Thanks for this amazing tool and some feedback
Flipbook, Image Viewer and Audio-Video Player
Brought to you by:
ggarra13
Menu
▾
▴
Hello.
First of all a big big thank you fo this splendid tool, is one of the best image sequence and movies viwer out there, and nowdays my favourite one.
Some comments, suggestions and question :
- I think there is a bug with the UI colors/theme, Im using 5.6.6 on windows. mrViewer always start using the platic scheme, I always use base or gtk+, so I always have to change it all the time. When I change it and I restart the prefrences are correct but the UI is using plastic not the one I set in the preferences.
- Is there any way to have like a globa lstudio config that all users inherit initially?
- One of the things that scares some people to start using the tool is the "particular look" of the UI. I think the UI needs to be more clear, it needs a more "profesional" look with more modern icons. This is quite old, is FLTK and looks quite professinal to me:
https://nnc3.com/mags/LJ_1994-2014/LJ/109/6320f10.large.jpg
But it is obviously a very subjective matter.
- Use TAB to swap between the two sequences at the top of the reel, I know you can use PgUp/Down but when comapring two images one TAB press to quickly swap is quite useful.
- Contact sheet mode, this will be great, create a contact sheet witrh all the renders in the reel. And with a quick mode to put the two top renders at the top side by side.
- I have read reel supports EDL, that means I can put let sy several shots together and play them like they are defined in the edit EDL? It would be great to be able to drop lt say 3 renders in the edit timeline and put them one after the other to generate a rough cut and see the renders in context
- I have seen in the hotkeys list two options for Next Image Version and Previous Image Version, how is that working, how mrViewer can load several versions and being aware of the version number? Is there any way to load images folowing a name convention?
- How is the 3d View working? I just got a ground grid, a purple square in the XY plane and the world axis.
Again thanks alot for this amazing tool!
Pablo
anim_v001.0001.pic
anim_v002.0001.pic
where v001/002 are the version numbers. It will skip missing versions up to Max. Images Apart.
Last edit: ggarra13 2020-11-19
Hey, thanks for the response.
I will give it a go to some of your explanations you mentioned later.
But just to explain the contactsheet thing. This is what Im talking about:
https://briandyak.artstation.com/projects/xNEd2
http://0x4e.com/contact-sheet/screenshot.jpg
Is like a mosaic with all the renders, would be great to create it from all the sequences in the reel, to compare two renders side by side and the ice on the cake will be to be able to make a mosaic with all the channels in an EXR, like the example I put.
Thanks!
Oh, yes. That. That's not likely to happen anytime soon as there's a limitation in the mrViewer code to show only a single foreground image.
Tested the EDL, yep that what I was looking for, really cool. Some notes:
- Icons in the Reels and EDL Windows needs a review :) (that what I was talking about a more professional look)
- Cant undo or remove Fade In/Out.
- Not sure what the right mouse button is doin on the clips in the EDL Window, it creates another line for the fade in, and break the fonts in the clip name, but seems is not doin nothing.
- For FadeIn/Out I think is more useful to have an atiomatice Out/In betwen clips and the user selects the duration.
- Save Reel button in the tracks in EDL Window are not working.
- Tried to save the reel from Reel Window but that crashed mrViewer. The resulting reel file just had this:
Sequences are loaded in the next convention:
element/v(VERSION)/element_v(VERSION).####.exr
For instance:
explosion/v001/explossion_v001.####.exr
explosion/v002/explossion_v002.####.exr
explosion/v003/explossion_v003.####.exr
In the preferences ther is an option for looking for sequences version, with the level up in the folder hirarchy to find the version folder, in this case 1, just the parent), and then a pattern, something like: _v###.
And when pressing Alt+PgUp/Down it can look in the previous/next version folder and load the sequence in the reel, in version order. A window for version would be great, following the same mechanins the user can load sequence open the Versions Window which uses the patternd described before to genrate a list of all available versions and the user can drag&drop them into te viewer or rell window.
Sorry for the long message :)
Thanks, is looking great
P
bunny_v001/bunny_v001.0001.exr
bunny_v001/bunny_v001.0002.exr
...etc...
bunny_v002/bunny_v002.0001.exr
bunny_v002/bunny_v002.0002.exr
That is, the name of the directory should also have the v preffix in it. A versions window sounds like a good idea and will place it on my todo list.
Last edit: ggarra13 2020-11-20
Hello ggarra.
So I have been testing some of the last comments:
Up/down playback. I understand some convention has been decided. But what about this behaviour:
Space: start/stop playback in the current direction (forward or backward)
Up: change playback/pause forward
Down: change playback/pause backwards
Got the versions working! is pretty cool, some comments that I think will make it even better:
- When changing from one version to another it start to play from the beginning I think, I believe it will be better that if the play is paused and using Alt-PgUp/Dpwn it just switch to the same frame in a different version, then the user can resume playing the desired version.
- Version pattern preference is not saved, when I start mrviewer again it is lost and reset to _v.
- quick version comparing with current. So I open a sequence, then I want to compare it with a previous version, if I there is a mode, another shortcut, like Alt-Shift-PgUp/Down where the version traversing is done in a new track in the EDL, set as background, so I keep the original sequence I opened, when I found the version I want to compare with I have the EDL ready to compare both of them
I tried to save the EDL again but keeps failing, this is the mrviewer version Im using:
mrViewer 64 bits - v5.6.6 - Built Nov 4 2020 19:12:49
Also today I was working on some metadata in our EXRs, the Media Info is another dialog that I think some love, I think that an interface with tabs, one for Main and another for Metadata, and the data presented in a two columns table, like a spreadsheet where users can copy the values will be much useful.
Thanks for the great work!
Toggle Modify->All, mark the text and use CTRL+C (copy) / CTRL+V (paste) on the value you want.
Last edit: ggarra13 2020-11-25
My bad, sorry, I always forget to click on the save button :)
Yeah, version pattern is saved correctly.
For the save reel issue Im getting it saving from the Reel window in both, from Right-Mouse button file->Save->Reel As
And also from the Reel menu at the top left. In both cases mrviewer crash and the reel is not saved completely, it just creates the file and writes something that I suppose is the initial header, and thats all.
I got the metadata copy working, however I think is not really intuitive, I think the extra step of Toggle Modify should disappear, and users should be able to just right click on the entry and select Copy, at least is what I was expecting. PDPlayer from Chaos Group works in that way for instance.
For the EDL/Background thing I think I didnt explain myself correctly.
I guess what I mean is the same A/B buffer concept you can find in other tools. Basically something to compare two renders quickly.
Using Pg/Up/Down in the reel is nice, the background toggle or swap is nice but what Im missing is that A/B buffer idea.
Let say I'm watching a sequence, then press something like 1 to put it in the A buffer, then switch to a different sequence, using PgUp in the reel, or Alt-PgUp to switch to another version, then you press 2 and put that new sequence in buffer B, now would be great to be able to use w to fo the wipe comparison between the two or for instance use Tab to swap between the two quickly.
I belive this will be a really nice feature!
Thanks
Regarding the saving of the Reel, I am not sure what you are doing differently. Try saving it to C:\ and see if that works. Maybe you are saving it to a disk in the network and that's causing trouble?
The toggle modify setting is a safeguard to avoid modifying the results by mistake. Removing it means any change will take effect immediately. However using the RMB might be a good compromise. I need to test it.
The A/B buffer already exists in mrViewer. If you go to a movie/sequence and select the BG button from the Reel Window it will place the selected movie in the background. It will also comp the FG image on top of the BG image which will get resized to the size of the FG image. There's by default no hotkey for it, but you can set it in the hotkey window. With TAB you turn compositing on/off. Then, you can use 'w' for wiping between the current image and the background image or press CTRL+j to switch one movie to the other. You can of course change the hotkeys as you see fit.
Note that if you are going to use the BG option, you should download the latest v5.6.8 as it has a number of fixes to it.
Hello.
Got some time to test the BG as a A/B buffer solution. I also update to 5.6.8.
It works as you said. My only concern is that the idea was clearly targeted to compositing.
Personally for a review tool I'm more looking into the idea of switching between two buffers rather than comping them.
I think the BG option should be refactored as a A/B buffer solution:
- Concept of A/B rather than BG. One entry in the reel window is set to A another to B, there is a hint, an icon, on top of the reel thumbnails to indicate which one is A and one is B. Also in the topbar UI besides the W button I would put an icon to show the buffer that is being previewed.
- By default the mode is no comp. It wil be an option.
- In one of my previous posts I talked about a contact sheet or being able to preview sid by side, I was talking about this: http://zurbrigg.com/keyframe-pro
Scrub to 1:48 and see how A/B viewer works.
- I think having 3 modes to work with the A/B would be a killer feature:
- Swap mode with a hotkey. I setup the hotkeys to use TAB for this, it works great, I just need the extra step of disabling compositing and works great
- Wipe: is already implemented in comp mode, it doesnt work if comp is disabled, would be good to have.
- Side by side, similar implementaton to wipe, with one hotkey the user can change the view mode: side by side horizontal, vertical or disable.
Great to see some of the reported bugs solved, Thanks a lot!!!!
I have updated the BG button to allow for non-compositing when TAB is pressed by default (ie. when show BG is turned off). Then with 'w' you will be able to wipe as an A/B preview.
The titlebar window already lists the FG and BG images, their reels in brackets and whether it is shown (comped) or not.
The side by side view is supported for stereo viewing. This means it works command-line if you set the stereo (-s) flag twice and two image sequences. You can then go to the Stereo Window and select output side-by-side. I will try to make this more generic.
Last edit: ggarra13 2020-12-04
v5.6.9 contains the update to the BG image which can be made to work without compositing if you select Show BG hotkey off.
For A/B side by side you can currently do it if you select stereo viewing. Load your first movie or sequence. Then go to File->Open->Movie or Sequence for Stereo. Now open the Window->Stereo 3D Options Window. From the output pulldown you can select to show the images side by side, top to bottom, etc.
I have been playing around with the Fstops and Gain options, so more suggestions, this time on the color balance side.
- There is no reset hotkey for Fstops (exposure)
- Would be great to have a simple color correction solution, so apart from the Gain and Fstop, have things like hue, saturation, gamma, bias controls, gain/exposure per channel. It will be like a new window, a color correction window :)
- At the top bar would be useful to have the ability to double click on the gain or Fstop value to reset it to 1, with another double click you togle to the previous value.
- A hotkey to toggle color corrections on/off
- Would be inmenselly useful to be able to export the color correctio to a Nuke/Fusion script, something you can paste into your comp script.
Im startin to think that is probably more useful to collect all these feature requests in the fature requests forum or in the forms of tickets :)
Thanks!!!
Clicking on the FStops button resets it to the previous value. In addition to that SHIFT+c reverts all settings to 1.
I will consider adding a shader with more color correction tools.
Thanks for the update gga.
For the A/B buffer I think the current workflow is still not very intuitive. I load two sequences, then I have to select one of them, set it to be the background, then select the other and finally is when I can swap. But this is becaue I have been digging into the tool, for any new user, if he/she is looking for a A/B buffer to compare images is going to be very difficult to guess how to do it.
What I suggest is that in the topbar there are to small A|B buttons. So if Im watching a sequence I press in the A and the A button keeps pressed telling me something is loaded for that buffer, then I load another sequence, and I press B. Now let's say I want to use TAB to switch and it just swap between them. The background of the active buffer button can change color to show which buffer is active.
To make things easier having any of the two buffers pointing to a sequence will enable A/B mode and tools like w will automatically work with the A/B buffers rather than trying to comp.
Comp will work only if A and B are disabled and there is a BG image.
Also I couldn't find the Show BG hotkey off in the hotkey list.
And didn't manage to get the Stereo working, but didn't spend too much time on it to be honest.
For the stereo I have the same issue as with the BG, is not intuitive, if I want to compare two images Im not looking into Stereo, that is going to be difficult for users.
For me it would be another A/B option.
Thanks!!!!
Sorry about the Show BG. The option was renamed to Toggle Background Composite.
OK. I think we are on the right path. We just have different terminology to refer to things.
I tried a mockup of your A/B idea and, to be honest, it does not quite work for me yet. The issue is that there's no need for an A button as that's the foreground image by default as it is more natural.
The B button would set the background image or B image as you call it, with no compositing. That makes perfect sense.
I renamed the Stereo 3D Options to Stereo 3D - A, B Options and that will have the top/bottom, right/left placement of A/B images, without the need for you to open any additional images.
I will post a beta of that mockup version here for you to play with.
Here's the link to the mockup version of mrViewer v5.7.0 beta.
https://mega.nz/file/jH43jQCS#r7lVTOxmF9-EuRNKVhzKSSkJFSnqRJzCoi_fhYRiCM0
I've updated the version to only have a single A/B button which switches to B when selected.
https://mega.nz/file/bP5yhI7J#vL8ESCo5uQ-JRqzpYxfJCF2N_knvl5_HWZUzwEgyuJs
Thanks a lot for the quick update.
Yep, I agree with your comments that only B is needed. I think this option is almost there.
I think there is a bug in the playback, I add a sequence, play, pause at a frame, add another sequence, play it, pause and set it to be B, then select the previous seq and play, when I press tab it show me the last frame of the background sequence not just swaping them.
I think if you play a little with playback, adding 3 or 4 sequence and changing the back ground sequence you will get the error.
Some comments about UX:
- I think the Switch BG/FG option needs to be smarter. So if I load one seq, play, load another one, set this last one to be the B (background). No if I press TAB(my hotkey for Switch FG/BG) I expect it to swap with the previus. At the moment is doing nothig because mrviewer is waiting for me to switch to another seq to set a FG. I think the option needs to be smarter and identify the user wnat to swap to another set, so if you are alredy in the BG the Switch option should automatically swith to the previous sequence in the reel and if there is no prev to the next.
- The reel window needs some visual cue that tells the user which one of the sequences is the background, a letter "B" overlay in blue or red on top of the sequence thumbnail or a different background color for the B sequcen will be enough.
- The top toolbar also needs this visual cue, ther AB button needs to change whether yo uare in the B or the A, so as soon as I set a B it turns into a B letter, it is already doing that, and a backround with the same color used for the reel windoe letter overlay I commented later, or the back gropund for the reel entry what ever method you prefer, is just to use the same hint color for B an another for A.
then when use switch to A the button canhe it's letter to A and change the button background to another hint color.
If this is also happening in the reel window will be great, being very clear in the reel window and in the top toolbar about whether or not yo uare looking at B or A is very important wehn yo uare reviewing several sequences.
Finally for the A/B side by side. I couldnt get it working weith the sterio option. I got closer this time :)
I think I set the input to be Separate Layers and the Output Top/Bottom or Left/Right. Initailly was confussing because of the same issue with the switch FG/BG. I set the B then set the Sterio option and nothing was happening, I need explicitely to move in the reel window to the previous sequence. Same as the Switch FG/BG this needs to be smarter.
But the main problem is that when I maneg to put the two sequences top/bottom or left/right only one sequence was doing playback, the other one was stopped in one frame. Wasnt doing simultaneous playback, which I think is the point.
Again thanks for the update, is very close I think, apart from a couple of bugs and some UI things the base is there and working.
Thanks!!!
I think that the playback issues you mention are due to the sequence/movie having less frames than the other sequence movie. When you switch sequences, mrViewer tries to place you at the same frame on the other sequence, but if it fails, it might get stuck on the last frame. If you see that happen, try stopping and playing back again and see if that addresses it.
Hey gga.
I looked again into the playback issue. Using the test version you sent me: 5.7.0
The problem happens even when you have two sequences with the same number of frames.
Basically when I press TAB to switch sequences the new sequence just jumps to the last frame not to the same frame I had before pressing TAB.
The sequence is this, with two sequences in reel and one set as background (B):
- Pause playback.
- Press TAB to switch sequence.
- Press Space to play again and then it jumps to the lst frame, hangs for a couple of seconds and start playback from the beggining.
I was able to reproduce it, but only once in a blue moon (ie. after many trial runs with the instructions you provided). I'm afraid that unless it happens more consistently I will be unable to debug it.
In any case, I uploaded a new version of mrViewer with improvements to the UI feedback in A/B:
https://mega.nz/file/jKI1iYiY#qWrdxuq0mr9VGK9_OWNFMhm-RlsOKFesaZkX_g4oDXM
This should not make any changes to the playback issue, but you never know :D