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I'm happy to announce the general availability of Kinovea 0.8.25.

This post describes some of the improvements in version 0.8.25 over version 0.8.24.
This release focuses on usability and polishing of existing features, and introduces one new feature in the Capture module.

 
1. General

Starting with version 0.8.25 a native x64 build is provided. There are now 4 download options. The `zip` files are the portable versions and will run self-contained in the extraction directory. The `exe` files are the installer versions.
The minimum requirements have not changed and Kinovea still runs under all Windows versions between Windows XP and Windows 10.

The interface is now translated to Arabic thanks to Dr. Mansour Attaallah from the Faculty of Physical Education, Alexandria University - Egypt.

 
2. File explorer

Thumbnails details

The details overlaid on the thumbnails have been extended and made configurable. The framerate and creation time have been added to the fields that can be displayed, the framerate is displayed by default. Right-click the empty space in the explorer to bring the thumbnails context menu and choose the fields you would like to be shown.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-thumbnaildetails.png

 
3. Playback module

Interactive navigation cursor

The video now updates immediately when moving the playback cursor. This behavior was previously only activated when the working zone was entirely loaded in memory. It is now enabled by default. The experience should be largely improved but if you are on a less powerful system and navigation is problematic, the behavior of the cursor can be reverted from Preferences > Playback > General > "Update image during time cursor movement".

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-interactivecursor.png

Video framerate

The internal framerate of the video can be customized from the bottom part of the dialog in Video > Configure video timing. This setting changes the "default" framerate of the video by overriding what is written in the file. This is a different concept than slow motion. What the setting does is redefine the nominal speed of the video, the 100%. This is useful when a video has a wrong framerate embedded in it which can happen sometimes. In general use you would not use this setting very often but it can save an odd file. Note that this setting is also not the same as the Capture framerate that can be set from the same configuration box.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-framerateconfig.png

 
4. Annotation tools & measurements

Named objects

All drawing tool instances (angles, arrows, markers, chronometers, etc.) now have a custom "Name" property. This makes it easier to match drawings with their value when exporting data to spreadsheet. Regarding spreadsheet export, all lines and point markers are now exported to the spreadsheet, whether or not they have the "Display measure" option active in Kinovea.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-nameddrawingusage.png
http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-nameddrawingexport.png

Custom length unit

A new custom length unit can be used to cover use-cases that are not natively supported by Kinovea. By default Kinovea natively supports Millimeters, Centimeters, Meters, Inches, Feet and Yards. The extra option can be used to define a new unit such as Micrometers or Kilometers depending on the scale of the video being analyzed, or any unit specific to your field. The default value for this option is "Percentage (%)". The percentage unit would make sense when analyzing dimensions of objects purely relatively to one reference object. The mapping between video pixels and real life dimensions in the custom unit is defined by a calibration line, or a calibration grid for non-orthogonal planes. Any line or grid can be used as the calibration object.

The unit is defined in Preferences > Playback > Units > Custom length unit. It can then be used in any line or grid during calibration.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-customlengthunitconfig.png
http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-customlengthunitusage.png

Default tracking parameters

A default tracking profile can be defined from Preferences > Drawings > Tracking. This profile will be applied by default to newly added tracks and trackable custom tools like the bikefit tool or the goniometer. The parameters can be expressed in percentage of the image size or in actual pixels. Note that in the case of tracks, the tracking profile can also be modified on a per-object basis after addition. This is not currently possible for other objects.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-defaulttrackingprofile.png

    
5. Capture module

File naming automation

The file naming engine has been rewritten from scratch to support a variety of automation scenarios that were not previously well supported. The complete path of captured files is configured from Preferences > Capture > Image naming and Preferences > Capture > video naming.

A complete path is constructed by the concatenation of three top-level values: a root directory, a sub directory and the file name. It is possible to define a different value for these three top-level variables for the left and right screens and for images and videos. The sub directory can stay empty if you do not need this level of customization. Defining root directories on different physical drives for the left and right screens can improve recording performances by parallelizing the writing.

The sub directory and the file name can contain "context variables" that are automatically replaced just in time when saving the file. These variables start with a % sign followed by a keyword. In addition to date and time components you can use the camera alias, the configured framerate and the received framerate in the file name.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-filenaming.png

The complete list of context variable and the corresponding keyword can be found by clicking the "%" button next to the text boxes.

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-contexvariables.png

A few examples:

    Root: "C:\Users\joan\Documents"
    Sub directory: "Kinovea\%year\%year%month\%year%month%day"
    File: "%year%month%day-%hour%minute%second"

    Result: "C:\Users\joan\Documents\Kinovea\2016\201608\20160815\20160815-141127.jpg"
    Root: "D:\videos\training\joan"
    Sub directory:
    File: "squash - %camalias - %camfps"

    Result: "D:\videos\training\joan\squash - Back camera - 30.00.mp4"

If the file name component does not contain any variable, Kinovea will try to find a number in it and automatically increment it in preparation for the next video so as not to disrupt the flow during multi-attempts recording sessions.

Capture mosaic

The capture mosaic is a new feature introduced in Kinovea 0.8.25. It uses the buffer of images supporting the delay feature as a source of images and display several images from this buffer simultaneously on the screen. The result is a collection of video streams coming from the same camera but slightly shifted in time or running at different framerates. The capture mosaic can be configured by clicking the mosaic button in the capture screen:

http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-capturemosaicbutton.png
http://www.kinovea.org/screencaps/0.8.25/0825-capturemosaicconfig.png

Modes:

1. The single view mode corresponds to the usual capture mode: a single video stream is presented, shifted in time by the value of the delay slider.

2. The multiple views mode will split the video stream and present the action shifted in time a bit further for each stream. For example if the delay buffer can contain 100 images (this depends on the image size and the memory options) and the mosaic is configured to show 4 images, then it will show:

  • the real time image;

  • a second image from 33 frames ago;

  • another one from 66 frames ago;

  • and a fourth one from 100 frames ago.

Each quadrant will continue to update and show its own delayed stream. This can be helpful to get several opportunities to review a fast action.

3. The slow motion mode will split the video stream and present the action in slow motion. Each stream runs at the same speed factor. In order to provide continuous slow motion the streams have to periodically catch up with real time. Having several streams allows you to get continuous slow motion in real time.

4. The time freeze mode will split the video stream and show several still images taken from the buffer. The images are static and the entire collection will synchronize at once, providing a new frozen view of the motion.

    
6. Feedback

Feel free to use this post for feedback, bug reports, usability issues, feature suggestions, etc.

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Dear joan,
thank you very much for the new features and this wonderful piece of software, once again!
Will use 0.8.25 from now on and report any issues if present.
Have a nice day,
everyone!

- the repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before -

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All regards for development to Joan and other contributors! I'm happy and excited to see new Kinovea edition, it looks promising. Wish successful use to whole Kinovea community.

4 (edited by TriStuff 2016-08-30 01:46:41)

As an Android version is unlikely, was wondering whether to buy a cheap Windows Tablet. Will this new version run on the Windows Tablet OS?
I think this is far and away the best video tool around, and to date it has been great for me as a coach, but disappointing that I can't use it at the time with my athletes.
I particularly like the slider speed control.
The only issue has been upside down or 90 degree images!

5 (edited by getpa 2016-09-02 14:55:24)

Dear Joan,
just experienced the following issue & would like to inform you:
having installed the 0.8.25 version x64.exe, i cannot access the PS3eye camera anymore - it is not even appearing in the cam list.
With the win32 version, however, I can still access & work with the cams as previously.
best regards,

- the repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before -

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TriStuff wrote:

As an Android version is unlikely, was wondering whether to buy a cheap Windows Tablet. Will this new version run on the Windows Tablet OS?

If the hardware is running Windows 10 it should work. It will not work on Windows Mobile. Some of the controls and menus might be a bit small for touch interface though.

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getpa wrote:

having installed the 0.8.25 version x64.exe, i cannot access the PS3eye camera anymore - it is not even appearing in the cam list.
With the win32 version, however, I can still access & work with the cams as previously.

Thanks for the report!

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Dear Joan,
when saving the analysed video files, the option to apply the slow motion on the video is not available anymore. This happened on purpose or is this something that went wrong?
best regards,

- the repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before -

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I can repro this, thanks for the report. It was not intended.

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Great update Joan. Scrolling is very smooth now.

Now a more touch friendly interface and we are good to go smile

I use Kinovea on a Surface 3 Pro

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>> 6. Feedback
>> Feel free to use this post for feedback, bug reports, usability issues, feature suggestions, etc.Hi,


OK, I will post here.

I use the stable version 8.15 for automatic recording of my golf swing.   Trying v8.25 it seems the recording delay feature has been removed.  Without this ability I cannot see how to automatically record my golf swing!

FYI, the standard method for automatic recording of golf swing is by sound trigger at impact and then capturing 1-2 seconds prior and post impact.  Recording the swing PRIOR to impact trigger requires some kind of recording delay.

Ideally Kinovea would have this logic built in but I am able to do this with stable version 8.15 by using a 3rd party sound trigger application calling a keyboard script which causes Kinovea to record about 3 seconds and then play back the swing in slow motion.  It works quite well but only if the recording can be delayed.

Can anything be done?

Thanks.


PS.  My PS3eye camera works in the 32bit version and I can change resolutions and frame rate but all the camera properties are greyed out and unavailable (gain, exposure etc).   They work in v8.15.

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I also use kinovea primarily for the delay feature. Hope it's not the plan to take it out of future versions.

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Thanks for the feedback!

The delay feature is alive and well and has been expanded in the latest version (see mosaic button that allow you to split the capture screen and get multiple streams from the same camera at different delay values).

What has changed is that when recording video, we previously recorded whatever was displayed in the capture screen, so if you had a 10-second delay and recorded 5 seconds of video, at the end of the recording you have on file an action that happened before you hit the record button.

The new behavior (since 0.8.24, March 2015) is to record the stream as it comes from the camera, independently of what is shown on screen. So if you have a 10-second delay and record 5 seconds of video, at the end of the recording you have the  action following your hitting the record button.

This was done to improve the recording performance and avoid dropped frames. Dropped frames cause mismatches between real time and video framerate and break time and speed measurements when analyzing the videos, so it's very important to get this right.

I understand that there is now a missing feature of being able to record action in "pre-roll" fashion and considering various options.

Another feature that is often requested is to be able to increase the size of the delay buffer. This is currently limited by memory. It should be possible to increase it on 64-bit versions, but the real solution would be to allow the delay buffer to be stored on disk. I feel these two features are interlinked because if we have the delay buffer in a temporary file on disk, it should be a small step to being able to save the part of the delay buffer between the start and stop record commands to be converted to a regular video file.

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joan wrote:

I understand that there is now a missing feature of being able to record action in "pre-roll" fashion and considering various options.

Thanks Joan.   Yes, the removal of the recording delay feature, or the "pre-roll" capability as you call it,  is causing the problem.  I'm glad to see it's being worked on.   Sounds like you have a bigger picture in mind so it will be interesting to see what you come up with.   If i can provide input from the golf perspective I'm  happy to do that.

15 (edited by Chas Tennis 2016-11-28 15:42:38)

First time using 8.25 - this question involves the use of the stopwatch "countdown mode" for displaying time or frame.

For side-by-side tennis strokes I would like to display "0" time for racket-ball impact with negative values of time before impact and positive after.  I would like these to appear in a video for Vimeo or Youtube and not just on the Kinovea analysis screen.

First pair of videos were: 1) 29.97 fps recording & 29.97 playback and 2) a high frame rate recording described as "240" fps and processed in the Casio camera to 29.97 fps playback video.  The 29.97 fps rates appeared automatically for one video. I entered the 240 fps recording rate for the high speed recording video. 

Positive Time works well. I used the millisecond time scale for each video, coordinated the impact frames between the two videos and each video has a time indicator displaying positive time after impact.   On the Kinovea analysis screen, one video advanced 33.33 milliseconds each time the combined control single frame advanced and the other 4.2 milliseconds. 

Negatve Time before impact. I am having no luck adding the stopwatch "countdown mode" to the display.  If I select "stop stopwatch" and "countdown mode" only one frame displays "0" at impact - no countdown to "0".  Search under Help did not have information for "countdown mode."

On the Kinovea analysis screen, next to the speed bar, I see "Position" and it lists the negative millisecond values that I am trying to display in the video.

Unfortunately also, when I uploaded this Kinovea side-by-side, 30 & 240 fps video to Vimeo, the Vimeo processing seems to have kept only one frame in four from the original 240 fps video.   
[video]https://vimeo.com/193082298[/video]

To do stop action single frame on Vimeo, click Vimeo then full screen, hold down the SHIFT KEY and use the ARROW KEYS.