Resolve Edit

Resolve Timeline Edit

Bridges editorial craft to this repo's tools. Open the right manual; don't re-derive it here.

• Craft / story — docs/guides/editorial-decision-guide.md. The global editor / assistant-editor skills add editorial philosophy and cutting-room practice; use them for why to cut, not tool mechanics.
• Live tool mechanics — docs/kernels/timeline-edit-kernel.md (the timeline edit-kernel boundary: duplicate/copy/move, range ops, item-state copy).
• Offline timeline / changelist — resolve-advanced/README.md → drt (timeline file authoring) and editorial (interchange + turnover).

Two servers

What this build cannot do (check before you offer it)

The scripting API changes per patch release, so "Resolve 21" is not a usable label. Read resolve_control get_version → build.unavailable_on_this_build before offering a gated surface; check_version_support asks about one named symbol. Gated in this domain:

An empty unavailable_on_this_build means nothing recorded is missing, not that everything exists — most of the API has never been version-bisected. A symbol with no gate returns unknown, which means probe it. Probe with name in dir(obj), never bare hasattr: on a Resolve object hasattr returns True for every name, real or invented, so it can only say yes.

Distinguish gated from absent. A gated surface arrives with a newer build; an absent one never does, and upgrading will not help. Clip speed / retime is absent on every build — see the edit-kernel essentials below before you offer set_retime for it.

Live edit-kernel essentials

• Duplicate/relocate: duplicate_clips (modes same_time/offset/ at_playhead/track_above/after_source/next_gap), copy_clips (alias), move_clips (duplicate-then-delete). include_linked=True carries linked audio.
• Ranges: copy_range, duplicate_range, overwrite_range, lift_range. No public razor/split — partial overlaps in lift_range are blocked unless allow_partial_item_delete=True (whole-item delete, not a trim).
• Item state copy: copy_properties (transform/crop/composite/audio/retime/ markers/flags/grades/takes/keyframes …); scope with a group list.
• Reading the user's selection is best-effort and version-dependent. The selection helper duck-probes three method names; the documented one, Timeline.GetSelectedClips, is 21.0.4+ (issue #131), so on older builds selection resolves by luck or not at all. Never build a destructive operation on "the selected clips" without reading back what you actually got — an empty or partial selection is indistinguishable from a small one.
• There is no clip-speed API at any version. set_retime sets retime quality only (RetimeProcess, MotionEstimation) and returns True for doing so, which reads as if the retime succeeded. Setting a % speed, reversing a clip, and speed ramps are all unreachable — SetProperty('Speed'|'PlaybackSpeed'| 'RetimeSpeed'|'ClipSpeed') returns False and the matching GetProperty returns None on every build measured. Say so and route the user to the UI; do not offer set_retime as if it answered the question (issue #132).
• Routing to the UI is where issue #132 actually went wrong — and it was not a tool lie. Having been told to hand off, the assistant improvised the handoff: it sent the user hunting for a dropdown "in the lower left of the clip" and never mentioned the keyframe tray. That direction came from nowhere in this repo. This repo verifies API behavior, not UI geography, and has no mechanism to version-guard a UI claim — Resolve's controls move between builds, pages and layouts, and every ledger entry here is stamped with the build it was measured on precisely because unstamped claims rot. So: never improvise UI geography. Say what the user needs to do ("set the clip's speed / build the speed ramp in Resolve's own retime controls") and say plainly that you cannot see their screen. Do not invent where a control sits, what it looks like, which corner of a clip to click, or a menu path or keyboard shortcut recalled from general knowledge — an invented location costs the user more than "I don't know where it is on your build" ever does, and it reads as authoritative because everything else you told them was measured. The line is improvised vs. written down here. A UI pointer that already exists in these skills (e.g. the playback-frame-rate path in resolve-rough-cut) was authored and reviewed deliberately — use it verbatim. If no pointer exists, that is not an invitation to supply one: name the operation and point at Blackmagic's manual for their build. The same rule covers every other "do it in the UI" handoff in these skills.
• edit_engine drives higher-level selects/tighten/swap flows (plan → confirm → execute); tighten variants can carry audio via keep_ranges mirror / include_audio. For a full dead-air pass over one long single-take recording — transcribe → plan → review → execute, with the source/record coordinate trap spelled out — use the resolve-tighten-recording skill.