1,906 Topic by joan

(6 replies, posted in General)

The feedback on 0.7.6 has been good (thanks) and several good points have been made.

It occurred to me that some parts weren't up to the quality standard I wanted. This was especially true of the Pencil tool but of some other bits aswell.
So before diving into special effects, DV capture, audio support or other features of 0.8.x, some polishing of the existing is necessary.
This new 0.7.x won't take 4 month to be completed though, and it should be out within the next 4 weeks now.

To be expected:
- Better pencil tool.
- Drawings that fade in/out of their key frame or stay visible for ever.
- Direct zoom into picture.
- Semi automatic tracking through template matching.
- Plus as many bug fixes as possible.

It must be as stable and bug free as possible since future versions will add many new areas for bugs to hide into.
So please, I emphasize that bug reports are the very important contribution you can do.
Try all options systematically, try to make it break, and please report when it does.

Thank you big_smile

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1,907 Reply by joan

(15 replies, posted in General)

1. The chronometer export problem should be fixed in the next release.

2. Shapes as drawings is another feature that will be worked on, I'm not too sure when though.
I want to take the best approach on this one to enable people draw shapes as complex as they want.

3. This is an interesting point.
The current tracking function was done with technical sport analysis in mind. (Incentive was for exemple: how does the knee joint moves over time ?)

Having it tweaked for team sports/tactical position sports would be a great enhancement.

So please comment/expand on this tentative "feature spec" :
- In edit mode, the trajectory display wouldn't change much.
- In normal mode you could choose between several styles through the configuration dialog:
a. Analysis trajectory (same as existing),
b. Arrow pointing towards the point being tracked, (the trajectory in itself wouldn't be visible not to clutter the view)
c. Label attached to the point being tracked.

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1,908 Reply by joan

(25 replies, posted in General)

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

It will be taken into account when building the roadmap/features goals.
It turns out the priorities vary greatly from users to users...

@Tampai: Because of perspective it is not easy to give a meaningful value for line size.
As for the angle it will only be accurate if the line is on a perpendicular plane. But unlike angles, if you want to compare several line sizes, all lines would have to be on the exact same plane.
I think this is too much a constraint and will not be practical.
However, I'm considering using the new 3d grid to let the user define a reference plane. All angles and lines could then be computed relatively to this plane.

@mag: The "12" I had in mind will be included in a new 0.7.x release soon. However I think what you describe is more of an object tracking scenario. Putting a line and have it following an object on subsequent frames. This won't be in the very next release, I still need to have a stable/consistent tracking for single points first.

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1,909 Reply by joan

(5 replies, posted in Bug reports)

Short anwser:

Will be fixed in next version.


Long answer:

I tried the file and reproduced the problem. Then I tried it in MPlayer and VideoLan, and got the same issue...
This generally means it's an issue in FFMpeg itself (the decoding library we all use) which is out of my league to fix.

I looked for topics related to errors on this specific codec and found some interesting posts on the subject.
The root cause is the little watermark in the bottom right corner, which is actually superposed in a metadata layer and modifies the way the file is encoded...
It turns out this was fixed in FFMpeg very recently.
I'm using the "unofficial builds for Windows" done by Ramiro Polla and he just made a release today ! (previous one was in august)
I integrated the new build and I can confirm that the problem is fixed. big_smile

All the credit goes to the FFMpeg developpers and the Windows builds manager. (This is definitley Open Source in motion smile)

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1,910 Reply by joan

(5 replies, posted in Bug reports)

Hi,
It can have several causes... Would you be able to provide a sample so I can have a look ?

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1,911 Reply by joan

(3 replies, posted in Bug reports)

Thanks for the follow-up and glad it finally worked !
It still means there is a problem somewhere because the installer is supposed to detect and warn you when the .NET framework isn't there...
Will have to test that part again someday.

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1,912 Reply by joan

(1 replies, posted in Bug reports)

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

1. It will be possible at some point because it is actually easy to do in .NET
The plan is to have a number of improvements of this nature, including a "focus region" (for a lack of a better name) where you simply zoom in/out and pan sidewise and also making the "mirror" option available anytime...
All this has an impact on many things (drawings, magnifier, exports etc.) and will need to be carefully tested to avoid regressions...

2. The "fine-tune" function is trigerred automatically depending on the size of the working zone (and the settings in Preferences>Play/Analyze>Switch to Analysis mode sliders.)
I know the meaning of the settings is not very straightforward but I wanted for casual users not to have to bother about it.
You can learn more about it in the article "General Tasks > Preferences" of the Help.

3. And renaming too... I'll append that to the todo-list with medium priority.

4. You map them on an existing plane of the video or you set them to reveal a plane that is not visible.
For example, say you study a tennis match, you could map the grid to the court. That way you can better assess where the players are evolving, and if you know the size of the court you can even infer the size of a single cell and make rough measurements.

5. Hmm... In the current design if you have defined a working area the resulting video will only contain this working area.
So, it will not be possible without modifying the workflow...
There might be something to do with the meta data file (drawings etc.) to save this information though...

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1,913 Reply by joan

(3 replies, posted in Bug reports)

Hi,
This behavior has been reported for at least one other person, and frankly I have no clue as to the origin of the problem...
Can you please state your Windows version, Service Pack, .NET version, etc.
Hopefully we can start seeing a pattern and assess the problem.

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1,914 Reply by joan

(3 replies, posted in Français)

Bonjour,
Merci d'avoir tout de même pris la peine de rapporter le problème.

Une autre piste peut-être, êtes vous sous Windows Vista 64 bits ? (Il y avait un soucis de ce type avec certaines versions précédentes, normalement corrigé mais peut-être une régression...)

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1,915 Reply by joan

(2 replies, posted in General)

Oh, and sorry if this has been proposed by some of you already. I just had to rephrase it with the technical aspects and existing architecture in mind.
Sometimes the same idea needs to come from several people, expressed differently, to provoke insights about its full potential smile

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1,916 Topic by joan

(2 replies, posted in General)

I was just thinking a bit more about that onion skinning thing for drawings and having the next keyframe's drawing showing through...
It is definitely the way to go ! big_smile

Here's what came out as tentative functionnal specification :

- One drawing is still associated to one and only one key image.
- You can enable/disable fading.
- When enabled, it means each drawing will be seen on a few frames before and after its reference key image.
- The opacity of the drawing peaks on its key image, and is lowered as the play head moves away.
- The default fading value for new drawings is modifiable via general settings.
- Each drawing can have a custom value, modifiable through its configuration window.
- You can disable fading altogether for all drawings if you want.

So far I guess its standard fading / onion skinning and exists in other packages. Now the specific stuff:

- You can set a drawing to have an infinite fading value, meaning it would be visible during all the video.
- It stays linked to its reference key image but it doesn't matter anymore.
- This solves the issue of not being able to have persisting drawings; all without introducing a new set of tools or a new drawing mode...

This also almost solves the custom guides feature:

- Manually draw a circle or more complex shape on the first frame and turn its fading to infinity.
- Save as .kva file.
- import it in another video and you can now move it around, change its color, etc. and use it like a reference frame.
- It won't do all you could expect from a custom guide though, but with some tweaks we could have something very useful, that you can import and resize.
and share with anyone. ( Heck I could even host a repository of custom guides on kinovea.org...)

Opens new horizons !

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1,917 Reply by joan

(15 replies, posted in General)

And maybe:
- If you start to draw and it detects you are right upon an existing [line, angle, chrono, text, etc. except another doodle] then it switches to the "Hand tool" on its own automatically.

That may prove counter intuitive though.

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1,918 Reply by joan

(15 replies, posted in General)

jeandenis wrote:

- when you select the drawing tool for instance and draw on a frame, then step frame forward or backwards, I have to reclick/reselect the drawing tool in order to draw again. It would be great to have the selected tool be selected at all times, unless you change it. So when the tool is selected it could be highlighted to show what your selection is.

I am currently reconsidering my views on this problem. big_smile

At first, (and this is what I answered pateta3d from 11secondclub on the same issue) I thought it would interfere too much with the workflow.
The problem with keeping the pencil activated is that you now have to explicitely choose the "hand" tool to be able to move drawings around.
In my initial assessement, users would create a few key images and add a few drawings on them, mostly lines and angles, and perform more "moving" actions than "drawing" ones.

However, I'm starting to understand the potential of that "Drawing on a Video" concept, if only the pencil was actually usable.
(It actually started as a simple way to fill the gap for all the potentially missing tools)

So I will probably fix this bug/feature, and try to improve the pencil tool in the following ways:
- Custom circular cursor so you know which size you're drawing at,
- Colored circular cursor so you know you're using the tool and don't mistakenly draw while trying to move something.
- Defaults to 8 pixels instead of one. Call it a "brush" tool anyway.
- Rounded line endings, possibly smooth curves.
- More sizes options (2 -> 16 ? still want to keep the number low)
- Brush size rescaled according to image stretch.
- Any other ?

What will probably don't make it:
- Variable width from pen pressure. (my tablet is broken smile)

Sorry no ETA for the moment.

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1,919 Reply by joan

(3 replies, posted in Français)

Bonjour,

Pour l'instant le suivi est purement manuel.
J'ai testé quelques algorithmes de suivi automatique et pour l'instant je n'ai pas encore trouvé quelque chose de vraiment satisfaisant au niveau du compromis rapidité/efficacité.

La mécanique actuelle est censée anticiper le jour où ce suivi automatique sera en place. Dans la plupart des cas il faudra quand même ajuster la cible manuellement de temps en temps (point irreconaissable, masqué par un autre objet, etc.)

Si avec un positionnement manuel sur chaque image vous obtenez une suite lignes droites, c'est que le mouvement est trop rapide par rapport au nombre d'images par secondes...
(Cependant je pense qu'on pourrait avoir un effet de lissage de la courbe pour un meilleur rendu, je vais étudier ça)

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1,920 Reply by joan

(15 replies, posted in General)

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

As mentionned elsewhere, there's a lot of common needs between animation study and sport analysis...

- Layers
I have considered this in the past, and was afraid of complexifying the interface and workflow too much... (Keeping it simple is the one goal)
I have even done some code in this respect, but not conclusive.
Maybe for some selected tools, like Chronometer, custom shapes/guides...?

- Onion Skinning
I've always loved Onion Skinning :-) Once the motion extraction stuff is figured out, this is one thing I'll absolutely want to include.
Having it for key images drawings may be interesting. (Better having a fixed camera view though)

Ok, I really need to set up this brainstorming app to gather all ideas so people can comment and expand on them...:)

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