About Palette Storage Locations
Palettes can also be stored in four different locations. The best location to store palettes depends on the type of production, the purpose of the palette, your pipeline and your backup plan. Here is an introduction to each type of palette location and their purpose:
- Element: The palette-library folder inside an element's folder in the scene. This is the recommended location if you are adding palettes to the palette lists of individual elements.
- Scene: The palette-library folder inside the scene's folder. This is the default location when creating a palette in the scene's palette list, and is the location chosen by Harmony when creating a palette with the Advanced palette Lists preference disabled. This is a suitable location to store the palettes of characters, props and backgrounds used in a single scene, a small project, or any production that uses Harmony Stand Alone.
- Job: For Harmony Server, this is the palette-library folder inside the job's folder on the database server. This is the recommended location if you want to share the same palette between several scenes in the same job, like for characters, props and backgrounds that are used in across entire episodes or smaller-scale projects.
- Environment: For Harmony Server, this is the palette-library folder inside the environment's folder on the database server. This is the recommended location if you want to share the same palette between several scenes in the same environment, like for characters, props and backgrounds that are used across an entire series or movie.
Another reason why it is better to store shared palettes in a scene's job or environment is because, when you export a Harmony scene, you can choose to export the palettes in the scene's job or environment palette libraries along with it. These palettes are then stored with the exported scene and, when importing the scene back into the database, you can choose to import the job and environment palettes that were exported with it back into the scene's job and environment.
Even in Harmony Stand Alone, you can store palettes at the job or environment level, even though Harmony Stand Alone scenes do not have a job or an environment. When you do this, palettes are stored inside a provisional jobs or environments directory inside the scene directory. If you import your scene to a Harmony Server database, you can choose to import the files located in that scene's provisional job and environment into the scene's job and environment. Hence, when using Harmony Stand Alone, you should only store palettes at the job or environment level if you intend to import your scene in a database later.
If you wish, you can also link a palette from any location on your machine or network to a palette list. This can be useful if you have are doing a project in Harmony Stand Alone, and want all your scenes to source their palettes from the same location. However, it is not recommended to do this with Harmony Server projects, as opening a scene linked to an external palette on a different workstation will require that palette to be in the same file path as on the workstation where the palette was linked.