1 Topic by schinkster

  • schinkster
  • Member
  • Offline

Hi Joan,

Kinovea simply rocks - it's by far the most useful tool I've come across in YEARS!!

As a character animator, I really need a decent tool for motion analysis on a day-to-day basis. Kinovea really blew me away with it's functionality and I don't think I can live without it anymore. wink

I compiled a list of suggestions, just in case you're interested:

- Play in reverse (backwards); helps to judge animation
- Have a shortcut or button to quickly set the playback speed to 25%, 50%, 75, 100,... I use those the most and it always takes some time to get there...
- Ability to enter playback speed numerically, by clicking on the percentage number and entering
- Upon exit, a warning would be nice if stuff hasn't been saved. (i think sometimes there is one..?)
- Love the tracking feature, but it would be even cooler to be able to stabilize the background plate with it! Reference material is often filmed by hand, so it's jittery, which makes it hard to concentrate on the motion
- when switching from timecode to frame display, the key images don't reflect that change; would be nice to have the option. Now they have to be deleted and re-done.

I think that's it!

Sorry if some of that stuff is already in there and I just haven't found it.

Thanks again for a wonderful tool and thanks even more for providing it to the community for free.

Kind regards,
schinkster

2 Reply by joan

  • joan
  • joan
  • Admin
  • Offline

Hi,
thank you for all the suggestions and kind words.

schinkster wrote:

- Play in reverse (backwards); helps to judge animation
- Have a shortcut or button to quickly set the playback speed to 25%, 50%, 75, 100,... I use those the most and it always takes some time to get there...

Yes... This will probably end up as CTRL+UP and CTRL+Down to move the speed slider to the next 25% spot.
I think it would be better not to have an additionnal button in this area not to clutter the interface... (?)

schinkster wrote:

- Upon exit, a warning would be nice if stuff hasn't been saved. (i think sometimes there is one..?)

It should warn you if you have changed or added key images and/or drawings. If it doesn't, then there is a problem.

schinkster wrote:

- Love the tracking feature, but it would be even cooler to be able to stabilize the background plate with it! Reference material is often filmed by hand, so it's jittery, which makes it hard to concentrate on the motion

Well, this will be part of a long term work to provide functions that completely decorrelate the background from the moving foreground.

schinkster wrote:

- when switching from timecode to frame display, the key images don't reflect that change; would be nice to have the option. Now they have to be deleted and re-done.

Ah, that... This is really one point where I seem to have failed to communicate what I had in mind...
Actually the little text you see under the key image thumbnail is not the timecode per se. It is the key image title.
It so happens that the title is defaulted to the current timecode at the time of the key image creation.
You can change the title by clicking the "Show Comments" button.

From the feedback received on this, I guess it would make more sense to actually always put the current timecode in there, instead of the title, which may not be used so much.
Or better, make the title dynamically follow the current timecode and time format unless the user has explicitely changed the title. That way we get both functions.

thanks.

3 Reply by schinkster

  • schinkster
  • Member
  • Offline

Hi and thanks for the great response!

- Yes, CTRL+UP and DOWN to set playback speed in 25% increments would be GREAT

- No, it doesn't always warn me when my work hasn't been saved yet, at least when it's just key images, so I loose them quite regularly... sad

- Wow, your project to seperate the background from the foreground sounds very ambitious, I never would have even hoped for that wink
I just thought that stabilization would be quite easy since you've already implemented the tracker!

- I understood that you've used the timecode/frame numbers as "default" comments for the key images. And it's actually very helpful, but it would be even better if they switched to the display mode I set the program to, ie. from timecode to frames. So, yes, to always have the frame number underneath the key image is very helpful, but then, we'd also like to add comments as well... at the moment, in the comments window, there's the "headline" and then the "body" underneath. Could there be an option to expand the key images view bar and display those comments from the body as well so we can see them?

Also, using comments is not as easy as I thought it would be: You have to click on the notes-icon and then enter the text in the new window. It would be much easier to just click on the comment text underneath the key image, and be able to enter the text right there without using that extra window. That would speed things up a lot.


And, I just wanted to mention again, that reversing playback would be an awesome improvement to future versions... wink


Here's some more comments I collected:
- hitting the space bar to play doesn't work when the cursor is over the key images
- a shortcut to create a key image?

I think that's it! Love your tool and thanks so much for the great effort you're putting into this and for sharing it with the community!!!! smile)

kind regards,
Schinkster

4 Reply by joan

  • joan
  • joan
  • Admin
  • Offline
schinkster wrote:

- No, it doesn't always warn me when my work hasn't been saved yet, at least when it's just key images, so I loose them quite regularly... sad

Hum... sorry for that. Would you have a scenario that I could follow that would expose the issue ?

schinkster wrote:

Also, using comments is not as easy as I thought it would be (...) It would be much easier to just click on the comment text underneath the key image, and be able to enter the text right there without using that extra window. That would speed things up a lot.

I think that should be feasible for the title (headline). It didn't occurred to me but yes, I can see how that will be much more efficient.

schinkster wrote:

Here's some more comments I collected:
- hitting the space bar to play doesn't work when the cursor is over the key images
- a shortcut to create a key image?

The shortcut is 'F6' key. Others are listed here : http://www.kinovea.org/help/en/403_Shortcuts.html

Thanks.