January 2008 - Pro-apps-dev

Sorry: Again another XML related question
by Andreas Kiel 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Hi all, Thanks Andreas Andreas Kiel Spherico Nelkenstr. 25 D-76135 Karlsruhe Tel.: +49 (0)721 183 9753 eFax: +1 650 897 8094 eMail: kiel(a)spherico.com http://spherico.com/filmtools -- workflow tools for FCP P Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Though most of my XML questions have been related to FCP here is one for DVDSP. With DVDSP you can save you can save "item descriptions" which are some kind of XML. I can read (with the help from a cool guy in Canada) the subtitles which are encoded in quite a strange way - that's my personal opinion and as always I may be wrong. Going thru the entries of the subtitles it always says: <key>MostCompatibleStringEncoding</key> <string>Western (Mac OS Roman)</string> which seem be not a value which should be considered as it obviously is set for any text regardless of the type of text like arabic, hebrew, punjabi, french, german. Are there some docs about that meanwhile? I know I asked that (or a similar question) two years ago and got as answer: cool idea, but figure out by your own. But maybe things have changed. P.S. I'm a paying developer member and never used my "free questions" - does the above qualify for that? :) This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Antialiassing in an FxPlug
by Pete Warden 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Pete On Jan 31, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Gary Fielke wrote: Thanks again Gary Basically, allocate a pbuffer or FBO that's several times larger than the final output, and draw into it scaled up. Then as a final pass, scale down and resample the result into the output. Is that any help? Pete ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Pro-apps-dev mailing list Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/pro-apps-dev End of Pro-apps-dev Digest, Vol 5, Issue 13 ******************************************* _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… One trick you can use is to just use the default bilinear filtering to resample four pixels to one without a shader. You need to set up your texture coordinates so that the sample point is at the corner of four pixels when drawing to the final output, but it's an efficient way of using the hardware. Doing an extra pass is always costly though. Back when I was coding plugins for another app that shall remain nameless, I used the same general over-sampling technique to reduce aliasing, and offered it as an extra user control, as a filter parameter. If you're worried about the performance hit, that might be an option. Thanks Pete, just what I was after (the tiling tip will undoubtedly be useful also) Re the "scale down and resample result into the output" stage is it preferable to use GLSL to average neighbour pixels in a frag shader? Or is there a better option? Out of curiosity I just tested out CILanczosScaleTransform to scale down from a 2x2 FBO. It seemed to work well but a bit slow on my G4 PowerBook. This might be suitable for the rendering stage but I'm not sure yet how well it would play if tiling of image buffers was required. Hi Gary, you're right, there are a lot of mines to step on when trying to get multisampling working in an FxPlug. Since as you discovered PBuffers don't support them, and I'm not sure of the state of FBO support, we've tended to do the same operations manually. I don't have much information on the state of hidden windows, since it's been a long time since we used them, but it's a pretty unusual path to be using these days and I wouldn't recommend it. One thing to watch out for with this is that you may hit card limits to the maximum texture size, or even how many textures will fit in VRAM at 16 and 32 bit float bit depths. FCP and Motion have checks to limit the output size they request to stay within those limits. Rather than allocating one large buffer, you may instead want to allocate several smaller buffers at the output size, draw separately into them as tiles, and then join them together by rendering them into the final output. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/pwarden %40apple.com This email sent to pwarden(a)apple.com This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: reset all controls and custom data
by Micah Sharp 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: reset all controls and custom data
by Darrin Cardani 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

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Re: reset all controls and custom data
by Darrin Cardani 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

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Re: Antialiassing in an FxPlug
by Gary Fielke 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thanks again Gary Hi Gary, you're right, there are a lot of mines to step on when trying to get multisampling working in an FxPlug. Since as you discovered PBuffers don't support them, and I'm not sure of the state of FBO support, we've tended to do the same operations manually. I don't have much information on the state of hidden windows, since it's been a long time since we used them, but it's a pretty unusual path to be using these days and I wouldn't recommend it. Basically, allocate a pbuffer or FBO that's several times larger than the final output, and draw into it scaled up. Then as a final pass, scale down and resample the result into the output. One thing to watch out for with this is that you may hit card limits to the maximum texture size, or even how many textures will fit in VRAM at 16 and 32 bit float bit depths. FCP and Motion have checks to limit the output size they request to stay within those limits. Rather than allocating one large buffer, you may instead want to allocate several smaller buffers at the output size, draw separately into them as tiles, and then join them together by rendering them into the final output. Is that any help? Pete ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Pro-apps-dev mailing list Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/pro-apps-dev End of Pro-apps-dev Digest, Vol 5, Issue 13 ******************************************* _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Thanks Pete, just what I was after (the tiling tip will undoubtedly be useful also) Re the "scale down and resample result into the output" stage is it preferable to use GLSL to average neighbour pixels in a frag shader? Or is there a better option? Out of curiosity I just tested out CILanczosScaleTransform to scale down from a 2x2 FBO. It seemed to work well but a bit slow on my G4 PowerBook. This might be suitable for the rendering stage but I'm not sure yet how well it would play if tiling of image buffers was required. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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OpenMp in FxPlugins
by Brian 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=KDnT84/qjIOgbGx62XGlsmRdT/wz6kNXBO8ctDGye4tNUs6AZLgs0H9xh1DQHDcg; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; I've just started using OpenMp in an FxPlugin. (Thanks, Paul M, for the earlier suggestion.) It is very easy to use the "#pragma omp" directives. What is the best way to specify the number of threads to use? Is it better to declare it on the pragma line, or through an environment variable, or is there some other better way? #pragma omp parallel num_threads(NUM_THREADS) -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: variesOverTime method of an FxPlug
by Brian 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=XVrvo3AjEqy8khybBLV4qa1j+qH3O5ngotJNpDm/DbssnWiM4CcF+MVhHGxuUNFA; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Cc:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Ah! I think I understand now. Thank you very much, Paul. Uhm ... Well, maybe one more refining question... If I use a Temporal API call, to get an adjacent frame. Then, that means I should return a YES from variesOverTime, correct ? Since a held still would not be able to use the cache for the first (or last) frame of the hold. -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: variesOverTime method of an FxPlug
by Paul Schneider 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Hi, Brian, - Paul On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:12 PM, Brian wrote: I am a little confused about the "variesOverTime" method. The default FxPlug template for a "filter" type FxPlug (which implements "brightness" by default), has the following code for "variesOverTime": - (BOOL)variesOverTime { return NO; } But doesn't the explanation comment above the code seems to indicate that this code is wrong? Since the two different frames will typically yield different results, even with the same parameter settings? (eg "brightness" stays = 1.0) So, frame 1 results can't be cached and reused for frame 2's results. The comment (and also API help doc) states: //--------------------------------------------------------- // variesOverTime // // This method should return YES if the plug-in's output can // vary over time even when all of its parameter values remain // constant. Returning NO means that a rendered frame can be // cached and reused for other frames with the same parameter // values. //--------------------------------------------------------- Could anyone clarify this for me? Is this a mistake in the documentation, or a mistake in the default code, or am I misunderstanding the docs? Thanks. -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/pschneider%40apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… -variesOverTime means that the plugins output changes over time, even if all of the parameters *and the input frames* remain constant. For example, if you add a still image to the timeline in FCP, the image will be repeated for several seconds by default. If you add a filter like "Brightness" to this image, and don't set any keyframes, the output will be the same for the entire still. So this filter isn't considered to vary over time. However, if you add a filter like "Earthquake", the output will be different from frame to frame, because the filter adds some jitter which is different for each frame. So this filter does "vary over time", even if all of its inputs do not. A good rule of thumb is that if you use the current render time (renderInfo.frame) in your calculations, then your plugin should return YES from -variesOverTime. This email sent to pschneider(a)apple.com This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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variesOverTime method of an FxPlug
by Brian 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=re0oLUxtKgnhtuVJnmUtsIMs3/u+BcRJJa16KFWnC2wPoR/qm/yXHUmvbVQj+PVc; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; I am a little confused about the "variesOverTime" method. The default FxPlug template for a "filter" type FxPlug (which implements "brightness" by default), has the following code for "variesOverTime": - (BOOL)variesOverTime { return NO; } But doesn't the explanation comment above the code seems to indicate that this code is wrong? Since the two different frames will typically yield different results, even with the same parameter settings? (eg "brightness" stays = 1.0) So, frame 1 results can't be cached and reused for frame 2's results. The comment (and also API help doc) states: //--------------------------------------------------------- // variesOverTime // // This method should return YES if the plug-in's output can // vary over time even when all of its parameter values remain // constant. Returning NO means that a rendered frame can be // cached and reused for other frames with the same parameter // values. //--------------------------------------------------------- Could anyone clarify this for me? Is this a mistake in the documentation, or a mistake in the default code, or am I misunderstanding the docs? Thanks. -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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