How important are these features to you?

fvisagie

Hello All from this newbie on the forum,

I've been looking for a new, solid editor with lossless input and output, no re-encoding of unmodified frames, no unnecessary deinterlacing or colourspace conversion, and easy frame-accurate navigation. I made a list of important features and started evaluating.

VideoPad really impressed me, especially with its multi-track timeline and flexible handling of effects. Unfortunately it came short on a few key issues. Although I've sent feedback to the developers, perhaps it would be useful to them to see how important or not these issues are to other users. How important are they to you?

Not letterboxing when exporting from 720x576 DV input to 720x576 DV
Not re-encoding unmodified input frames when exporting to the same format
Not deinterlacing otherwise unmodified frames when exporting to the same format
Not converting colourspace, especially not when exporting previously unmodified frames
Navigating the timeline in integer frame increments, i.e. landing mouse clicks and forward/backward button presses on frame boundaries instead of on decimal values inside frames as is the case often
No keyboard shortcuts for Clip Go to and Set In/Out (these become more important due to non-integer frame navigation)
Not losing 1 frame when encoding (to DV and Lagarith at least)
Preferably make most things shortcutable with configurable shortcuts

Especially the first five are key to me and I'd be interested to hear how others see them. Let me know if anyone is interested in the full feature list and VideoPad's results. I just don't know how to attach it here?

Thanks in advance,

Francois

ConnorBrendish

Hi fvisagie,

Not letterboxing when exporting from 720x576 DV input to 720x576 DV

I'm curious about what exactly you mean here. In my testing, VideoPad respects the selected output resolution and if your input video resolutions match the aspect ratio then no letterboxing should occur.

Not re-encoding unmodified input frames when exporting to the same format.

Not deinterlacing otherwise unmodified frames when exporting to the same format.

Not converting colourspace, especially not when exporting previously unmodified frames.

VideoPad will most-likely support this in the future but I couldn't say when exactly.

Navigating the timeline in integer frame increments, i.e. landing mouse clicks and forward/backward button presses on frame boundaries instead of on decimal values inside frames as is the case often

Noted. I'll see if we can maybe add some setting in the options dialog so that you can choose between seeing the timeline in millisecond or framecount view, but I can't promise anything.

Not losing 1 frame when encoding (to DV and Lagarith at least)

I'm not sure what you mean here. Could you please clarify?

No keyboard shortcuts for Clip Go to and Set In/Out (these become more important due to non-integer frame navigation).

Preferably make most things shortcutable with configurable shortcuts.

I'll write this down so I don't forget it, it seems like a cool feature and I'd also like to see it implemented.

Also, as the responsible developer for VideoPad I'm very interested in seeing your full list of recommendations from your evaluation!

Thanks

borate

Cnr-N©H wrote:

Also, as the responsible developer for VideoPad I'm very interested in seeing your full list of recommendations from your evaluation!

Forgive the hijacking of the thread, but as you are the very first developer that I have run across here, please consider giving priority to fixing the transition freeze/jump problem in 3.0 that has been voiced many times in this forum and via your support e-mail channels. And do drop by often. ^_^ Gracias.

fvisagie

Hi Cnr-N©H,

I'll reply to your message point-by-point soon, but how do I upload the evaluation results and a sample clip? The forum editor provides a "My Media" button, but I haven't found a way to populate My Media!

Thanks,

Francois

fvisagie

Cnr-N©H wrote:

I'm curious about what exactly you mean here. In my testing, VideoPad respects the selected output resolution and if your input video resolutions match the aspect ratio then no letterboxing should occur.

It seems the problem occurs with anamorphic video, like 720x576 4:3 PAL DV in this case. The closest output preset is 768x576. That does produce full-frame 4:3 video, but also causes scaling of otherwise unmodified frames (and makes the output unsuitable for authoring to DVD later in the workflow). Trying to avoid that I set a custom output resolution of 720x576 and that's when horizontal letterboxing occurs.

Cnr-N©H wrote:

VideoPad will most-likely support this [non-destructive editing] in the future but I couldn't say when exactly.

I can't wait! What would really make my day would be Avisynth input too.

Cnr-N©H wrote:

Noted. I'll see if we can maybe add some setting in the options dialog so that you can choose between seeing the timeline in millisecond or framecount view, but I can't promise anything.

That would already help a lot. The simplest approach (and which I find easiest to work with by far) is to simply navigate the timeline by frames. Dragging the pointer, or clicking the buttons or clicking the timeline or controlling playback simply scrolls forward or backward so many frames, then naturally stops on a frame boundary. I can't actually think of a single use case where a user would need to position the pointer within a frame? In terms of on-screen values, display the current position in both frame count and time value, and accept input in both forms. That would be perfection in my world! Something else that might also improve from navigating by frames - I see 50fps clips are navigated in 0.04s increments, instead of 0.02s.

Cnr-N©H wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean here [output shortened by 1 frame]. Could you please clarify?

All test clips I exported without modifications on my part came out 1 frame shorter than the source. The test clips were all Type 2 AVI of varying length, some DV and some Lagarith. This happened regardless of input or whether output was to DV or to Lagarith. In fact, from Rightclick -> Properties on clips in Video Files it seems they are short by 1 frame after input already. I have a handy 2-frame test clip for you if only I could upload it.

Cnr-N©H wrote:

I'll write this [configurable keyboard shortcuts] down so I don't forget it, it seems like a cool feature and I'd also like to see it implemented.

Of the ones I've come across, VirtualDub and AvsPmod are two of the best examples of exposing and configuring controls for keyboard shortcuts.

Cnr-N©H wrote:

Also, as the responsible developer for VideoPad I'm very interested in seeing your full list of recommendations from your evaluation!

How do I send the Excel spreadsheet to you?

If there's anything else I can contribute or help with, let me know. Your product already scored very highly, and the fact that you are receptive to suggestions well, gives me hope .

fvisagie

fvisagie wrote:

How do I send the Excel spreadsheet to you?

You can find the evaluation here, and the 2-frame DV AVI Type 2 test clip here.

Kind regards,

Francois

ConnorBrendish

Thanks fvisagie, I'll have a look at it today when I have time.