Hello All -
I am considering some new features for the next release of Dodcap and I wanted to see whether people would really find them useful or not. For those of you who already use Dodcap, or are interested in it, could you please drop me an email or reply to this post. I would like to know whether you would find these features useful. If you don't think they would be useful, please let me know before I put them in the product. Thanks!
The features are:
1) Custom media player (instead of using MS MediaPlayer) for reviewing your capture right after the capture finishes. The player allows you to play back the capture on your computer monitor at full speed, or to step frame-by-frame forward and backward through the capture, seek to the beginning or end, move around with a slider bar, view file statistics, etc.
2) Making Dodcap capable of recording your capture back to DV tape
3) Making Dodcap capable of playing your capture back to your DV camcorder (or device) without actually recording
4) Making Dodcap capable of playing your capture out to a television set or VCR connected to the analog outputs of your DV camcorder.
Thanks again, and Happy New Year!
- Jeff Dodson
Question for Dodcap Users
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studiocarter
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Single Step
Michael -
Yes, although it is such a simple thing, I thought the single frame step was an important feature. I always found myself capturing in Dodcap, then loading the file up in Tsunami MPEG encoder for viewing, just because Tsunami allowed me to single-step through each frame.
The single-stepping in Dodcap will work with analog captures (like yours) or DV.
Thanks for the input.
- Jeff
Yes, although it is such a simple thing, I thought the single frame step was an important feature. I always found myself capturing in Dodcap, then loading the file up in Tsunami MPEG encoder for viewing, just because Tsunami allowed me to single-step through each frame.
The single-stepping in Dodcap will work with analog captures (like yours) or DV.
Thanks for the input.
- Jeff
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Barry
As soon as my Workprinter arrives I'll be buying dodcap. I certainly like the idea of 1 & 2. It would be great to capture and send the master straight back to the camcorder. Another idea would be to be able to delete unwanted frames as well, but I've no idea how much work that would involve for you.
Regards,
Barry.
Regards,
Barry.
Deleting Frames
Barry -
Yes, deleting some sections would be a nice feature, especially if the roll you transferred has completely over- or under-exposed (i.e., unusable) segments. Some of my family's old footage is like that.
This next release of Dodcap won't have that capability, but I am currently looking at creating a simple timeline-based editing package. It would allow you to quickly remove clips, rearrange clips, and add transitions between them, before sending out to tape or monitor.
- Jeff Dodson
Yes, deleting some sections would be a nice feature, especially if the roll you transferred has completely over- or under-exposed (i.e., unusable) segments. Some of my family's old footage is like that.
This next release of Dodcap won't have that capability, but I am currently looking at creating a simple timeline-based editing package. It would allow you to quickly remove clips, rearrange clips, and add transitions between them, before sending out to tape or monitor.
- Jeff Dodson
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Barry
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sigr
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Hi Jeff,
I have not yet purchased Dodcap, as you know, but I'm still considering it. (I have been on a sidetrip down "SVCD lane" the last couple of weeks - very successful! Thanks for suggesting TMPGEnc.) The new features you are proposing certainly increase the likelihood that I will buy Dodcap soon. I would find all the new features you are proposing, as well as the one suggested by Barry, to be very useful.
Regards,
Sig R
I have not yet purchased Dodcap, as you know, but I'm still considering it. (I have been on a sidetrip down "SVCD lane" the last couple of weeks - very successful! Thanks for suggesting TMPGEnc.) The new features you are proposing certainly increase the likelihood that I will buy Dodcap soon. I would find all the new features you are proposing, as well as the one suggested by Barry, to be very useful.
Regards,
Sig R
Editing
Barry -
Here are a couple of ideas/options I will throw around:
1) I could modify the media player in Dodcap to allow trimming of the beginning and end of the clip. In other words, you could set one "mark in" and one "mark out" point for the video clip.
2) Instead of just allowing one mark-in and mark-out, I could allow you to specify exactly which segments of the whole capture you want to keep. In other words, I would allow multiple mark-in mark-out points.
3) I could modify the media player to allow the user to mark individual frames as "bad." Also, there could be an option to replace each "bad" frame with the previous adjacent good frame. This would keep the original frame count intact and preserve the frame rate.
These are just ideas I am throwing around for the sake of discussion. I am torn about whether to add these types of features, because it is giving Dodcap some features of an editor. I have always tried to keep Dodcap as simple as possible. Also, I know that Dodcap will never be able to compete with the sophisticated edit packages out there.
I guess I was just wondering if perhaps there were some Dodcap users who load their captures into an editor to do very, very minimal editing before sending them back to tape. If I could add small features to Dodcap that would satisfy these minimal needs, it might save someone from having to enter the editor at all. Again, I am torn because I want to keep Dodcap simple, but at the same time I am easily seduced by neat features.
Later!
- Jeff D.
Here are a couple of ideas/options I will throw around:
1) I could modify the media player in Dodcap to allow trimming of the beginning and end of the clip. In other words, you could set one "mark in" and one "mark out" point for the video clip.
2) Instead of just allowing one mark-in and mark-out, I could allow you to specify exactly which segments of the whole capture you want to keep. In other words, I would allow multiple mark-in mark-out points.
3) I could modify the media player to allow the user to mark individual frames as "bad." Also, there could be an option to replace each "bad" frame with the previous adjacent good frame. This would keep the original frame count intact and preserve the frame rate.
These are just ideas I am throwing around for the sake of discussion. I am torn about whether to add these types of features, because it is giving Dodcap some features of an editor. I have always tried to keep Dodcap as simple as possible. Also, I know that Dodcap will never be able to compete with the sophisticated edit packages out there.
I guess I was just wondering if perhaps there were some Dodcap users who load their captures into an editor to do very, very minimal editing before sending them back to tape. If I could add small features to Dodcap that would satisfy these minimal needs, it might save someone from having to enter the editor at all. Again, I am torn because I want to keep Dodcap simple, but at the same time I am easily seduced by neat features.
Later!
- Jeff D.
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MovieStuff
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I think I should point out that the "bad frames" that Jeff speaks of would be on the original film, such as splices or projector burn marks, etc. If the WorkPrinter and DodCap are set up properly, there are never any bad frames as a result of the transfer process. The basic edit functions proposed would be handy for those that would like to preview their transfer before saving it as a file or running it off to tape.
Roger
Roger
True
True. If your WorkPrinter and software are adjusted properly, you will get a discrete, one-to-one capture of your film frames.
- Jeff D.
- Jeff D.
Re: Deleting Frames
I don't have Dodcap yet either, but that's really good feature.digvid wrote:Barry -
Yes, deleting some sections would be a nice feature, especially if the roll you transferred has completely over- or under-exposed (i.e., unusable) segments. Some of my family's old footage is like that.
- Jeff Dodson
On the other hand one reason I'm very interested in digitilizing cine films with WP is the possibility to get those old over- or under-exposed films corrected by changing brightness and contrast. You can't adjust those properties with Dodcap?
-Atte
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Barry
I understand you wanting to keep dodcap simple. A lot of good programs can end up being bloated and difficult to understand for the new user. Even if you didn't go down the route of making it more of an editor, I think the trimming of the start and end point as you suggest would be good. What I was talking about in deleting individial frames was the type of frames Roger mentioned. You could scroll through the film back and forth one frame at a time and just press the delete key to remove these bad frames, and then save it. I know virtualdub does this.
Having said that, I think that out of the features you mentioed the one I'd most like would be recording back to DV. This means you could record a master copy of the capture -- warts and all -- straight from Dodcap.
Regards,
Barry.
Having said that, I think that out of the features you mentioed the one I'd most like would be recording back to DV. This means you could record a master copy of the capture -- warts and all -- straight from Dodcap.
Regards,
Barry.
Editing
Atte -
When I first created Dodcap my strategy was to make it as simple as possible, and cheap. The way I kept it simple was to have it perform stop-motion capture only, plus pulldown. No editing. If you wanted to edit, you had to use your existing editing software. I also thought that if I added any editing features at all, people would compare the features to other editing programs. Better to not have editing at all.
However, as I used Dodcap myself, I found that I was always switching out to other programs to do small things, such as being able to single-frame-step through the video to look at scene transitions and such, or to edit out the very beginning second or so of the capture. That is what has given rise to this conversation.
So to make a long story short, Dodcap does not currently allow you to do any processing on the capture, other than perform pulldown.
Barry -
I am leaning towards adding the trim beginning & end feature, just because it is so common to want to do this, even if you are not going to do any more editing. And if I do that, I might as well allow you to delete individual frames as well. I'm not sure how to best represent this in the user interface though. I can't actually just delete the frame. I would probably have to mark it with some sort of visual flag that shows it will be deleted in the final stream. Also, I am not sure that I could render the "edited" version straight out to DV. You might have to render to a secondary file. Is the feature still attractive in that case?
- Jeff Dodson
When I first created Dodcap my strategy was to make it as simple as possible, and cheap. The way I kept it simple was to have it perform stop-motion capture only, plus pulldown. No editing. If you wanted to edit, you had to use your existing editing software. I also thought that if I added any editing features at all, people would compare the features to other editing programs. Better to not have editing at all.
However, as I used Dodcap myself, I found that I was always switching out to other programs to do small things, such as being able to single-frame-step through the video to look at scene transitions and such, or to edit out the very beginning second or so of the capture. That is what has given rise to this conversation.
So to make a long story short, Dodcap does not currently allow you to do any processing on the capture, other than perform pulldown.
Barry -
I am leaning towards adding the trim beginning & end feature, just because it is so common to want to do this, even if you are not going to do any more editing. And if I do that, I might as well allow you to delete individual frames as well. I'm not sure how to best represent this in the user interface though. I can't actually just delete the frame. I would probably have to mark it with some sort of visual flag that shows it will be deleted in the final stream. Also, I am not sure that I could render the "edited" version straight out to DV. You might have to render to a secondary file. Is the feature still attractive in that case?
- Jeff Dodson
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Barry
Recompress
No, I would not have to recompress the video. Also, I believe now that if all I did was clip the beginning and end, I could send it out to DV in real-time, i.e., I would not have to render out to a file. Just trimming the beginning and end is also much easier than allowing deletes of individual frames. I may implement the beginning/end trim and save the deletion of various frames for the next release.
Also, when individual frames are deleted, would you prefer that the frames be replaced by a good frame, or that they be deleted from the video stream entirely, even if that affects the apparent frame rate?
- Jeff
Also, when individual frames are deleted, would you prefer that the frames be replaced by a good frame, or that they be deleted from the video stream entirely, even if that affects the apparent frame rate?
- Jeff