First Light settings?

[Matt Vanecek]

How do you remove First Light settings for a Cineform AVI?

Also, where is the database located? There's a way to add additional databases, but I don't see a way to specify location.

It'd be really handy to just have a "Remove AVI from database" function...

Thanks,
Matt

[David Newman]

The next release will have the database moveable. Of course you can remove settings for a particular AVI by loading into First Light and resetting its settings. How could that be improved, and how is that difference from what you are requesting. If you want to do it globally, disable the four check box in the play/loop controls in First Light or using the sample checkboxes in SetActiveMetadata.exe. What do you want to add to the database, and how would you use that additional information?

[Matt Vanecek]

I think a button to remove settings for a selected AVI from the selected database would be really useful. The test case would be to load a project of previously-adjusted AVIs, select one (or more) of the AVIs, and click the "Remove From Database" button. The expected result is that the settings for the selected AVI(s) are removed from the open database. I'm thinking that would improve downstream processing time, in situations where the adjustments aren't needed. Alternatively, a "Reset All Settings" button would be good--instead of having to reset each category manually. Either way, the buttons would work for all selected AVIs in the Clip Library.

I don't necessarily want to disable ALL First Light settings for all clips, which is what I think disabling the global settings would do. I just want to disable on a clip-by-clip basis.

I really do need a delete function on the Snapshot Manager. It's incredibly dirty from all the misfires and tests and messing around. It'd be good to clean that up to just the snapshots I want going forward. e.g., I do a show at a location, and the lighting never changes, so a single snapshot for that location works. But I've got several that I've saved and need to delete, because I've settled on a particular setting that works best.

Thanks,
Matt

[David Newman]

Good idea on the snapshot manager, but that isn't the database, so I'll have to ask the engineer who built that. Plus a Reset All is a good idea to.

[Jan Cannon]

David,

Is there anyway that First Light could show up as a plugin? That way it could be enabled, disabled or removed and it would be easy to know exactly which clips have a relationship with First Light. At this point, having played around with First Light for a week or so, and making sort of random adjustments here and there, just to see what it does, I'm not sure exactly what clips I've adjusted. Is there an easy way to tell?

Another thing that I think would be nice would be to have thumbnails of the clips instead of just clip names.

Also, is there a way to backup the changes that you make to clips? Is there a database to copy?

I look forward to learning more about First Light and thanks for all of your input on this forum.

Jan

[David Newman]

Jan,

Much of First Light power comes from it not being a plugin, so it features can exist outside of stock NLE filters. In the next release (currently) working inhouse, there is a cool autosync function, if you play or scrub a CineForm file in any tool, player or NLE, First Light will bring it to front and line up on the frame you just working on. While this doesn't tell you which clips have been modified, it solves the big issue of finding the clip you where just working on in your editor. More enhancements like this are coming.

There is a database copy feature. Top Left in the database section click on "More", you get all the call database new, branch, delete, import and export function. Use Branch for a copy. This allows you to do color work on one PC and send just the database to another PC for instant color corrections.

Thumbnail view is planned, as we have that on the Mac version.

[Matt Vanecek]

I'm still a little fuzzy on the multiple database thing. There's the default database, and then you can create databases. How does Cineform know which database to look at when decoding video? Does it just look through all the databases until it finds the clip?

Thanks,
Matt