I’ve played quite a lot with the new visualization filters. Here are some thoughts. Mostly intended to (but not limited to) the Audio Level Visualization filter:
I would like to have the choice of dividing the bars into more segments. A lot more segments.
The Thickness setting would also need to have a higher limit. 20 pixels might not be enough, depending on what you need. Not enough for the 2 examples below anyway. And who knows, some people might want to have huge 500 pixels wide meters.
Same for Segment Gap. The limit is 20 (pixels?). People’s imagination have no limit, why would we give them filters with limited boundaries?
As it is, the Audio Level filter is perfect for mimicking Vu-meters with LEDs stacked on their sides, like this:
But what if I want to create meters like these:
They are quite common. But I’d need as much as 46 larger segments to create the blue VU-meter. Even more segments if I want higher bars with same size LEDs.
Of course, it would be difficult to fit a Graph Color bar with 50, 60 or even 100 color selectors in the filter panel. Not to mention that it would be a pain in the butt and take forever to assign a color to each segment.
But we wouldn’t need 100 color selectors. 10 would probably be enough, but let’s say we settle for 20 (in case of very long VU-meter bars). Each color selector would apply a color to it’s own region of the bars, no matter how many segments are in that region.
As an example, if 10 colors are applied to 21 segments, it would look somewhat like this:
One region of red segments, one region of yellow segments and height regions of green segments.
So in brief, here are my suggestions (most of them applicable to both filters) :
More segments. A hundred? More?.
Wider bars. 1000 pixels? why not?
Bigger gaps
Separate settings for # of colors and # of segments
I think it is. You get something like hmmmm 2.1?
A few years ago, Canada retired the one cent coin.
Now, when we pay with money in a store, they round the total to the nearest nickel
Total is 5.73$ ? You pay 5.75$. Total is 10.02$? you pay 10.00$
Btw, yes, the $ sign goes on the right side of the price in Canada.
So can’t it work too for the meters ? rounding up to the nearest unit?
I speak only for myself of course, but as long as on the output it looks like a VU-meter, I don’t really care if it’s 100% accurate. In fact I think the segments will still react accurately to the audio signal. The only real problem will be the colors divisions who will possibly be off by a fraction of something. I can live with that. I think.
Because some values provide bad or unexpected results. Also, it can be difficult to select an exact value if all the “useful” values are in the range 0-10, but the control goes up to 100 - only 1/10th of the slider is useful.
By the way, I discovered something nice that I think is worth sharing.
It’s useful to know
If you add a Gain / Volume filter UNDER the Audio Level filter, the gain level will not affect the LED bars at all.
However, if you put it ABOVE the Audio Level filter, the LEDs will climb higher or lower, depending on the gain level.
Well @GordC, it looks like we are both right and wrong. According to this, it’s not necessary a Québec thing. It mentions the use of the dollar sign in French documents. Québec is not the only province where French is spoken and used.
But thanks for bringing that up. I was not aware of the bilingual nature of our currency.
Oui et non car le filtre “Audio Level” doit être appliqué au clip qui possède le son. Je dois donc d’abord faire tourner ce clip de 90° avec un premier filtre SPR, puis appliquer le filtre audio, et enfin redresser l’ensemble avec un second filtre SPR.
Yes and no because the “Audio Level” filter must be applied to the clip that has the sound. So I have to rotate this clip by 90° with a first SPR filter, then apply the audio filter, and finally straighten it with a second SPR filter.
You can try: copy the clip with the audio to a video track above. Add Opacity filter to make transparent followed by visualization followed by Size Position & rotate.
What would be very helpful is if the maximum peaks would stay longer, or if you could set it to stay until you replay it, so you can clearly see and read the peaks. Especially in the range of -12db and -6dB up to 0db.
I finally found time to install the latest version of Shotcut that allowed me to test the improved Audio Level and Audio Spectrum Visualization filters.
The only thing I noticed is that the last segments (the ones on top) have a variable transparency if the filter is applied to a clip with something else on the track below.
It’s not a huge problem since real LED meters (the cheap ones maybe) often do the same.
But there are occasions, where that transparency would be undesirable in my opinion.
When trying to replicate a LCD display for example.
I’m not sure, but I think LCD segments are either visible or invisible, with no degrees of transparency in between?
So I don’t know, if there was a way to turn ON or OFF this transparency, I think the two filter would be very near to perfection
It is designed this way on purpose. I noticed a need for this when testing a low number of segments. Imagine a graph with 4 segments. Shall the first segment be fully lit up when the audio value is 1%? Or should not be lit up at all until the value exceeds 25%? Same for the last segment - When to light it up? 76%, or 100%? Either way, the display is less reactive and interesting.
