EnigmA Amiga Run 1997 July/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 20 (1997)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1997-07 & 08][EAR-CD IV].iso/lightwave/cgplwlist/cgplw05001-05250.txt/[e-mail]_Sat Apr 22 12:10:10 PDT 1995.msg

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Article: 5087 of comp.graphics.packages.lightwave
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Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!netnews
From: [e-mail] (Thierry Humeau)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.packages.lightwave,rec.video.desktop
Subject: Flyer Bugs/Improvements Reports (Long)
Date: 21 Apr 1995 15:15:28 GMT
Organization: Netcom
Lines: 633
Distribution: world
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Hi,

Here is a compilation of all the Flyer
Bugs/Improvements reports I have sent to
Newtek.  I though some of you may be interested
to take a look at it.

Feel free to comment.

Thierry.


FLYER BUGS/IMPROVEMENT REPORT #1

Date: 4/5/95
From: Thierry Humeau
Current software version: 4.02
Tel: [phone]    Fax: [phone]

>>>My configuration:
A2000/PP&S Zeus 040/33mhz accelerator w/16 meg
ram
Workbench 2.1
68040 lib version 37.4, Setpatch version 38.31
Mega chip 2000, ICD Flicker Free Video display
enhancer
VT 2000 card, Flyer card #8002315
2 Seagate Elite-9 drives (latest revision #016)
1 Seagate SCSI 2 Hawk , 1 Gig for audio
1 Quantum SCSI 2 Empire, 1 Gig internal Amiga
drive.


Video Quality:
*************
Quite a far cry from the D2 quality offered by
a $50,000 Sony recorder as Newtek ad
claims the digitized video looks in most case
good but not as good as Betacam SP.....
Video shots with pan moves, fine detailed
contrasted areas and high luminance values are
the worst to digitize (e.i. wide pans of bare
trees in front of a bright overcast sky).
Also,
digitizing video footage that includes graphic
overlays creates sometimes problems.
Most of the observable artifacts are moire
rainbows and softening/flickering of the video.
According to Newtek, this is due to the amount
of details and the inability for the drive to
keep up with it. I don't quite buy this since I
have seen better results with other non-linear
edit systems using the same drives....   In
result, the digitizing quality drops and the
digitized clips loose sharpness. I hope to see
further improvements in the VTASC
compression scheme .....

Improve Location and Timing of Video/Audio
events (CRUTIAL)
***********************************************
*********
It is very tricky to properly time audio/video
clips relative to Program time and/or
background events.  There are two essential
reasons for this:

1) The program accumulated and total time
should be updated after any change made to
the project and displayed in the project and/or
process windows.
2) While editing an audio or video event in the
process window, there is no way to
monitor other video/audio tracks overlaping the
clip.

Example: Cutting video clips onto a background
music track, multiple cut-aways on a
talking head, etc....

Proposed Solutions:
1) When opening a clip Process window and
making changes to the clip edit points, the
program time should update while changing clip
edit points.  Also, selctive monitoring of
other audio/video events occuring in the
backgound should be possible so the clip being
edited can be positioned/timed relative these
other events.  As an example, you could
precisely cut video clips to a music or
narration track running in the background, very
basic stuff.  At present, the only way to do
that is to use a stop-watch while playing back
the sequence, not so practical.....

Such a feature would also greatly facilitate
the building of multiple cut-aways on top of a
talking head.  Has Newtek tech staff seriously
tried to insert two or three consecutive cut-
aways on a talking head video clip and noticed
how tricky it is to match video/audio IN
points when the talking face comes back at the
end?  This is a widely used and very basic
editing technique and it should be very easy to
complete.

2) We need some kind of slider control that
could move to and display any point in the
project even if it is located in the middle of
a video clip. A "start playing-back from"
action
should be able to be performed form this point.
 While shuttling through the Project using
this control, audio scrubing should work so
precise positioning of further events can be
located.  Here again, the Program time should
be able to update itself while moving
though the slider and once a position has been
located to either insert or trim audio/video
events, they should be a quick and easy way to
cut and paste the program TC position.
The range of this overall program slider
control sould be adjustable with Zoom In/Out
controls to allows for presice shuttling
through the Project. An alternative could be to
have this program control slider to move
through the project part currently displayed on
the screen.  So the differents steps to locate
a pecific program postition would be to:

- drag the project left sliders until you
locate the part of the project you want to work
on.
- use the new project control slider (may be
located accross the screen under the play,
stop, process,.... buttons) to move anywhere
throug the project displayed part.
- press "c" to capture the project time code
value of the current cursor position or "i" to
insert a new event.

3) Add timing information to the project
window.  It would be very convenient
everytime you highlight a crouton in the
project windows to have timing information
displayed on the top of the project window next
to the program time instead of having to
open the clip process window.  The information
could appear as follows:
_______________________________________________
_____________________
Clip name   Clip duration        Prgm accum.
time at Clip Out point    Prgm Total duration

This should also work when selecting multiple
clips, the "Clip duration" would just display
the total added time of all the highlighted
clips and the Prgm accumulated time would be
relative to the last highlighted clip Out
point.

Improve Clip Process Window Time Code entry
(MINOR)
**********************************************
1) Beside the current way to change time-code
values, right-clicking and hold on a time-
code window could bring up a pull down menu
with the different options:

    - Trim: enter a + or - number of frames
    - Copy: would copy the displayed
time-code onto the clipboard
    - Paste: would paste the clipboard
time-code onto the time-code window

New Clip Window:
*****************
- It would be nice to be able to save audio or
video clips directly into Flyer drives created
sub-folder so we would not have to do the long
and tedious process of going to the
files/files mode, drag the croutons to the
proper directory and delete the previous ones.
- The audio meters should have a range of leds
like you can find on any tape deck or
receiver.  This would facilitate the
adjustement of an optimal audio input level.


Time Code capture (IMPORTANT)
*******************************
I'd really like to be wrong here but I
understand that you opted for an RS-232
protocol to
read VTR time code form the Flyer serial
connectors.  I cannot beleive that this choice
was made considering than today, RS-422 is the
defacto standard for most of the
industrial/broadcast machine controls.  Is
there any easy way to use these serial ports as
RS-422?  I know about the Horita TC/RS-232
translator but that's an extra $500 and an
extra box to add to the system.

Improve Audio level adjustment.  There is no
easy way to program and variate the
level of a music track playing  over sound
bytes or narration.  (CRUTIAL)
***********************************************
***********************
>From the Audio Clip Process window, we should
be able to have the option to monitor
other audio tracks while shuttling through the
clip.  Moving the slider would allow
monitoring of other audio tracks overlaping
this audio clip, locate, mark and assign
keyframes with an audio level assigned to them.
 To avoid changing the already set In and
Out points, just clicking within the marked
audio clip range could add a third slider just
to
shuttle through the clip to look for
positioning information.  This could also be
implemented in the video clips process windows.

TPaint Video Clip Processing. (IMPORTANT)
*****************************************
- All these processing capabilities are really
nice but they are also very slow.  Don't you
think you should try to bypass loading  clip
image in TPaint and do Clip processing
direclty from the Project interface using
plug-ins or arexx macros that don't call up
TPaint?  I am not a programmer so I don't know
how difficult this would be but as a user
point of view, all the process you can do on a
VTASC clip now is really slow to render
even on my 68040/33mhz machine.  However,
rotoscoping always takes time and using
TPaint for that seems to have potential.

Miscelleneous:
*************
- In the Files/Files interface mode, they
should be an option to move and not copy files
from one window to the other.  May be after
having selected croutons and dragging them
to an other window, a requester could offer a
moving or copying alternative.

- Keyboard shortcuts for all basic operations
would be welcome.

FLYER BUGS/IMPROVEMENTs REPORT#2

Much Needed Improvements in Flyer software on a
daily user side:

- You must find a way to help us locate and
time events relative to the program
time.  Right now, the program time is useless
since it displays only the total
project time and only when playing back a
project all the way through.

Any of the following features added ASAP would
make our life much easier.
Thanks for taking a close look at these notes
and having little thoughts for
agonizing Flyer editors......



1) More Timing Information :
We need more timing information displayed in
the top of the project window
and here is my opinion:
_______________________________________________
____________
Clip        Clip            Program
Program     Total Program
Name    Duration        TC In        TC
Out    Duration

A program accumulated duration and total
duration update displayed in the
top of the screen that would update itself in
real time everytime a change is
made.  The accumulated duration display should
be relative to the last
highlighted clip In and Out points in the
project window.  This feature should
work while editing clips in the Process window
so beside the clip In and Out
point, the editor could also relate to the
Program In and Outs which is critical
50% of the time.

2) Playback of Other Clips While in the Process
Window:
I know that there are some hardware limitations
but I feel that the Flyer could
handle playing back at least one extra
video/audio track on top of the clip
being edited. It would be awesome for fine
tuning purposes to be able to
select from the process or the project windows,
at least one other video/audio
track to monitor while fine tuning the clip.

ex: a good one here would be adjusting a video
clip to fit in between two
beats of an audio crouton triggered several
clips earlier (e.i. music video
editing technique)

3) Hot key for Capture of Program Time Code
One other thing which could be (I thing) simple
to integrate would be a hot key
(maybe just g for "get" or "grab" time code)
that would allow the editor to
capture the program time while playing back the
project or portion of the
project.  The grabbed time code could be
automatically copied onto the
clipboard and pasted in the clips process
window if you manage to give us the
possibility to edit these clips by also
changing their program In and Out
points.  Assuming that the program timing
information mentioned in 1) is
working this could be a workaround to precisely
time clips relative to the
program time if monitoring other tracks as
mentioned in paragraph 2) is for
now too complicated.

New Various Bugs Discovered:

Project Interface / Sequencing of Events:
- For some reason, audio playback of audio only
clip or split audio portion of a
video clip does not work if "playing from" a
clip located right after or still
overlaping these audio clips.  A real pain in
the butt.....
- The requirements for loading FS and effects
are now really udge and I can
barely sequence several FS together if their
duration is set to under 5 sec.
And that's just using 1 sec dissolves.  As far
as I remember, .94 was doing
better than that.

TPaint 2000 (too buggy to sort it out but
anyway, these are just a few...)
- Major problem with display buffers managment.
Have you seriously tried it?
- Make Flyer Stills describe in Flyer tutorials
does not work
- Could we flip back to the 2000 1/4 display
for better painting precision and
resolution.  The magnify mode is still awfull
and really hard to use?
- Cutting out brushes and pasting them stamps
B&W garbage at top left of the
screen.
- Fill tools work whenever they want
- etc.....

Toaster CG
- Scroll pages don't support drop shadows
- Some scroll pages seem to freeze the system.
At least it happened to me
after having setup a scroll page using Bodoni
40 pts saving it and putting it in
a project.
- I cannot get the "Startup Script" to work
- The "Chart Font" script is great but can get
really screwy depending of the
font you are trying it on.


FLYER BUGS REPORT #3:

Audio-Only clips or Split Audio portion of
Video Clips do not playback when
doing a "play from" command.

Any audio-only clip or split audio portion of a
Video Clip located prior to the start
of a "play-from" operation does not playback.
This is a real pain in the butt since
there is no way to check if added clips are
syncing correcly with the audio
without playing back the Project from the
begining.  For example, let say you're
working on a 20 min. video with a 20 min.
narration track that has been laid
down in the project as one audio clip locked to
first video clip in the project.  If
you're editing some new clips, let's say 15
min. into the audio clip and want to
playback from there to check your beatifull
work, you're screwed.... The narration
doesn't playback in the background unless you
playback the all thing from it's
begining and wait patiently 15 min. until you
get to the part of the project you're
editing.  Want to trim the last video clip you
laid downz? well, you'll have to go
for an other 15 min coffee break.....


Use of Flyer Stills in a Project affects timing
of Audio-Only clips located prior
to the clip where doing a "playback from"
command:

After inserting Flyer Stills into a project
that has one audio-only clip after the first
video clip in the Project, everytime I'd try to
do a playback from one of the Flyer
Stills or from other clips located after the
audio-only clip, they'd trigger the audio-
clip located at the begining of the project for
no reason.  Also, when playing back
the all thing from the begining, everything
sequences okay but it's really
annoying not being able to correctly test
playback a project containing audio-
only clips using the "play from" command.

Note: If you ad a Split-Audio Clip prior to the
point you are trying to play back
from, it will bahave differently.


FLYER BUGS REPORT #4:

Flyer Backup:
I can backup everything but video and audio
clips located on Flyer A, B or C
drives.  Every attempt to backup a project
containing audio or video clips will
bring up a message in the backup window saying:

Backing up file "FlyerA:......" ...... Failed!
Error Sense Data:
    70 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Error during backup!

I am using a brand new Sony  SDT-5200 DAT
drive.  It is set to SCSI ID #1,is
hooked to my FlyerC audio drive ID #0 and is
properly terminated.  Data
compression option is disable on the DAT drive.

Backing up a project containing only
Framestores and effects works without
problems.  Any suggestions???


New Digitizing settings do not work:
In a previous fax, I mentioned that the new
*standard and *extended mode
accessible though the Alt-Alt-~ keyboard
combination worked.  Well, they
worked until you turn off the system and reboot
it later.  Then, when you try
playing back those clips digitized at these new
resolution settings, they flicker
really bad and show some chroma shifts.
Something similar to what LW anims
were doing under .94

Cutting Room should be optional:
Please, in next software update, allow us to
disable "Cutting Room".  It is
annoying when recording new single clips to
have to move through two different
windows.  Also, Cutting Room is a nice idea, it
is somewhat buggy and really
slow.  It takes for ever on my 68040/33 amiga
to process.  About 2 to 3 minutes
for just 10 clips.  Please, do not waist to
much time on improving CR for now at
least.

"Dropped Frames" message when Digitizing New
Clips:
Many times I start digitizing new clips, I am
getting the "dropped frames" error
message. The second try usually works.  Over five or six minutes of
recording
time, the "dropped frames" message often appears and recording stops.
I found
this really wierd since under .94, I could digitized 20 min. clips
without any
problems.  The "dropped Frames" errors don't seem to be linked to
resolution
modes selected.

Clips Processing:
1) It would be nice when processing a clip from the clip process window
to have
the option to either create a new clip or write over.  For example,
when you just
want to change the clip representative crouton, when processing it to
do so, the
software creates a copy of the processed clip with a new representative
crouton.
You then have to delete the original clip and rename the one just
created.  This
is a slow process.

2) I discover a few keyboard controls when in  a clip process window.
I really
like the arrow to playback or do frame by frame advance.  For some
reason, the
audio doesn't play back when using the arrows key to move through the
clips.
Are these keyboard controls documented anywhere?

3) I whish we could be able to edit or process clips from the files
window as well.

Minimum Clip Length:
If you want to market the Flyer as a system to produce cool videos, you
must
allow cutting clips of less than 10 frames!
It's very important but I don't know
what's the limitation here.  I just hope this
is possible.....

Some Wipes Effects are not working properly:
The following wipes:
- Wipe in Corner TL-BR and BL
- Wipe L-R and R-L
- Wipe B-T and T-B
are not working properly.  The wipe patten does
not seem correct and they put
the VT out of sync after they excecute.

TPaint 2000 very buggy:
I mentioned this one before but I am just
reminding you again:
- buffer display scheme does not work properly
- new full screen display really dropped
painting resolution
- etc, etc,......

FLYER BUGS REPORT #5:

Toaster Paint:
1) A "Save frame" operation usually always
aborts on the first try.  The second
try always work.

2) Sometimes and I could not exactly identify
when this happens, the color
control pannel turns mostly black and the
"edge" "center" , "flip range", etc....
buttons located on the right of the color
control pannel dispear.

3) Redo operations don't take place at the
proper location and sometimes crash
the software.

4) Text brushes create annoying gosted images
on the top left corner of the
display.

Flyer Backup:
I can backup everything but video and audio
clips located on Flyer A, B or C
drives.  Every attempt to backup a project
containing audio or video clips will
bring up a message in the backup window saying:

Backing up file "FlyerA:......" ...... Failed!
Error Sense Data:
    70 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Error during backup!

I am using a brand new Sony  SDT-5200 DAT
drive.  It is set to SCSI ID #1,is
hooked to my FlyerC audio drive ID #0 and is
properly terminated.  Data
compression option is disable on the DAT drive.

Backing up a project containing only
Framestores and effects works but when
doing a restore, and playing back the restored
project, it crashes.  The control
display, project/files scrolling controls get
fuzzy and covered by some gray color.
Using a directory utility, I noticed that the
restored files seem identical in size,
name and creation date.  Trying to open one of
the restored framestore from
ADPro gives me a message "error in body".

Double Booting Flyer:
When quitting Flyer software and rebooting it,
it freezes

New Digitizing settings do not work:
In a previous fax, I mentioned that the new
*standard and *extended mode
accessible though the Alt-Alt-~ keyboard
combination worked.  Well, they
worked until you turn off the system and reboot
it later.  Then, when you try
playing back those clips digitized at these new
resolution settings, they flicker
really bad and show some chroma inversion.

You mentioned that this occurs because I should
have entered the "*modes"
prior to playback these clips.  I have tried
this but the "*quality" recorded clips
still do not playback correclty.

--
**************************************************************
Thierry Humeau             tel: [phone]
Cameraman/Producer        fax: [phone]
Freelance/TV Networks        [e-mail]
**************************************************************