Managing Your Work Environment > Clip History >

# Clip History Functionality

When using clip history in an Autodesk Visual Effects and Finishing product, the following limitations apply:

- If you expand a clip with an Action module or node in Smoke, only features that are already available in Smoke are editable. If the clip is reopened in Inferno, Flame, or Flint, the features accessible in these products will be retained.
- If you have a Paint or Stabilizer element in your clip history, all modules that precede the Paint or Stabilizer module will not be editable. You can, however, modify the elements before the Paint or Stabilizer element by selecting the element immediately preceding the Paint or Stabilizer element in the history, and then pressing the Match hotkey to create a clip with the same history in the Source Area. You can then use the result clip from the match. The history is expandable and editable.
- The duration of a clip created in the Paint module is not retained. For example, enter the Paint module with None selected, and then in the Paint module create a scene that is 30 frames. Then go into a module such as Action and make some changes. When you view the clip history and click the Paint module element, the clip will contain one frame only.
- When you enter a module from clip history, in and out points mark the duration in the source clip that was used in the clip history (unless the entire clip was used). If you then make a modification and process the result, only the duration of the clip marked by in and out points is rendered, unless you park the cursor before the in point. If the cursor is parked before the in point, media is added to the head frames, starting from the cursor position.
- Always apply soft effects or Batch FX after you work in modules if you want to edit the soft effects from the clip history. If you process a clip in a module after a soft effect has been added to the clip history, you can no longer modify the preceding clip history. The clip name is also greyed out to indicate that the preceding soft effects and modules are no longer editable. For example, if you add a timewarp to a clip and then go into the Colour Corrector module and process the clip, you will not be able to edit the timewarp in the History view. The timewarp will be greyed out in the clip history.
- When you process a clip or element starting at a frame other than the first, the leading unprocessed frames are padded with unrendered frames. Unrendered frames are put in the header of the clip, producing a soft clip with a specific number of heads. This is necessary in Inferno, Flame, and Flint so that when you expand clip history in Batch, the frame numbers match between all nodes in the Batch schematic. It is also necessary in Smoke so that you can trim the element and then access the clip history to render the missing media.