Sugestions after months of testing

I love this new software but I'd love it even more if I could:

Assign updated thumbnails to scenes in the Java UI (like R4)

Overlay Announcements that sit still on the screen when set to long durations (like R4)

See the tweaks pane in automatic mode at all times (like manual mode)

Be able to pause the time line in manual mode without switching back to automatic mode.

Be able to zoom in and out on the time line in manual mode instead of just scrolling up/down

Control video clip's speed and direction of play

Make every overlay fade in and out instead of cutting in and out

Have a button in the UI or assigned as a hot key that fades all to black (like R4)

Bind Hot Keys (like R4)

Be able to remove active overlays from the time line before they reach their end without them getting stuck on. (Right now, in manual mode, if you trash an overlay before the time line reaches the end of the overlay's icon, the overlay stays on and can't be removed.)

Access a sound preferences tweaking dialog (like R4)


I have more suggestions that I can't think of at the moment. I'll add them soon. Please let me know if any of this is already possible. I hope I haven't overlooked anything that's already been explained in documnetation.

"Control video clip's speed and direction of play

Make every overlay fade in and out instead of cutting in and out

Have a button in the UI or assigned as a hot key that fades all to black (like R4) "

fully agree with these... they sound like pretty fundemental features of morphyre

Thanks - sorry it's taken so long to reply - I've been crazy busy recently.

They sound like great ideas, I'll definitely have a go at getting some of those in. I'm not sure quite where I'd stick the tweaks pane in auto mode though (I'm trying to keep it so it'll fit on 800x480 so it can be controlled with a USB touchscreen monitor)...

The video seeking thing would be good - but it would require all the videos to be encoded per-frame (maybe using MJPEG instead of MPEG4). Any ideas how that would actually get controlled from the UI though? another 'tweak' for speed?

It's really interesting to see someone using the Manual mode - I did it because people had requested it in R4 but I honestly thought no-one was using it

Also interesting with overlays really - I left out the smooth transitions because it took a while to do on R4 and no-one ever mentioned it - I assumed no-one cared

basically the more sliders you expose, the better... but for the purposes of your 800x480 screen, i think the space taken up by the 'next scene' area on the right side could be better used by a bank of sliders concerning the current scene, such as blend modes and transparencies for things which are blended on screen ,time rate adjustments for individual elements like the overlay fades, or direct position control like in a video or maybe the fade progress, if that is possible...
the 'next scene' area is like a panel on the right side which is called from a button , and it basically looks like that UI mockup i did in the other thread, when you call it, it could push the bank of sliders to the left side so you could simultaneously tweak the sliders and build the next scene, and have some form of manual control over the transition into the next scene and make it look more seamless
on the 'current scene' side, there could be buttons for things like overlays, the video control, audio response adjustments, and any number of obvious things you might add in the future...

could the videos not be decoded seperately from when it is being played? like when the video is selected and you select a position on it, the video is decoded from the last keyframe , and each frame is stored in memory......
my idea for controlling the playback of the movies is that you dont just have a slider, but a button which opens a screen width, 2 layered slider, and a preview window on the UI itself, if that is possible... the upper layer controls the actual time position of the video, and is zoomed at one frame per pixel... the lower slider controls which portion of the upper slider is visible... if possible , there could be a method of controlling the zoom level so you can more easily get to the parts of the video you want
this is useful for when you add things like cue points and stuff like that for looping

and then you can control the playback rate after you've set a loop, so that it loops in time to the music, etc....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2011 12:33PM by carmatic.