# Frameboard for DaVinci Resolve

Frameboard lives in Resolve's own Scripts menu. You install it once and then
forget this folder exists.

## Start here

1. **Double click the installer for your machine.**
   `Install Frameboard (Mac).command` or `Install Frameboard (Windows).bat`.
   It copies one file into Resolve's scripts folder and tells you where it
   went.
2. **Open Resolve.** If it was already open, restart it: it reads that folder
   when it starts.
3. **Workspace, Scripts, Frameboard.**
4. **It asks for a code the first time.** In Frameboard, go to Account, press
   **Connect a program**, and type the eight characters it shows you.
5. **Pick your production and press Build.**

The frames download, the timeline is built, and it appears in your project in
a bin named after the production. Nothing already in the project is touched.

On a Mac the first double click needs right click, Open, and confirm, because
macOS quarantines anything downloaded from the web.

## Where it gets installed

Your own account, not the whole machine, so it needs no administrator:

- **macOS** `~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Utility`
- **Windows** `%APPDATA%\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Fusion\Scripts\Utility`
- **Linux** `~/.local/share/DaVinciResolve/Fusion/Scripts/Utility`

Copying `frameboard_resolve.py` there by hand works just as well. Name it
`Frameboard.py`, which is the name the menu shows.

To remove it, delete that one file. Nothing else is left behind except the
downloaded frames, in `~/Frameboard/animatics`.

## Python

Resolve runs Python scripts with the Python already on your machine rather
than one of its own, so you need Python 3 installed. On a Mac you have it. On
Windows, python.org, and tick **Add Python to PATH** in the installer.

Nothing beyond the standard library is used. There is nothing to `pip install`.

## Running it from outside Resolve

The installer offers a second option: build a timeline right now, without
going through the menu. That route drives Resolve from outside, which needs
**DaVinci Resolve Studio**. Blackmagic closed that bridge on the free edition
in 19.1.

The Scripts menu is the better route anyway, and it is the one to try first
whichever edition you have.

**If neither works:** in Frameboard, use Export, Animatic. You get the same
timeline as a file, and Resolve imports it with File, Import, Timeline.

## What arrives

One clip per shot, in shooting order, each held for the length you planned it
at. The scene heading and the shot's own line come in as markers.

Shots with no duration set are laid at four seconds and marked, so a guess
never looks like a decision. Shots with no picture on the board yet come in
black rather than offline, so they still hold their place in the cut.

## Verified how

Every path here has been driven with Resolve's objects standing in for the
real thing: connecting, being asked again after a token is revoked, cancelling,
and a full build. Resolve itself is not installed on the machine this was
written on, so the calls into Resolve are the part that has not been proven
against the real application.