VFCapture 5.1.4 Release Notes

Salient Sciences 2016

Contents

VF 5.1 Installation

This page provides information on downloading and installing VFCapture 5.1 and provides a review of the new features.

Downloading VFCapture 5.1

The latest version of the VFCapture 5.1 installer can be downloaded from the following page.

Save the download executable to a convenient location on your computer and when the download is complete run the executable to unpack the installer and automatically start the install process. The download file is an offline installer and can also be used to install VFCapture on a machine other than the machine on which it was downloaded.

Activating VFCapture 5.1 with a Dongle

VFCapture dongles can only store one product activation at a time. For those users with a dongle and without an Internet connection on your computer please contact Salient Sciences for further information about upgrading. For those users with an Internet connection the dongle will be upgraded to a 5.1 code when VFCapture 5.1 is first run. (The dongle can be downgraded back to prior version code by running the older VFCapture while the Internet is connected.)

Activating VFCapture 5.1 with a Software Key

Running VFCapture 5.1 requires an activation update from our license server and you will be prompted for your Installation ID when VFCapture 5.1 is first run. Please use the Installation ID that you have been using for your VFCapture 5.1 (this can be found under the Help->About menu of your existing installed version of VFCapture).

Supported Operating Systems

VFCapture 5.1 is only available for Windows platforms. Detailed support levels are given in the following table.

Features in VFCapture 5.1

Import of DVR Formats

Directly imports many proprietary DVR formats, this allows you to import proprietary DVR formats into VFCapture quickly without having to screen capture or convert the videos.

VFCapture Runs On 64-bit OS

VFCapture will be 64-bit and will only work with a 64-bit OS. The 64-bit version will allow VFCapture to utilize more of your computers memory and improve performance within the application. This will especially help with larger HD (High Definition) videos.

New Look and Feel

VFCapture has modernize the appearance of the application and align it with other Salient Sciences products.

Fast Import For Many Media Formats

VFCapture eliminates the need for transcode for a wide variety of video media formats. As a consequence import time for long duration or large frame size video are substantially reduced (in certain cases two orders of magnitude). Furthermore the disk space use for the import of such media is reduced substantially.

VFCapture import consists of a copy phase to create a copy of the media within the project storage with time taken comparable to a regular file copy and if required an indexing phase to produce an accurate frame index for those media types lacking a native frame index. Indexing is typically needed only for the import of media originally produced for live streaming.

Improved Player Performance for HD Video

VFCapture includes an architecture for media handling which supports a more efficient approach to playing video. This provides notable improvements in player performance particularly for imported media with temporal compression and HD (1366x768 line) and higher frame dimensions.

The import facilities allow for the efficient import of HD and larger frame sizes however many processing operations are intensive and for HD sized video require considerable computation per frame. Although HD video player performance is greatly improved, depending on the processing operations applied, playing processed HD video may result frame skipping if computation cannot keep up. If necessary the "self contained" option in the modify dialog can be used to create a rendered copy of the processed video to improve player performance.

Simplified Export

The export dialog presents a goal oriented approach to selecting export formats and codecs. The dialog offers a set of default export profiles that represent appropriate choices of format and video and audio codecs for specific tasks such as full quality archive, email and high quality reduced space exports.

Export Profile Editor

Facilities are included under an "Advanced" panel to allow users to define their own export profiles appropriate for their export needs. Profiles can be constructed from a number of different media formats and accompanying audio and video codecs. User created profiles become available exactly like predefined system profiles as selectable output types in the export dialog.

When creating a user defined export profile consideration should be given to the fact that not all combinations of formats and codecs will create valid files. It is therefore suggested that any new profile is tested with familiar media and the anticipated media player to confirm that output is as expected before using more generally for export.

Of the three common players, QuickTime, WMP and VLC, we have found the VLC player to be the most accommodating in handling different formats, codecs, media frame rates and dimensions etc.

Audio Support

Audio Import

The import capabilities of VFCapture are extended to allow for the import of audio media files. When supported media files containing audio are selected in the import dialog the import review player can be used to play the file. When opened an audio item will be added into the captured and imported session area.

Audio Project Items

Audio only media that is part of a VFCapture case is displayed in the captured and imported session area and depicted by a speaker icon. Audio items can be viewed in the player in the same way as video items. The player shows a visualization of the audio signal that follows the play head position and the zoom control can be used to view fine structure of the audio signal down to the individual sample values.

Audio Modification

The modify panel now supports basic audio modifications on audio or video items. When modifying a video item containing audio the panel contains an additional "Audio Properties" tab containing the controls. Changes in audio properties are reflected in real time in the modify player.

• Sync Adjust The sync adjust control allows for the relative advance or delay of a selected sub set of audio channels in the media.
• Channel Select The channel select control allows for the retention of a selected sub set of audio channels in the media. The other channels are removed from the audio or video item.
• Channel Mix When two channels are selected the channel mix "Stereo Balance" option provides the ability to adjust the balance between the two channels. When two or more channels are selected the "Mono" option will perform a equal weight mix of each channel to produce a single channel output.

Media Player Updates

Looping and Selection Play

"Loop Play" and "Play Selection" menu items are in the player popup menu and the view menu of the undocked player window.

The play selection will make the player play only the selected section of the video or audio instead of the entire duration of the media.

Loop play will cause the player to loop continually over the section selected for play. If loop play is selected when a selection of more than one frame is present the play selection option will also turn on resulting in the looping play of the selected section of media.

A shortcut to the loop play menu item is provided by a loop button in the player to the right of the time selection slider.

Volume Controls

The media player interface provides a volume control and an audio mute button.

Audio Signal Visualization

When the media player is used to view video containing audio the "Audio Signal" popup menu item will control the visualization of the audio signal as a waveform. Each channel is displayed with channel 0 being the closest to the bottom of the player window.

The signal visualization is limited to a maximum time window of 10 seconds centered around the current displayed frame. The specific position in the audio signal corresponding to the currently viewed frame is indicated by the vertical white bar. The visualized audio signal time window adjusts according to the time scale sensitivity selected by the timescale zoom slider control

Batch Image Import

Drag and Drop Import

VFCapture supports drag and drop for media import.

Drag and Drop Media Import

VFCapture will import media files that are dropped into the application. Individual or multiple video files can imported by dragging from the desktop or a file explorer and dropping them into the "Captured and Imported Sessions" area.

Collections of two or more image files of the same type can be also be dragged into the "Captured and Imported Sessions" area and they will be imported as an image sequence. When these items are dropped VFCapture will prompt for the desired frame rate for the video.

Cases

VFCapture uses concept of a case to allow for better organization and management of separate work efforts.

The following case related actions can be found under the 'File' menu.

• New Case Creates a new empty case. The location of new cases can be changed by changing the in the directory specified in the preferences dialog ('Edit'->'Preferences').
• Open Case Opens an existing case directory. Cases are identified in the open dialog by a VFCapture icon. When a case is opened a tab will be added in the main window containing the case contents.
• Archive Case Creates a complete zip archive of the entire contents of the case. The zip archive contains can be un-zipped at a later date and then opened using the 'Open Case' action.
• Close Case Closes the tab associated with the case. This does not delete any of the case data. The case can be re-opened using the Open Case action.

Other Features

A rotation option has been added to the modify panel ('Processing'->'Modify'). This allows for the arbitrary rotation of both images and video by a specified number of degrees.

The WAV file type option is available with movie export. This will be available if the session being exported (or any session in the case of a batch export) contains audio. It will produce a WAV format audio file.

VFCapture has a screen capture source selection dialog and it can resized to allow for more precise selection of the capture window area.

Change Log

This list will be updated with information on fixes as new versions of VideoFOCUS are made available for download.