site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev@lists.apple.com On Oct 7, 2009, at 4:53 PM, Brian Gardner wrote: This quickly turned into a show-stopper for me. Pretty much all of the plugins I was writing became immediately useless. So, I just stopped developing. I'm really sorry to hear that. That really bums me out. I think the schedule for the next point-zero FxPlug SDK release needs to happen much sooner than expected. <http://bugreporter.apple.com/> I hope we'll be able to add this functionality in the future. Thanks, Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani@apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.ap... Unfortunately, we can't do that. Legal tells me that we can't add new functionality to the SDK until we have a paid release of the Studio due to Sarbanes-Oxley (an obscure business law in the US). If it were up to me, we'd have releases every few months, but sadly, it's not up to me. Being unable to get the current frame number from an input, and consequently the corresponding 'current frame' from an image parameter, makes all image parameters effectively useless, as well. As soon as a user changes the in-point, the filter gives the wrong results. FCP is an Editing app -- so, changing the in-point is kind of critical functionality .... Realistically, we can't tell FCP users to use our plugins "as long as they don't edit them". :-) I realize that it's much more cumbersome to do this, but couldn't you have control which allows the user to set where to start getting frames from in the image well clip? It means they'd have to match it up by hand, which is a pain, but at least it makes what you're trying to do possible. BTW, because a corresponding problem exists with editing in-points in Generators, which makes image parameters useless there, I had re-written all my FxGenerators as FxFilters. Then, I hit this lack of -inPointOfInputFilter problem in Filters. -- So, I have no work-around. I've tried a half dozen work-arounds, and subsequently hit a half a dozen bugs (or missing APIs). Have you filed those bugs? If not, they won't be getting fixed. We can't fix any bugs that aren't in Radar (our bug database), so please file them at: Certainly, adding -inPointOfInputToFilter would be a huge necessary step. But, there seems to be a much broader underlying problem with the handling of in-point changes, across all classes of effects (not just filters). To date, I have not written a single FxPlugin which will work correctly when the user starts to edit the in-point. This implies to me that the APIs for dealing with in-points in the FxPlug SDK really needs to be re- addressed soon. *** I really believe that there should be some sort of (callback- ish) methods added to the FxBaseEffect class to allow the plugin to be informed of in-point changes and "cloning" (e.g. caused by razor "cuts" or "copy'n'paste"). A razor "cut" is effectively a clone of the clip along with an in- point change to the clone. The developer can optionally write (override) their own version of these methods, if they need the in-point tracking or cloning tracking functionality (seems common). If you read all the developer emails about these topics, it seems that many of them are resolvable if there existed methods in the FxBaseEffect class which would be invoked upon the in-point change and/or cloning of an effect. This would resolve all of the internal ID updating developers do, as well as an frame number tracking that they keep tabs on internal to the plugin. Whether cloning is done to create a copy (from clipboard), or to read it back in from disk (eg File->Open Project) -- seems like this could just be a flag parameter passed to the (clone) callback method. This could also resolve a lot of initialization issues we've seen crop up in emails. This is an interesting idea. I'm not sure what it would take to implement it, and I'm not sure of all the implications of doing it, but please add this information to your bug about the in point API and we'll consider it. And I just want to say to any other developers out there with ideas, now is a great time to give your ideas to us, as we're at the start of our new development cycle. In another month or two we'll probably be too busy implementing what we've come up with to start designing and adding more stuff. So please let us know what you want now! This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com