Alpha Version 23.03 now available to test

To Dan, Brian and everyone else who contributed to all of the advances that are here in this Alpha release, I take my hat off to you. Thanks for all the work that was put into this as it is a big step forward for Shotcut. :+1:

I found some free time to take this Alpha for a quick spin and here are bugs that I found:

  • Tool tip for Advanced Keyframes can be obstructive. In this pic here, the cursor and keyframe are blocked by the tool tip.
  • GPU Brightness highest limit (200%) is not as high as the regular CPU Brightness filter. GPU Brightness 200% vs CPU Brightness 200%
  • Advanced Keyframes for GPU Size and Position are not working.
  • Pressing the icon for Advanced Keyframes for GPU Contrast doesn’t open the Advanced Keyframes for it.
  • Put one video on top of another in the timeline. Add to the video on top, GPU Size and Position or GPU Crop: Source. Add the Contrast filter on the video on top. Take the level up to 99.6% and everything will be fine. But take it to 99.7% and the video underneath will turn black.
  • Put one video on top of another in the timeline. Add to video on top, either of these 2 filters: GPU Size and Position or GPU Crop: Source. Move the parameters of either so that both the video on top and the video underneath can be seen. Then after adding any one of the following CPU filters, the video underneath turns black: Blur: Gaussian, Chroma Hold, Chroma Key: Advanced, Chroma Key: Simple, Deband, Grid, Halftone, Hue/Lightness/Saturation, LUT (3D), Nervous, Noise: Fast, all Old Film filters, Reduce Noise: Quantization/Smart Blur/Wavelet, Reflect, Sepia Tone, Sketch, Stabilize, Threshold, Trails, Vignette, and Wave filter. Demo pic without these CPU filters vs Demo pic with one of these CPU filters
  • Put a clip on top of another in the timeline. Add to the video on top either filter: GPU Size and Position or GPU Crop: Source. Make sure the playhead is on the clip so that it’s in view in the player. Then add the Choppy filter. Shotcut will crash.

Some feedback on the Motion Tracker filter:

  • Currently the color of the preview box is green and it can’t be changed. Consider adding an option to change the color of the preview box in case the scenery and/or subject one wants to track is green.

  • Providing an option that would show an explanation of each motion tracking algorithm would be very welcomed and so useful for users. Perhaps like an icon could be added that would show a window or something with a description for each algorithm. I suggest this so that it can be translated in the other languages available for Shotcut. If that’s not possible for whatever reason then, at the very least, providing a web link that leads to an explanation of the algorithms could also be done although including it inside the program itself would be preferable.

  • A common occurrence with motion tracking is when the tracking loses the subject. In other programs, the user has options on how to continue in order to finish the tracking. From what I can see, there is nothing really here to do that so that you can end up with one complete uninterrupted track of a clip. 1st, it would be nice if the analysis stops as soon as it loses track of the subject rather than it analyzing the whole clip even after it lost tracking of the subject. 2nd, something missing here that should be added are Advanced Keyframes to mark what the Motion Tracker mapped out so that the user can go to where the track got lost and manually fill in the gaps or finish it. 3rd, it would be fantastic if something equivalent to Offset Tracking is added. This is featured in Blender and essentially is when the object you are tracking for a moment is blocked somehow but it is still in motion then you can pick something else on screen that has a similar path to track in its place then add that tracking data to the original subject’s path to complete the tracking. A demo of Offset Tracking and how this is done in Blender can be seen at this video tutorial here. The link is already cued up to the start of the demo and lasts about 6 minutes so you can stop it at 14:52.

  • Tracking more than one point at the same time would be useful so that the tracking data can eventually be added to a filter like Corner Pin.

  • Is there multi-threading applied on the Motion Tracker filter?

Finally, what is the GPU Diffusion filter supposed to do? I tested it briefly and it didn’t seem to be doing much if anything at all.

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