CinematicStudio

Lol :D

Windows can suck, in lots of ways ;) Now multiply that by 1000x if you're a developer :D

> I would like more "tracks" to drop stuff in and have the app assume what 99% of users are trying to do.

Right now I allow for 9 video tracks + 6 audio tracks, but I'll soon have 20 video tracks + 12 audio tracks.

> Lots of Right click context menus are awesome too.

Agreed. I will add right click menus at a later time. Right now, pretty much everything is right there simple (IMO of course :D), at the touch of a button.

> Hardware keeps getting faster and software still keeps becoming slower.

I do know what you mean :D

> For export, avoiding reencoding where possible is a must in my opinion, e.g., for extracting clips from a video (even if frame boundaries are inexact).

At this time, this is not as easy as I'd like. I can't use ffmpeg, because my app in commercial. So at this time I do reencoding -- these are implementation details I simply can't avoid.

However, this happens on GPU, and it's really really fast. Especially on a decent graphic card.

> Also, I would like it to be super easy to keep the existing frame rate, quality, encoding, etc. Most software I see today ask for fresh export settings and not let easily figure the current ones (I guess assuming each video clip imported may have differences on these parameters).

This is doable (basically, guessing the best arguments by looking at all imported videos).

> It would be so much better, for some tasks, to treat videos like usual documents - open, edit, save (to the same location), as opposed to import, edit, export.

This is an interesting idea. Do you mean, have a special extension, and when you open it do your editing + auto save + at close, you've already saved the video project?

Got it, thanks!

If lots of people will ask for this, I will certainly implement it. I do understand what you need, and while it's not easy, it's definitely doable. Knowing my already huge todo list, this will take a lower priority.

Just in case the above are a "must", and your company is paying, I could set aside 20-40 hours/month to work on this -- as a contractor (I am expensive though :)). Hit me up if you're interested in that.

Thanks, got it now!

I use a different rendering process, and at this time, there's no need for this (the GPU can do all the work real time).

Everything I've dealt with so far didn't require pre-rendering yet. I may end up doing this in the future for insanely complicated scenarios. Otherwise, I do a lot of optimization behind the scenes for loading the video frames (I've made my own PRORES-lookalike format), while applying all effects on the GPU.

If I will end up implementing this, I will also allow for a Refresh footage button :P

Thanks!

> Maybe you can look at (linear) music DAW's (reaper, cubase, logic,studio one) for inspiration on UI; track grouping/labeling, fades

Great idea! I have a friend that is an expert when it comes to music, and I will ask him more about this. He did give me some advice, based on Logic's app ;) I will dig deeper into this.

> what I longed for years ago was an easy way to; (non destructive) editing on low quality copies of source material, and using their HQ originals for rendering.

Hehe, that's what I do now, behind the scenes ;) It took me quite a while to develop, but I'm quite happy with the results :P

> the use of VST plugins for the audio part

This is a highly complex issue, but I will dig deeper into it. I am pretty happy with how I handle the audio now (that doesn't mean it couldn't use an improvement :D), and depending on what people will want, I can slowly implement them as well ;)

> A while ago i read about software to cut video files without rerendering / converting(dunno if thats common, or useful, but sounds interesting)

It is possible, I did a few tests, but not really worth it. In other words, I'm not sure of a scenario when that would truly make sense.

Thanks!

For previewing and playing, I use GPU only. For rendering (export), it's a combo of GPU + CPU, and I defer that to Windows - in a nutshell, there's an API that you call, in order to export an .mp4 file. Of course, there's a lot more than that, but you don't control what the OS will use in order to write the .mp4 file.

Thanks!

> Be aware of variable frame rate footage, make me aware and have clear ways to deal with the issues. Adobe software lets you screw yourself with this, it’ll import fine, not warn you but then your exports will have seemingly random weirdness like flashes of green for single frames that’ll make you think your hardware is failing.

I do handle this pretty well. I have a "properties" pane, and for media, if you click the "media" icon, I will show info for each video, which includes the frame rate.

I will convert that frame rate into your project's frame rate, by a simple convert X FPS to Y FPS algorithm. You'll never see any flashes of green.

> Use as much power of my gpus as you can, if I have a high end nvidia gpu I want to see it acting like a hot knife through butter.

Agreed 200% - you'll see your GPU sweating, trust me ;)

> When I drag footage in a timeline update the display, Premier shockingly doesn’t do this.

I do this, and if I understand correctly what you mean, I give you a bonus feature: instant preview all the time, while you hover the mouse through the timeline (like Final Cut).

And as an extra bonus, something not even Final Cut has, I will give you specific preview, based on where you are in the timeline - if you're hovering a specific video track, I'll preview that only, otherwise, I'll preview all the video tracks + applied effects.

> Reload footage button, another thing Adobe Premier doesn’t have.

Not sure what you mean - when should this be applied?

Thanks!

> Easy of use like the windows movie maker, basic cutting, and easy to apply LUTs.

Agreed! I'll take another look at windows movie maker, but I do think I have all that.

About LUTs - I will certainly have that, I do think in a 3-4 months timeframe, it's certainly on my TODO list. I know how to implement it, but it's certainly far from trivial :D My take is that it'll take me roughly 1 month to have it done.

> The more magic you can do for the average user, the better (e.g. how Lightroom or Instagram work for pics)

Agreed, that's what I intend to do, thanks again!

what do you mean by that? :)

What do you mean? :)

Thanks!

I do what to go multi-platform ASAP. However, because of the sheer complexity of video editing - and since I focused on speed + ease of use from the get go, I chose to go with a single platform (Windows) for starters.

Once I am close to feature complete (as in, be able to properly launch and be rock stable), I can think of porting to Mac (first), and who knows, maybe Linux.

I did think about this from the get-go, so I did isolate the complicated code in a specific module. So theoretically, it should not be very easy (read = 2-3 months :D) to port. But when reality will hit, we'll see :D

Thanks!

> My biggest pain points are that all the good video editors are paid, and the free ones are total crap.

I do agree with that :)

> Here's what i need from a video editor : ability to cut/copy/move video across timeline; add/remove audio tracks and adjust their volume + mute certain parts; apply cool transitions here and there; add text overlay and text frames

While I do have all the above, I will offer a lot more, and the pricing will show that.

> I would pay 10-15$ for such editor per year. After all it's for casual use. anything more than that and it would make me wanna pirate it.

Yes, unfortunately that will not fit my pricing. Thanks again for the feedback!

I may have some special offer for casual use - I will need to think really thoroughly about that.

Thanks!

I wasn't aware of kdenlive, until a few days ago when it popped in my news feed :D I'll take a look :)

Thanks!

> 1. Rotate all or parts of a video.

I have that :) It's part of the crop function (you can set an angle).

> 2. Crop all or parts of a video.

Yes, I have that, I even have an animated crop - where you can set several keyframes, and at each keyframe you set the "crop" and I animate in between.

Thanks! I will take a look at at this feature, and get back to you!

Thanks!

About video processing time - are you talking about the rendering time, at export, or the "optimize" time when you import the video into the project?

Software stability: for sure! One of my priorities is fixing any crashes ASAP (1-2 days since they happen, if possible)

Thanks!

Funny you mentioned that - when you open the app and start a new project, in the "video area", there's a link to a "Getting Started" tutorial :)

> I realize now that, because of the size of video files and the time required to process them, the manipulate-the-file-directly workflow probably wouldn't be feasible.

Yes, it is very unfeasible :) You don't wanna know the things I do behind the scenes to make this as user friendly as possible :)

> But if you think that Windows users inexperienced with video editing would have the same file-based mindset that I had, you might want to see if you can make your interface seem as though the user is opening, editing, and saving their video files directly.

Not sure what to say here. As far as I know, users have a far less "file-based mindset" as a while ago (I would know, I'm 42 years old :D)

I do think the UI shows to the user that he's opening/editing/saving the files directly - but that's for you guys to say :D

One thing I struggle with is this: how do I show to the user that he's not modifying the original video files? And since we have a video project, if you later remove one of the original video files and reopen the project, part of it is "lost". I need to add a "Create local copies" option and make it easy enough to understand ;)

Thanks!

> In every editor I used, they usually miss YUV support and OpenEXR support (monochannel 16bit images for example). It would also be terribly useful to me to be able to zoom anywhere in the frames and get the precise color values and location of any pixel.

From an implementation standpoint, this is not that complicated to implement. I will add it to my todo list, but very likely sometime in the future. I need to know people want this, since it will definitely take a while to implement.

Also, it would not play nice with a lot of optimizations I've done so far - but that is a different issue ;) If there's need for it, I'll do it :D

> A fast way to open two frames of the same file or of two different files side by side to compare would also be extremely useful!

This is also doable. I'm curious why you want this, and how you'd like to visualize the differences.

> It is terribly painful to compare two images :)

I know :D A looong time ago, I implemented a very advanced zoom on images, so I know :D

Thanks! I did check MS Photos app a while ago, and I've got pretty much all it has (and a lot more ;))

However, I added it to my todo list to take another look ;)

Thanks!

My focus is on speed and easy of use.

I already have some features that pretty much no one else has: - Custom Music Visualizers -- the ability to have any part of the video react to music, - Epic Focus (which is Pan and Zoom, but with an extra twist -- for instance, zoom in / out with a blur effect - ability to play an audio track only simply by hovering and pressing Space (or Shift-Space to play all tracks)

The hardest part is allowing to edit any control properties, anywhere in the timeline. It will still happen with keyframes, but a lot easier than Adobe.

And mask editing -- the way I will allow it is not present in any existing program, as far as I am aware of.

The last two things - will probably take an additional 3-4 months to implement ;)

Thanks!

1) Unfortunately, I will not focus on low-spec machines. The future is high end, and my app will cost money. It's very likely people with low-spec machines won't pay for my app anyway. The main reason for this, however, is that low-spec machines would require me to do optimizations that will don't really matter for decent machines (read: a lot of work, with no ROI).

The least I need is 8GB of RAM with 1 GB of video RAM, even though I recommend 16GB of RAM + 2GB of video RAM

2) I will allow for repeatable tasks to be automated, and I do think I will allow some scripting, even though I will do my best to keep it to minimum.

Thanks! I'll take another look at Windows Movie Maker, apparently :) I would say my app is quite friendly, but then again, I may be biased :)

He he, I was actually thinking about providing a light theme as well ;) I'll add it to my todo list ;)

Thanks :)

Thanks! Just curious if there's something you'd like done faster or something that Vegas doesn't properly offer.

About mkv: I'm looking into supporting mkv, but it's a really weird format. I've tried in the past to add it, and ran into a lot of issues.

About windows movie maker - lol ;) Maybe they will convert to my app :)

Thanks! My bad - I'm aiming at casuals + semipro. Initially, my focus is casuals, and slowly towards semipro as well.