First Light (Windows) Problem Thread
 

The beta thread below has grown tremendously, and is discussing both CS4 and First Light woes.

Because of the recent updates, I thought I'd start a fresh thread to see what problems still exist with First Light in build 208. You can continue to post your CS4 troubles in the previous thread.

Required components:
1) .NET Framework 3.5 (not required for Vista)
2) QuickTime 7.6

Known problems:
1) ATI cards will not display half- and quarter-resolution decoding options correctly.
2) Changes made in First Light will not work unless User Account Control (UAC) under Vista is turned OFF.

Please respond with current troubles not addressed by the above. A couple users have reported disappearing playback controls when the video window is maximized. If this is happening to you, please list your desktop resolution, content resolution, and video card & drivers.

Thanks! Hopefully this will allow us to button it up and getting it working for you all by the end of the week, since it seems to already be doing its job and helping some of you!

This is a nit, but when I open FL if I go full screen then open a file the video doesn't scale. If I restore the window then go full screen again it scales right up.

I have had issues of the video window going gray if I move between monitors.

I have had infrequent crashes of FLPlayer.exe

Feature request: I'd really like to be able to zoom the video window so I can see specific parts of the image while applying color corrections.

Regards,
Glenn

When going to full screen, the preview window on my system doesn't scale up until I grab the right hand toolbar and move it, then the window jumps to full size. My system has an nVidia mobile video card.

Good catch, gentlemen. Should be an easy fix.

Ok, the problems with "disappearing" controls and resizing only working after a clip is loaded have been fixed and will be rolled into build 209.

I'm trying to get the ATI card problems resolved for the same 209 release, so you may not see the new version until tomorrow or Friday.

I'm not sure if this is a problem or just the way it works.

After I perform a color correction in First Light (FL) playback in Premiere Pro CS4 is a little "strobey". After I apply a 32bit force render to the clip in the time line, then render, it looks great. However, after the force render any changes made to the clip in FL do not apply to the force rendered clip in the p-pro timeline. Perhaps this is normal. I do not know. Perhaps I'm just not understanding how FL works.

The same thing happens when I apply other P-Pro CS4 plugins. Once the plugin effect is applied and the clip rendered, changes made in FL do not get applied to the clip in the timeline.

I can't wait until the manual is out.

When I switch between Full, Half, and Quarter resolution the aspect ratio changes. The image looks stretched. When I reset back to full resolution the aspect ratio does not return to normal. I have to restart FL to get is back to normal.

ATI FireGL 7100

Diver: 8.563.0.0

Driver Date: 12/10/2008

Once the codec has to start processing additional metadata, it slows down the decode marginally. If your hardware is on the edge of real-time already, metadata processing could slow it down below real-time.
A force-render creates render preview files in Premiere. Then, when Premiere plays the clip back, it uses the preview file instead of asking the importer/decoder to give it the frame again. As such, whatever metadata is set for the force render is what you're stuck with unless you remove the effect.

What's the resolution of the clips? Some have complained about this when using 1.33 PAR clips (1440x1080 specifically).

Thanks Tim

Normal resolution is 1440 x 1080 - 1.3333

How about a beta version of the manual?

Is there anyone running an ATI card in XP?
I've got one XP 32-bit machine here running an X300 and it handles half-and quarter-res decode of HDV-based clips without a problem, so I'm wondering if it's something with ATI's Vista drivers that isn't handling the smaller resolutions well.

I've got a couple other ATI cards sitting around here that I'm going to test in Vista and XP (X850XT and X1950XT) but nothing newer than that.

As for the manual, it's still in development -- nothing worth posting yet.

There's no big secret that the manual will reveal.
Here's an abbreviated version:
1) Make changes in First Light, see them everywhere else the clips are being decoded -- its simplicity is its greatness.
2) Projects: just keeps track of what clips are in the bin so you can load it back up later.
3) Snapshots: saves the current clip's metadata settings to disk to be applied to other clips in this and other projects.
4) Copy + Paste: allows you to apply current metadata settings to other clips
5) Databases: allows you to have different metadata settings for different uses. Changes made in one database will not affect another. So, if you want to experiment with a clip without trashing the look/color you've decided on, just switch to a different database.

You can also mouse-over the buttons for a quick description of what they do

For more information about how active metadata works as a whole, reference the tech blog on our website!

The manual will be done once we get all of these other kinks ironed out.

Actually if you open First Light using run as administrator with the UAC on the changes do show up and are saved. At least that has been my experience so far.

Tim
With Vista 64 and ATI 4870 card w/ latest (4/09) drivers, the CF clips will play @ full rez and 1/2 rez, but not 1/4 rez (the frame shows only horizontal stripey fragmented nonsense). Otherwise FL seems to be working.
The preview window is fiddly, as previously posted, you sometimes need to adjust the right hand divider bar to get display. It's like if the window aspect ratio is not exactly correct, it won't display the image.

one question:
1- how do I import iridas .look files?

Did you just try copying the .look file to the LUTs folder? Look at this and see what you think:

CineForm - Iridas Strategic Cooperation

Else you'll have to wait for the Cineform guys to answer.

Yeah, tried copying into the Program Files/Common Files/Cineform/LUTS directory and nothing happened.