3.131 pre4+ VIDEO

[airon]

Ok, first test.

Quicktime Photojpeg(High) without audio
Resolution : 512x288
Length 00:21:37:08
Fps: 25
Filesize : 972.9 MB
Session 48k, 25 fps, Grid set to 1/25 with 60 bpm

==EDIT==
Source Properties of Video in Reaper:
Length: 21:37.079
Video: 512x288@25.00fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
Audio: 0Hz 0ch 0bps
==/EDIT==

What works so far:

• Click and dragging in an empty area, then to the left, will 'scrub' the video. Dragging to the right does not because the edit cursor stays on the left side of the time selection/loop.
• Clicking in to the timeline and arrangement area has the video jumping there just fine.
• Scrubbing, not a single middle mouse button click, but holding it and moving the mouse, works nicely. Some limitations of the scrub is revealed here, which is a matter of further discussion not belonging here.

Not working right:

• Middle-mouse scrubbing for quickly playing different spots without having to start and stop doesn't work for the video. It freezes.
• "View: Move cursor left to grid division" along with its right-hand cousin works fine most of the time. Sometimes the video freezes when I keep the key pressed(highest key repeat rate set in system settings). I have a 10x action of it set to keys next to it. It seems the video is being "Jogged" by the looks of it, and that sometimes fails. It's worth considering a "Move cursor left 10 x the grid division" action, so the engine can just leap, instead of jogging.

Much, much more testing to come.

Now for stuff that isn't there yet. The video is here and it's working well in a rudimentary fashion. Here's what's still ahead in terms of pure features.

• Video follows item trim
• Video follows left edge of selected items, and them being moved
• Video follows fades
• Video follows time selection when dragging right
• Video follows time selection made with the ALT+right-click method

[musicbynumbers]

just testing it here myself and for a 30 second avi the peak building is taking forever (could it be a setting?)

also it is upside down

maybe it's not a supported format, will try others.

[musicbynumbers]

Also the RT cpu went up to 500%

yikes!

will report back later with more but thanks for making a start on this Devs, fantastic!

it will bring in quite a few people I know now!

[musicbynumbers]

got a small avi to work with very little peak build time. (not sure of underlying codec yet) and it scrubs fine but it wont loop , it gets stuck on the loop.

Also I think it took so long on the other file to build because the sound track was empty / blank. could be a error in drawing peaks that don't exist

Lastly, The behaviour of the video screen disappearing when moved until clicking on the background of the arrange, is that intentional to stop it getting in the way on small screens? could it be made optional?

keep it up guys, excited about this one!

[lucky_bleeder]

Not having so much luck myself .

.Mov files that used to work in reaper now crash/freeze reaper everytime i drag them into TCP ( or are taking so long to load that it looks crashed ) either way i get a "not responding" and have to ctrl-alt-del to get outta there.

I'm loving the video love though, it just isn't loving me very much.

[musicbynumbers]

try importing them using the media browser as most of the ones I tried by drag and drop didn't work for me (got error message)

Nice to see another brighton based guy in here! that's 3 I count now!

[lucky_bleeder]

Originally Posted by musicbynumbers

try importing them using the media browser as most of the ones I tried by drag and drop didn't work for me (got error message)

Nice to see another brighton based guy in here! that's 3 I count now!

nope, doesn't work for me either. They load but then audio starts to auto play and can only be stopped with a ctrl-alt-del which then leaves my soundcard ( RME fireface 400 ) making a terrible noise til i reset it .( ie yank out the firewire cable )

.....maybe us Brighton folk should start a Firework Society ( sussex in-joke )
: )

[musicbynumbers]

I had the noise thing with certain file types after taking about 2 minutes to do an overview on a 30 second video.

I think this was because it had NO actually audio track to create an overview from. could that be your problem?

and YES as the train service to lewes is meant to be normal service (no extra trains this year) we might have to

VIVA LEWES FIREWORKS! cannot be topped for insanity!

[airon]

Lads, please post the exact container format, codec, length, dimension and fps of the video you're testing. In order for anything to get fixed, that kind of information is essential.

[Christophe]

For the bug reports in video, right-click on the video media item and choose "Source properties".

It'll show something like:

Length: 1:19:18.000
Video: 624x336@25.00fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YV12
Audio: 48000Hz 2ch 16bps

And this info is helpful to us for finding out why stuff doesn't work properly

-Christophe

[musicbynumbers]

will get on it as soon as I can christophe!

Whatever it takes to get this as solid and as functional as I have come to expect from Reaper!

thanks for getting round to video, I promise to drag a couple of new users your way with this new improvement!

[lucky_bleeder]

Just spent the last couple of hours trying to sort out what the problem with video is, and i can report that ....

1. 3.131 pre 4 doesn't work on my main computer , every time i try and drag or import this ( and others ) video file...
.mov
Length: 2:00.120
Video: 728x520, Aspect=1.00
Audio: 22050Hz 2ch 16bps

it crashes Reaper.

....but it just about works ( doesn't crash, scrubs, but won't play ) on the same Reaper on a different partition of the same computer with a default pref file.

2. The same video file ( and others )works in every other application i tried.

3. I went back to 3.131 pre 2 and the .mov file works as expected ( doesn't crash or freeze but has iffy sync issues ).


therefore i deduce that ...

a. somethings not quite right in 3.131 pre 4 where video is concerned
and
b. pref settings may ( or may not )have something to do with it.

my computer set-up
win xp sp2
Intel q6600
asus p5b
4 gb ram
RME fireface 400
focusrite liquidmix
etc.

I can't wait for this to be ironed out , stable video in Reaper will mean no more rewiring to Ableton Live or using dreadful Sonar for TV jobs = upgrade to pro licence for me.

cheers

Pendle

[musicbynumbers]

and me too, once I can get rid of nuendo 4 and use the video support in reaper I will pay for a full license too instead of the home one (which is all I can use it for now)

hopefully got a full length film coming up in jan so no excuse not to give you guys the money you deserve!

will get round to testing vids this weekend!

[semiquaver]

yep when its all working on mac, I'll upgrade my license too with my next gig...

[airon]

Originally Posted by lucky_bleeder

Just spent the last couple of hours trying to sort out what the problem with video is, and i can report that ....

1. 3.131 pre 4 doesn't work on my main computer , every time i try and drag or import this ( and others ) video file...
.mov
Length: 2:00.120
Video: 728x520, Aspect=1.00
Audio: 22050Hz 2ch 16bps

it crashes Reaper.

What's the container, codec and fps of the movie file ?

Coming up from me are tests of all container/codec combos I can come up with.

You see gents, it makes a very big difference what codec and container you do pick.

I might add that Protools depends on Quicktime being installed. There's a chance, that that's all it is using.

Christophe, is video support coming to the Mac ? Would it be easier to implement it on the Mac ?

Anyway, close to all the video files people use in production are Quicktimes containers with the codecs

• h264 - popular for delivery but not for editing due to its heavy reliance on Group Of Pictures, which slows down seeking to a crawl and makes it complete crap for editing, but almost acceptable for mixing.
• Sorensen Video 3 - somehow composers like this. GOP video, so it's for continuous playback, but bad for editing.
• DV, MotionJPEG, PhotoJPEG - apart from uncompressed video, this is used by sound editors most of the time, because of its non-GOP nature, in other words the video contains I-frames only and is thus seekable. I'll usually put the video on a separate drive, but todays drive can handle video and audio quite well.

Windows 7 can play most Quicktime files natively btw. It can't play the Sorensen 3, but can play the PhotoJPEG Quicktimes. Since Reaper still seems to rely on DirectShow or something, this might be the best way to handle those files.

Still, Protools LE/HD is the benchmark in terms of Quicktime video support.

[lucky_bleeder]

Originally Posted by airon

What's the container, codec and fps of the movie file ?

Coming up from me are tests of all container/codec combos I can come up with.

You see gents, it makes a very big difference what codec and container you do pick.

Thats the only info that Reaper would reveal of that particular file before it crashed.

My problem is that I can't get 3131pre4 to work on my main system with ANY video without a crash on loading, whereas pre2 doesnt crash .

Clearly if other peoples systems are running video fine then its something specific to my system, but on the other hand pre2 does work for me and so does every other host.

So whatever got changed in pre4 is probably the culprit.

[lucky_bleeder]

Originally Posted by airon

Quicktimes containers with the codecs

• h264 - popular for delivery but not for editing due to its heavy reliance on Group Of Pictures, which slows down seeking to a crawl and makes it complete crap for editing, but almost acceptable for mixing.
• Sorensen Video 3 - somehow composers like this. GOP video, so it's for continuous playback, but bad for editing.
• DV, MotionJPEG, PhotoJPEG - apart from uncompressed video, this is used by sound editors most of the time, because of its non-GOP nature, in other words the video contains I-frames only and is thus seekable. I'll usually put the video on a separate drive, but todays drive can handle video and audio quite well.

thanks for this by the way, i always wondered what the differences were. : )

pendle

[airon]

Originally Posted by lucky_bleeder

Thats the only info that Reaper would reveal of that particular file before it crashed.

You don't rely on Reaper to give you that information, but on the Windows Media Player (AVI) or the Quicktime Player, which has a feature called Movie Inspector. All the information you need is spelled out there. Then there's also a tool called GSpot, which reveals a lot about media files as well.

If you're using Windows XP, you need Quicktime installed to play Quicktime files. Windows 7 has native playback capablity of Quicktime files, though not all of them (Sorensen3 for example).

Get going fellas. We finally get what we want and we're not providing proper feedback so far.

[lucky_bleeder]

Originally Posted by airon

You don't rely on Reaper to give you that information, but on the Windows Media Player (AVI) or the Quicktime Player, which has a feature called Movie Inspector. All the information you need is spelled out there. Then there's also a tool called GSpot, which reveals a lot about media files as well.

If you're using Windows XP, you need Quicktime installed to play Quicktime files. Windows 7 has native playback capablity of Quicktime files, though not all of them (Sorensen3 for example).

Get going fellas. We finally get what we want and we're not providing proper feedback so far.

oh come on, how clear can i be 3131pre4 crashes itself and my soundcard when i try to load ANY video files and 3131pre2 doesn't.
Yes i do have quicktime installed. No i'm not a complete idiot.

[airon]

Some more Quicktime and AVI testing:

Reaper 3.131pre4 x32, running on Windows 7 RC x64, ffdshow_rev3119_20091027_clsid_x64.exe and XVid 1.2.2 is installed. i7 920, 4 GB Ram, Nvidia 9800GT 190.38 drivers, Fireface UC 0.935drivers hwrev91


Session 48k, 23.976 fps, Grid not set to anything usable right now

-----------------------------------------

Container: Quicktime
Codec: h264, quality high, i-frame every 24 frames(default), no audio
Resolution : 624 x 352
Bitrate: 1.48 MBit/sec
Length 30.11 seconds
Fps: 23.976(23.98fps given in Quicktime movie player)
Filesize : 5.3 MB

Reaper the source Properties of the video as:
Length: 0:30.111 (722 frames)
Video: 624x352@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
Audio: 0Hz 0ch 0bps

Seeking during STOP: fast

Seeking continuously by dragging right to left in empty session area: fast(quite surprising)

Playback quality:Fine

----------------------------------

Container: Quicktime
Codec: Photojpeg, quality high, no audio
Resolution : 624 x 352
Bitrate: 6.83 MBit/sec
Length 30.11 seconds
Fps: 23.976(23.98fps given in Quicktime movie player)
Filesize : 24.5 MB

Reaper the source Properties of the video as:
Length: 0:30.111 (722 frames)
Video: 624x352@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
Audio: 0Hz 0ch 0bps

Seeking during STOP: fast

Seeking continuously by dragging right to left in empty session area: fast

Playback quality:Fine

-----------------------------------------------------

Container: Quicktime
Codec: MP4, quality medium, no audio
Resolution : 624 x 352
Bitrate: 0.712 MBit/sec
Length 30.11 seconds
Fps: 23.976(23.98fps given in Quicktime movie player)
Filesize : 2.56 MB

Reaper the source Properties of the video as:
Length: 0:30.111 (722 frames)
Video: 624x352@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
Audio: 0Hz 0ch 0bps

Seeking during STOP: medium to fast

Seeking continuously by dragging right to left in empty session area: medium, sometimes choppy

Playback quality:blocky

=================================================

Container: AVI (produced with VirtualDub1.9.6)
Codec: XVID, no audio
Resolution : 624 x 352
Bitrate: 1.675 MBit/sec
Length 30.11 seconds (722 frames)
Fps: 23.976
Filesize : 6.03 MB

Reaper the source Properties of the video as:
Length: 0:30.000(!!!)
Video: 624x352@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YV12
Audio: 44100Hz 1ch 64bps no audio in this file !!!!!!!!!!

Seeking during STOP: medium

Seeking continuously by dragging right to left in empty session area: medium, choppy

Playback quality: No Playback!!! Reaper takes several seconds to react to STOP command too. Plays fine in Windows Media Player.

Note: Attempts to build peaks, which takes forever. Makes no difference to playback when completed or canceled before.

=================================================

Container: AVI (produced with VirtualDub1.9.7 x64 and FFDSHOW x64)
Codec: MotioJPEG, no audio
Resolution : 624 x 352
Bitrate: ~3 MBit/sec
Length 30.11 seconds (722 frames)
Fps: 23.976
Filesize : 12 MB

Reaper the source Properties of the video as:
Length: 0:30.000(!!!)
Video: 624x352@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=RGB
Audio: 44100Hz 1ch 64bps no audio in this file !!!!!!!!!!

Seeking during STOP: medium-fast

Seeking continuously by dragging right to left in empty session area: medium, choppy

Playback quality: Upside down. No Playback!!! Reaper takes several seconds to react to STOP command too. Plays fine in Windows Media Player.

Note: Attempts to build peaks, which takes forever. Makes no difference to playback when completed or canceled before.

[dub3000]

informal testing: it's not freaking out here. working well, actually.
will post more info later, will try it with some weird files and see what i can dig up.

[dub3000]

oooo, timestretch works! that's pretty cool.

[mim]

I'll make some tests as soon as I can (I'm going commercial also if video works perfectly); but the best way to use video in DAWs is a DV Pal format (without more compression) (quicktime or AVI) on a dedicated hard drive, you'll have the most performant system this way. (low cpu usage, and ultra fast seeking)

[robertpaulelliott]

Does video work at all on Mac?

I can't show the video viewer window and no video files will import or open regardless of whether by drag and drop or media explorer.

[airon]

The Video support didn't work for me either on the Mac. OSX 10.6.1 here, with two of the same files I used in the PC test (H264 and Photojpeg). Both played fine with the Quicktime player in OSX. They're still working on that I suppose, or it's that Snow Leopard is still too new ?

[semiquaver]

no its not implemented yet. The Readme has been changed to say that Video is not currently supported but will be supported "soon".

[brice]

Does it use Media Foundation on Windows 7?
Also WASAPI support would be nice for laptops and remove the need for asio4all most of the time.

[Kundalinguist]

Just a quick test. QT video works in OSX Tiger. No immedate issues. 640X480.

Did split and markers and jogging. All fine.

EDIT: upon saving project, video in window disappeared. Where do I put the quarter to get it to play again?

EDIT 2: rc2 works fine. rc1 might have too. When it didn't work it was probably because I moved the source video OUTSIDE the main folder. However, on doing this as a test in rc2, the browser warning came up asking me to look for the file. This didn't happen in rc1.

All's well, it seems...

[lucky_bleeder]

Sadly rc1 causes any video i load to crash Reaper .

But weirdly if i use the video.dll from pre2 it works ok ( without all the new scrubbing stuff that is )

So far to try and fix this issue I have...

uninstalled and reinstalled reaper.

reset my ini file

removed ALL of my personal extras ( templates, presets etc )

tried a different soundcard

unplugged all my external midi.

...and the best result i could get was on a fresh install and a reaper factory ini reset. Video worked perfectly BUT the next time i opened Reaper the crashing thing started all over again. But another ini reset fixed it again.

So somehow whatever was changed to make the video work better disagrees with something on my system.

win xp pro sp2
Intel q6600
asus p5b
4 gb ram
Nvdia GeForce 8500 GT
RME fireface 400
focusrite liquidmix
alphatrack
motu midi express 128
etc.

Anyone else having this problem ?

[plush2]

*updated* It appears that compressed video codecs are either 1 frame behind (advancing) or 1 frame ahead (reversing) when nudging through static frames. As best as I can tell, the video is in sync during playback so I assume this is some sort of buffer making itself known. By the way, the new video engine is very nice so far.
__________________________________________________ _______________________

Using my timecode ruler hack to advance and rewind one frame at a time I have noticed that with compressed codecs the current time relative to the ruler moving forward is 2 frames different than it is when moving backwards. This means that if I manage to get the timecode burn on the video and the timecode ruler lined up at 10:19:50:01, if I go forward one frame in reaper the timecode window burn actually goes back to 10:19:50:00 as the timecode ruler goes ahead to 10:19:50:02. The timecode window burn will remain 2 frames behind for every subsequent frame forward. When going backwards through the session the frames will once again line up exactly.

The following codecs exhibit this problem:

Length: 25:35.201
Video: 720x480@23.98fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
(it's an h.264)

Length: 25:35.000
Video: 720x480@29.97fps, Aspect=1.00, Decoding format=YUY2
(it's divx)

*I'm trying to do screen captures or make a video of this but the Reaper video window does not show up. This negates the whole demonstration as there's no timecode window burn to see.

[airon]

I'll try to confirm your results today. Had a bit of a struggle with putting timecode in to the picture, but finally figured it out.

For anyone who'd like to verify exact frame positioning in Reaper on the PC, get yourself two free tools. Avisynth and Virtual Dub. Avisynth is a video processor that operates via script files.

Make a text file called "myvideo.avs", and put these lines in to it with a text editor :

DirectShowSource("C:\WhereeverYourVideoIsVideo\video.avi")
ShowSMPTE(offset="00:00:00:00", x=320, y=200, font="CourierNew", size=48, text_color=$ffffff)

Make sure the x and y coordinates in the ShowSMPTE options is within range of your video frame size. Avisynth will complain if it isn't.

Now start VirtualDub and toss in that myvideo.avs file. Then simply reexport it to whatever format you wish. If you'd like to test Quicktime, I recommend that you render a new uncompressed AVI that you can then use with the Quicktime Player to generate your Quicktime files of various formats(like I do).

The result will look a little like this :

[musicbynumbers]

EDIT: added some more.

Few notes from first test

just tested a dvsd file at 25 frames avi.

Once I had lined up the burnt in timecode the video pretty much stayed locked through out all the abuse I could give it being able to use free item positioning and add (and even timestretch video) makes working with small video edit changes that the director might send through really great!

bad points so far..

- would only work on my main monitor crashed when trying it on any of my other 3, I have two ati cards over 4 monitors)

- would LOVE the option to enable "edit" mode like in Nuendo where the video position tracks your item as it's being moved. (hope it's coming!)

-am I right in thinking that if my computer plays the video (has the right codec) then reaper should? or does reaper only support certain ones as there were quite a few vids I couldn't import?

- would be nice to be able to lock to frames, it took a while to get it completely accurate (due to reapers "any samplerate" feature)

- The BIG clock seemed not to be completely locked to the main transport one all the time (could be related to the above problem some have) it seemed out by one or two frames but only until play was pressed again.

-When unticking "keep aspect ratio" I found the video screen would get easily hidden behind the main arrange page, It then crashed reaper after going full screen and then back. (needs more experimenting.)

will add more as I get them, keep up the good work! exciting stuff!

[musicbynumbers]

Just thought,

"EDIT MODE" could be done so easily by giving reaper the option (toggled by a key command or toolbar icon) to make the edit cursor lock to the point of edit.

so if you adjust the start the edit cursor locks to it and follows your edit thus moving the screen image too.

this could be the same for any edit, automation and markers included.

[musicbynumbers]

It's also amazing that even if you slow or speed the video down in pitch using the transport controls the timecode stays locked even on loop for the dvsd files anyway

[plush2]

Originally Posted by musicbynumbers

It's also amazing that even if you slow or speed the video down in pitch using the transport controls the timecode stays locked even on loop for the dvsd files anyway

I've used that on shows already when I wanted to quickly (at double speed) check things like that there were no missing lines in the dialog. Watching through at slower speeds is also great for checking sync on just about anything.

[Joystick]

Hello people,

I use some utilities that are pretty handy on video work, if you are not familiar let me show you some links:

GSpot:

Great little tool to see the video format and details of a file,
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

SUPER Encoder:
Nice little encoder utility
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

VirtualDub:
I believe it's widely known, 64bit also I think
http://www.virtualdub.org/
But you can also check out the portable version on:
http://portableapps.com/apps/music_v...aldub_portable

Also I had nice performance to work on video with:
AVI container with Xvid codec in best quality and "force keyframe every 1 frames", encoding done with VirtualDub usibg the Xvid Tryouts from http://www.xvid.org/
Also when the video start getting messy, I made an action to delete selected part and undo with one key, so it's a fast way to reload the video file in the timeline, this seems to refresh video and stop problems that appear when zooming to much and such problems.

Hope I helped a little.

I also believe that video following the cursor when we edit and move things around is one of the more useful things in audio for video ever!

Also a nice feature would be to have thumbnails on the video part, and an idea, if the text parts could have a property entry to use on video output window, and then be displayed in an overlay of the video, that way the notes we do on text parts can be shown on the video window for the length of the part.

Well, that's my thoughts for now, take care everybody, today I downloaded the Pi Version of REAPER and I think that it's the best way to start my week at work! Nice build Cockos people! Thank you :-)

Panoz

[musicbynumbers]

Thanks for the tips!

Also, anyone tried out video with multiple tabs?

Sounds like a recipe.. For disaster!

[Joystick]

Originally Posted by musicbynumbers

Thanks for the tips!

Also, anyone tried out video with multiple tabs?

Sounds like a recipe.. For disaster!

Yes, I tried it,
It is a recipe for disaster, hehehe.
I usually try to test some animation sequences from the games I design the sound and I like to do that with the session that I keep the loops for the atmospheres of the game, so usually I use the playback if the one session while the other is playing back, needles to say that the video never play back correctly. Also when the two sessions have two different videos each, the playback is also buggy.

I don't really mind, but it would be a nice fix!

Cheers!

[mio*star]

Question :

Wouldn't it be easier if Reaper supported a single video format ?

In DP, video must be a .mov or won't be recognized at all, This helps developpers focus their effort instead of getting crazy with dozens of codecs.

Then, it would be up to the user to find a video format converter etc.

Just a question ...

[Joystick]

Originally Posted by mio*star

Question :

Wouldn't it be easier if Reaper supported a single video format ?

In DP, video must be a .mov or won't be recognized at all, This helps developpers focus their effort instead of getting crazy with dozens of codecs.

Then, it would be up to the user to find a video format converter etc.

Just a question ...

That is a great idea, probably the best would be quicktime because all post as far as I know use them for preview purposes. +1 for that!
This is not only help the developers focus but help the users focus on a format also and know what to ask from the customers. Great idea!