8.1 GUI comments

[GrassValley_PS]

If you want to help use make this GUI better, please post your comments here. I am copying my post from another thread here to give some background.

[GrassValley_PS]

[QUOTE=Alter Ego;265443]Jerry I think users can put them themselves into your shoes and appreciate your vantage point, and I personally want to thank you and all the great forum moderators, GV staff and giving users that make this forum so great. But on the flip side, I think that any perceived barbs stem from stating that the GUI of 7 is gone forever and deal with whatever changes that may or may not be made. That is a huge point of contention for many. Down right scary actually. I'd probably be correct in saying that many people are a bit upset and frustrated by this. I think everyone means well.QUOTE]

Let me take a little time and hopefully clear up a few things. And I think I can speak to Jerry's comment as we have talked about it.

1. We assume that everyone here wants to make EDIUS better and we (GV) want to hear the comments. This has absolutely been the best editing forum I have been associated with , and their have been quite a few.

2. Steve and I as Moderators basically function as the janitorial service for the forum itself and as the liaisons between the users and the engineers as well as GV in general. In that role we try to influence the developers as much as possible, passing along the general thoughts of the group. And we try to explain as much as we can to the forum what GV is doing and how they operate. Yes we know more things than we can discuss but we try to balance things out.

But, you can imagine that there are many people (not just us) that are demanding their time to fix what they perceive as priorities; Marketing, sales, distributors, resellers, etc.. And everyone focuses on the area that directly influences them.

Although I thought I understood various workflows, it was not until I started getting out a lot and training multi focused groups did I appreciate how different peoples perspectives could be. What one person takes as an absolute number one priority, could be totally meaningless to someone else. That said, there are certain things that pertain to most groups.

3. To address the GUI (as we have before)...Let's be frank and say that no one is happy with it. The reason for the change is that they have several different programs that work in conjunction with EDIUS, and they wanted a redesign of the GUI in all of these so that they were similar. A very logical decision. However, I think we can all agree that the implementation left something to be desired. You have no idea how much time Steve and I as well as some other people that I cannot name have spent on trying to get things changed. And that is happening. Never at a pace fast enough to suit us, but we understand the reality of how this business works. Remember that this is an ongoing process.

We have no problems with letting people express their opinion of the GUI. Frankly we want people to so we can use that as data to back up our claims to perpetuate change. And we understand the initial burst of negativity (we had the same thing). What we now need is for people to state what they don't like, why, and examples if possible. Sometimes because of the language problems it is much more effective to show a picture (and PLEASE use the Manage Attachments section for pictures in the forum!!!).

What we don't want is for people to just continually insert into forums that the GUI sucks or GV doesn't care or other such comments that have nothing constructive to do with the threads. We have a few people that are currently doing that and we are just going to delete those posts. Simply leave out the sarcasm (which generally gets lost in translation anyway) and negative comments for the sake of being negative. As Kurt so aptly put it, and Jerry so aptly commented, we want CONSTRUCTIVE criticism with supporting data and suggestions. As my Dad used to tell me, "don't complain about it unless you have a better alternative solution.

4. Since I have made the most posts on what is happening, I assume the "Barbs" comment about not going back to the previous GUI, is more directed at me. I am not quite sure how that is interpreted as barbs. People generally want to know what is going on and like a level of transparency. There have been a few posts on here (even from some of the more knowledgeable users) about the possibility of going back to the old GUI. I am just flat telling as honestly as possible, that is not a possibility. My motivation for doing this is not to be short or curt in anyway, but so you will know that putting your energy into pursuing that path is a waste of time. Rather, it would be much more productive, to put that same amount of energy into getting the new GUI to the level of optimization that we would all like. Hopefully this does not make this "...a huge point of contention for many. Down right scary actually. I'd probably be correct in saying that many people are a bit upset and frustrated by this." I am trying for the opposite in that I am being truthful and saving people from the frustration of false hope.

I will add that it is personally frustrating when you think you are simply giving people the facts so they can make better use of their thought process and somehow it is perceived as making a negative comment. Maybe I need to work more on my communication skills.

5. As a last comment, I want to say that I am going to create a new thread just for GUI discussion as it is taking away from too many other various questions on 8.1

[BernH]

GUI zoom sliders

I know there have been comments about the zoom sliders in the bin not being extremely visible, but this is another issue.

If I change the zoom slider in the bin to a different value, I can't seem to get it to go back to the default 100%, but instead the closest I can get is 99%. This is not a show stopper, but it would be nice if you could add a "right click" or a "hold a modifier key and click" return to default option.

If this already exists but I am missing it, I apologize, but I couldn't find this listed in a forum search.

[Jerry]

It would help if you could please post a screen shot of your desktop. Also, post your color settings. That will show your GUI colors and how the sliders look with that setting.

[Harro]

Nicely put. As far as I am concerned, I would like to see a big contrast between sliders, waveform etc to that those things stand out very clearly and I don't have to squint or try to adjust contrast or colours to see things clearly. Clear and well defined borders, numbers and text is a must.

[BernH]

It would help if you could please post a screen shot of your desktop. Also, post your color settings. That will show your GUI colors and how the sliders look with that setting.

I am not in my edit suite right now, so I can't post a screen grab, but as I said, I am not complaining about the colours, I am suggesting a feature to reset the zoom to the default 100%. That has nothing to do with colours or the visibility of the sliders.

[BernH]

Audio Waveforms

My second complaint is in relation the audio waveform display.

I was a Fast/Pinnacle/Avid Liquid editor. In the GUI of that software, if I zoomed in on the timeline, I could see much finer detail in the audio waveform, so that if there was a small dropout in sound or a click or pop, it was much more visible in the waveform. This is very useful when trying to do rubber banding to lower a pop or doing a little cut and paste editing.

When I get back to my system, I will try to find some material where I can post a couple of screen grabs, one from Edius and one from Liquid, using the same piece of media to show the differences.

[Alter Ego]

[QUOTE=GrassValley_PS;265448]

5. As a last comment, I want to say that I am going to create a new thread just for GUI discussion as it is taking away from too many other various questions on 8.1

Jerry wrote - "Finally, someone presenting issues and providing support for their point of view rather than just throwing barbs."

I was referring to this comment that Jerry wrote about Claire's comment and suggestion.

It may have not come across as such, but my comments were meant to be frank but constructive. I attempted to articulate my interpretation of many peoples feelings about the GUI change. Thank you for fighting for all the changes that have and will be made.

[Jerry]

I am not in my edit suite right now, so I can't post a screen grab, but as I said, I am not complaining about the colours, I am suggesting a feature to reset the zoom to the default 100%. That has nothing to do with colours or the visibility of the sliders.

Take a look at the slider progression. Have you tried this technique for getting it back to 100%.
slider back to 100 percent.mp4

[Jerry]

My second complaint is in relation the audio waveform display.

I was a Fast/Pinnacle/Avid Liquid editor. In the GUI of that software, if I zoomed in on the timeline, I could see much finer detail in the audio waveform, so that if there was a small dropout in sound or a click or pop, it was much more visible in the waveform. This is very useful when trying to do rubber banding to lower a pop or doing a little cut and paste editing.

When I get back to my system, I will try to find some material where I can post a couple of screen grabs, one from Edius and one from Liquid, using the same piece of media to show the differences.

I will tell you that you're preaching to the choir on wavforms. All of us want those improved.
Definitely post the screen shots.

[GrassValley_PS]

I am not in my edit suite right now, so I can't post a screen grab, but as I said, I am not complaining about the colours, I am suggesting a feature to reset the zoom to the default 100%. That has nothing to do with colours or the visibility of the sliders.

as Jerry showed. Click in the area of the slider and you can get to it. Not the most elegant solution, but it can be done.

[GrassValley_PS]

My second complaint is in relation the audio waveform display.

I was a Fast/Pinnacle/Avid Liquid editor. In the GUI of that software, if I zoomed in on the timeline, I could see much finer detail in the audio waveform, so that if there was a small dropout in sound or a click or pop, it was much more visible in the waveform. This is very useful when trying to do rubber banding to lower a pop or doing a little cut and paste editing.

When I get back to my system, I will try to find some material where I can post a couple of screen grabs, one from Edius and one from Liquid, using the same piece of media to show the differences.

All of us want some changes to the waveform. We are still working on those. So rearticulating them are not necessary. But comparison pictures to better waveforms would be nice. It is often time better for us to show the engineers what we want rather than tell them.

[antonsvideo]

If I change the zoom slider in the bin to a different value, I can't seem to get it to go back to the default 100%, but instead the closest I can get is 99%. This is not a show stopper, but it would be nice if you could add a "right click" or a "hold a modifier key and click" return to default option.

forget the slider, don't look at it anymore

to zoom thumbnails, hold CTRL and roll mouse wheel (while bin has focus)

you will get your 100% that way

[BernH]

forget the slider, don't look at it anymore

to zoom thumbnails, hold CTRL and roll mouse wheel (while bin has focus)

you will get your 100% that way

Thanks Anton, I never tried the ctrl-wheel thing. It worked perfectly. Jerry's solution worked also, but the mouse wheel is quicker and easier.

That said, I still think a reset to default would be a nice addition, similar to a lot of audio mixer softwares.

[BernH]

All of us want some changes to the waveform. We are still working on those. So rearticulating them are not necessary. But comparison pictures to better waveforms would be nice. It is often time better for us to show the engineers what we want rather than tell them.

As promised, here are some waveform comparison pictures. I have included shots of Edius, Liquid, Premiere, and Media Composer, all using the same waveform, all parked at the same frame for comparison. I don't have access to any other NLE softwares aside from FCPX, which doesn't show a proper waveform anyway, so I didn't bother to include it.

All screen shots were taken on 1920x1080 monitors, and in all cases I have adjusted the zoom level to the maximum 1 frame setting so that the time slice covered by one frame is a comparable size, with the exception of Media Composer. For that I have one that is comparable size, but there was actually two closer zoom available in Media composer, so I have included it's maximum as the second screen shot.

I did not put premiere into audio samples mode, as that gives much higher zoom levels, and make the waveforms more like you see on a DAW, and since nothing else has that feature, it would be an unfair comparison.

The systems used have dual monitors, so the only image manipulation was to crop one of the monitors off to reduce the image width.

As I am sure you can see, all the NLE's have a waveform that shows some detail in the "peaks and valleys," with the exception of Edius, where everything is just a blob.

None of them are as good as an actual DAW software for detail, except for Premiere in it's afore mentioned audio samples mode, but they are adequate for spotting pops, clicks, and small drop-outs, allowing some visual editing instead if guessing if you are on the right frame where the problem is.

I hope this will serve to give you something to show the engineers.