Better buffering and playback

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:02 am

I would love to see some more options for playback and improving speed. Frame skipping is a good start and a wonderful option, but begins to skip too much with complicated scenes.

Primarily, all I can think of off the top of my head is to allow buffering, something along the lines of how After Effects works, where it loads a frame into memory, and then when it plays that frame a second time it only needs to read it, not calculate it. Playback is initially slow, but it allows for realtime playback within the confines of the memory of the computer, on the second viewing. An option, perhaps, like frame skipping?
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rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:33 pm

I want to second this request, I'm working in 2K with only pixelgraphics right now so I rarely get over 15fps.

Another solution might be in the lines of Mayas playblast where you render out a movie which opens up in a standalone player. The export movie isn't sufficient here since you have to type in range and chose codec and settings everytime. It would be great if you could have your preferred settings saved somewhere, mark the frames you want to playblast and just hit a key for the task.

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:15 pm

Mainconcept Mainvision has a "cooking" option that can render at different quality settings for preview, that's along those lines. But instead of doing it in the background you chose for a prerender and have control over the display quality.
By the way, kind of related question, is it possible to render half-size with the frame render Ctrl-R? You can do it on animation export.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:20 pm

I like the idea of having an easy way to render out a movie for preview purposes, without having to go through all the export dialogs and settings. I'll see that this gets added immediately.

So, you'll be able to press a button and get a preview movie to come up. What codec would you like to be used for this. I was thinking a lossless one, like Animation, but that could take a lot of disk space depending on the movie. Any preferences here?

nobudget wrote:By the way, kind of related question, is it possible to render half-size with the frame render Ctrl-R? You can do it on animation export.

No, the render function (Ctrl+R) just does a high quality render, with no control over any of the render options.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:43 pm

I agree, a quick render button would be an elegant solution.

The way Maya does it is you have a button that you can either click on and it renders it out at the defaults, or click on the option tab (shift click, double click, right click, or another pref tab in the preferences window in Moho?) and it takes you to the option screen. This way you can choose your render quality (codec, size/scale, frame range, etc.) and it will remember for when you click on it again. It's very handy. This way you would avoid any problems with people's playback (uncompressed can be difficult to playback too), or missing codecs, and leave it up to the end user.

I'll usually use a codec like cinepak. It looks like crap but compresses quickly and makes a small file. But everyone will want something different, give 'em the options.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:02 pm

I agree that offering options is a good idea, but I don't think there's time to do it for this next update. The update was ready to go today, but then I wanted to add this feature.

The feature is set up now so that you can hit the F1 key, and a short while later a preview movie will pop up. Adding UI to modify the output options will take a while and is going to have to wait for a future update.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:43 pm

Awesome. No problem on the UI. I can wait. If you're still getting it out today, whatever you can get would be awesome. I'd lean towards a lossy compression, if only because it will be more likely to play back at speed. I'm not sure what a standard "Everybody's got it" codec equates to now a days. We still have the ctrl-R button for checking a high quality render anyway, so Lossless wouldn't be necessary.

Just a side note: F1 could cause some pretty serious confusion, especially for new users who are used to F1 bringing up a help screen.

Just another side note: This sort of direct feedback from the developer is one of the main reasons I stick with Moho over wrestling with other apps.

rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:45 pm

I love you guys! Going from a users wish to an implementation in just a few hours!
I know I'm going to enjoy working with Moho for many years to come! (I just started with some initial tests for a short film using Moho)

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:56 pm

kdiddy13 wrote:Just a side note: F1 could cause some pretty serious confusion, especially for new users who are used to F1 bringing up a help screen.

Good point.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:11 am

I love the new preview tool.

I feel like a bit of heel asking for this, seeing as you had a turn around for my last request of under 24 hours, but now we just need a way to cancel it if we change our mind.

Also, does it save a temp/permanent version of the preview render someplace?
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rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 10:36 am

It's great!
would it be possible to include audio in the previews?
Often you want to check your lipsync.

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:26 pm

I was using it late last night, and I'm pretty sure it rendered audio fine for me. Is it a problem with using an mp3 file instead of a wav?
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Post by **Lost Marble** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:34 pm

It should include audio if you have a soundtrack attached, and MP3 shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, I know cancelling is going to be useful. There's definitely more work to be done on this feature.

The movie file gets saved in your temp directory. Where exactly this is will depend on your operating system and personal setup - it's defined by the TEMP environment variable. For me right now on Windows 2000, that's C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp

The movie file will always be called ".moho_preview.mov", so each preview will overwrite the last.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:37 pm

By the way, you can preview just a sub-section of your animation. By default, the preview renders the entire animation, but if you set up start and stop frames in the timeline, it will render just that section.

(Start and stop frames, in case you weren't aware of the feature, are a way to play back just a section of the animation in the timeline. If you Ctrl-click in the timeline (on the frame numbers), you can set up the start frame and the stop frame for playback. Left-ctrl-click to set the start, right-ctrl-click to set the stop. These frames don't affect the overall start and end of the animation - they just affect playback in the timeline, and what section will be animated for a preview.)

kdiddy13 · Post by **kdiddy13** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:50 pm

Yeah, I know cancelling is going to be useful. There's definitely more work to be done on this feature.

I used it a bunch of times last night and love it. It's a huge help while animating. Thank you very much.

By the way, you can preview just a sub-section of your animation. By default, the preview renders the entire animation, but if you set up start and stop frames in the timeline, it will render just that section.

Funny. I was just going to request this feature. You're so fast with the improvements that you're coming up with them before I can even request them! Awesome.
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