I initially deleted my post in this thread on top here:
because I forgot about Dan’s wish that these beta threads not talk about existing bugs. But @brian said here he wants the discussion on those issues discussed in this thread. So I undeleted my post above.
So the issues are:
The Tab button works when the Notes panel is undocked but does not work when the panel is docked.
The placement of the icon for the Notes panel is currently at the end of the line of icons after the Export and Jobs panels which in my opinion doesn’t make sense. I suggested in the other thread, “Maybe like after the Recent icon since if someone has Notes for a project that they are opening again then they would probably want to look at their notes before starting again or before the History icon.” Dan agreed, “I can agree to move it to after Recent as it could be perceived as related to (project) Properties or perhaps Recent from a workflow perspective as you pointed out.”
Changing the placement of the icon of the notes panel would also mean a change for its shortcut key. Dan brought up an additional issue with the current shortcut key (Ctrl+Shift+0) saying, “it is not working for me on Windows for some reason.”
I had thought about the Tab issue and based on Dan saying that his rule is that all panels should dock I suggested here in that Notes thread a change in the shortcut keys and behavior of how Tab in general is treated to accommodate this. But after thinking more about it really the best and simplest solution is to make the Notes panel the sole exception of a panel that does not dock. It solves everything as nothing in the current behaviors would change, the expected Tab function in a notepad like feature is kept intact and it eliminates the inconsistency that Tab works when it is floating but doesn’t when it’s docked.
It’s not like this would go against any expectation. The equivalent feature in Resolve always floats and does not dock. Also having a Notes panel is the equivalent of Windows’ Notepad feature but just for Shotcut. Anyone that uses Windows’ Notepad while working in another program is already used to having Notepad float around. In fact, there is a great example of a use case of how a Notes panel floating would work and come in handy in an actual Shotcut project.
In it he pulls up Window’s Notepad with the text already laid out that he wants to use in the project. He resized the Notepad window and placed it on the right side of the Shotcut window. But the issue is that when he clicks away from Notepad then naturally Notepad goes away from sight so he has to use an additional app to keep it on top while working in Shotcut. Shotcut’s Notes helps the user avoid having to use two apps while working with notes in Shotcut. As you can see from his video, having the Notes panel float while working would not be problem at all and in fact would come naturally especially since the size of Notes is fully customizable and can be moved anywhere. When the user doesn’t need to look at it anymore the panel can just be closed and opened back up when it is needed again.
I will never make it non-dockable; it was just about the default. Now, I am a little worried that new users will not understand how to close it and complain about it obscuring the most important parts of the UI. I have decided to keep it docked by default, and you can make it floating if that is what you want. I do not really care about what Resolve is doing here. The multiple windows issue you mention exists regardless as long as you use a non-tiling windowing system. The tab inconsistency is low priority because, honestly, I do not care about the Notes feature much and might even remove it.
How would anyone not understand how to close it when the X button is right there? And why would anyone complain about it obscuring anything when it can be resized, moved (almost) wherever you want and of course closed when you don’t need to see it?
You’re going to remove a feature that a number of people were asking for and finally got?
I think we have a situation that a vocal minority are eager for this feature. Does that mean we should give it high prominence in the UI? Probably not. Does that mean we should remove it? Also probably no.
As an analogy, consider the “Peak Meter” and the “Loudness” scopes. I have heard users say that they depend greatly on the Loudness scope. But it does not have a top toolbar button nor a keyboard shortcut. Why? Because we give less popular features less prominence (even if some people think they are very important).
I think we could treat the notes feature similar to some of the scopes. It could have less prominence.
Here is my proposal:
Remove the toolbar button for Notes
Remove the keyboard shortcut for Notes
Create a new submenu in the view menu called “Project” similar to the existing “Scopes” submenu
Move the Notes, Recent and History entries into the project submenu (Recent and History would keep their toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts)
I think the notes panel should not have any special docking behaviors or defaults. It should behave exactly like all the other panels.
How do you figure it’s a vocal minority though? There have been two threads created requesting this feature. One of the threads got 5 likes and that doesn’t include others that supported the idea but didn’t give the threads a like such as myself. That’s about as high as popular requests usually get around here such as Speed Ramping. This thread here requesting speed ramping got the same amount of likes that @MusicalBox’s suggestion for a Notes feature got. Would that also mean it’s a vocal minority that wanted speed ramping even though it’s observably very popular and widely used in video editing? Going by that measure, it would seem that a Notes feature is actually popular and used more widely than you may think.
It may not be something Dan cares about but if Shotcut has aims to scale up and become a video editor that can support long and much more complicated editing then trust me that a Notes feature will come very much in handy to even more people then. I mean just look at @jonray’s video that I linked up top. How can you not see how this feature would serve others? He needed two apps to accomplish what this Notes feature would support internally.
Why any of this? Were the button and shortcut keys really the issue here? I find it strange to want to nuke or undermine such a simple but helpful feature that has been supported by as many people here on the forum as anything else suggested.
I’ve been using Jon’s method for a while now. But having the project Notes integrated in the UI is more convenient in my opinion. No need to launch additional apps like Notepad and TurboTop.
If the Note panel survives this BETA version and ever gets the Text Size setting (or if I figure out myself how to change the font size), I will personally use it on all my projects. And I bet many users of the silent majority will use it as well when they find out it’s available.
Ok, yes that’s how it works, as you wrote. But I was a bit surprised, because at the first start without any intervention, the timeline was outside. But now it is not a problem anymore. Thank you.
I can’t completely erase the content of the notes dock and save it.
Next time I open the mlt file, the typed string is remaining in the dock.
If I erase only a part of the content, it gets saved correctly.
It seems like an empty notes panel is not accounted for when saving an xml.
This is also happen in 22.01.30, so not a beta issue.
I might be the right thing to do, splitting a clip will duplicate filters, but with join it might not be safe to removing some filter with out your are losing some information.
I your use-case it make sense, but in real world it can be more complex, so the safe way is to keep all filters and let the user clean up
I have a new crash in this version (22.03.06, standalone .zip in windows 10) if I try to apply a SPR filter after already having a Colour grading (or Contrast) filter on the clip (default values).
If I change the zoom value to 200 the app immediately crashes.
If the SPR filter is first the crash doesn’t happen.
Project has 1080p59.94 timeline and working with 2.7k59.94 files (also tested with a shotcut-exported 1080p59.94 file and still crashes).
I was able to reproduce it. The problem is not with 200, but rather 2 or 0.1. Because it is changing as you overwrite the number while typing, it first goes to a minimal value. This bug was due to image slice-threading added in this version causing a negative value for the final slice height (slice height is rounded up). Thanks and fixed for the release.
