VFSource 13.0.0 Release Notes

Salient Sciences 2023

Contents

VFSource 13.0 Installation

This page provides information on downloading and installing VFSource 13.0 and provides a review of the new features.

Downloading VFSource 13.0

The latest version of the VFSource 13.0 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 VFSource on a machine other than the machine on which it was downloaded.

Running VFSource 13.0 and previous VFSource versions

If your machine has an Internet connection you should be able to install VFSource 13.0 alongside older versions of VFSource and run either but not both simultaneously (i.e. close VFSource 13.0 before opening older version and vice versa).

Note that VFSource 13.0 changes case data elements and as such will not be be able to open cases created with previous versions. The appropriate version to use to open older cases can be determmined by attempting to open the case in VFSource 13.0. The message dialog that is presented will provide the details. If you wish to work on a case created by a version of VFSource that is not supported by VFSource 13.0 then obtain and install the appropriate version of VFSource from support.salientsciences.com

Activating VFSource 13.0 with a Dongle

VideoFOCUS 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 13.0 code when VFSource 13.0 is first run. (The dongle can be downgraded back to prior version code by running the older VFSource while the Internet is connected.)

Activating VFSource 13.0 with a Software Key

Running VFSource 13.0 requires an activation update from our license server and you will be prompted for your Installation ID when VFSource 13.0 is first run. Please use your existing Installation ID which can be found under the Help->About menu of your existing installed version of VFSource. If you wish to try VFSource 13.0 on a different computer please contact us.

Supported Operating Systems

VFSource 13.0 is only available for Windows platforms. Detailed support levels are given in the following table.

New Features in VFSource 13.0

The 13.0 release is primarily focused on the introduction of video search capability into the VideoFOCUS Pro product and improvements to the performance of the UI in both VFSource and VideoFOCUS Pro. The functional improvements that are also applicable to VFSource are listed below.

Tracking

Tracking has been upgraded to use a neural network based approach which performs very well even in the face of partial obscuration or overlap. This tracking can run on the CPU and does not require a high end GPU.

Resample Video

The temporal properties tab of modify adds an option to "resample"' the video at a fixed specified fps. Resampling creates new video by selecting frames from the source at the rate specified. Resampling is distinct from the option to change the frame rate in that it will preserve the original duration but will drop or duplicate frames from the source to achieve the specified rate.

Frame Numbers

The thumbnail view now includes the frame number in each thumbnail image.

Playing a Selection

The option of playing only the selected times is now also available via a button in the right bottom of the player next to the loop button. Additionally, playing a time selection that is formed from multiple periods of time now skips the gaps between each selected period.

QuickClip in Export

If a video that is chosen for export is appropriate for a QuickClip operation then that will be presented in the export dialog as an additional choice. As a reminder, QuickClip is a near instantaneous export that avoids re-encoding which can be applied to video created from time cuts of a longer MP4 source such as screen capture or import.

Features Introduced in Previous Versions

New Features in VideoFOCUS Pro 12.0

Folder Organization

We know that keeping track of numerous items of media in the 'session list' gets difficult when the project is complicated and involves multiple media items, many processing results, various exports etc so version 12.0 introduces the concept of folders.

There are two new actions available from the session list popup menu that allow for the use of folders. The first is the new folder action that creates a folder item in the project. The second is a move to folder sub menu that allows selected media to be moved to a folder. These are described in further detail below. To further enhance the value of folders, a selected folder automatically selects its entire contents when it is selected and any action in VideoFOCUS that can be applied to a selection of items can be applied to a folder. For the time being only a single depth of folders is allowed.

Folder contents can be collapsed or expanded using the + control. Folders with no contents will not show the expansion control.

Creating Folders

A new empty folder can be created via the right click 'New Folder' menu action on the session list. When the folder is created it will be uniquely named automatically, but the folder label will also become editable to allow for a change (see click to rename section below).

Generally speaking new folders would be created ahead of time to provide a subsequent action with a folder other than the default as a destination for any media. VideoFOCUS maintains the concept of a current folder as a destination. The current folder is either the selected folder, or the parent folder of any selected media. A new folder action might therefore be used prior to an import action or a capture action to organize incoming media.

Moving Media from Folder to Folder

The session list popup menu also offers a 'Move to Folder' sub menu that can be used with an existing selection of items. This menu action can be used to move all the selected items into an existing folder or into a new folder using the 'New Folder' action in the sub menu. Items will be removed from their existing folder when they are moved.

Note that item selections can span multiple folders, which allows for a simple way of condensing items in different folders into a single folder

Drag and drop can also be used to move items between folders. Selecting then dragging a media item and dropping it on another folder will move the item from the original folder to the new folder. Still images and frames can also be dragged from the Stills and frames view into new folders in the left side session list.

As before drag and drop can be used to copy rendered items from VideoFOCUS to the desktop or other file directory destination or directly into another application (if the application supports the drag and drop interaction).

Stills and Images in the Session List

A significant amount of screen area is dedicated to the stills and images area of VideoFOCUS. To provide more screen area to those who's use of VideoFOCUS tends to result in a smaller number of images, or does not require seeing all the images at once, we now offer the option of including the images and stills in the session folders. The stills and images area is still available, but it displays only images from the current folder, and can be minimized to provide screen area to the media view. The option to see stills and images in the session list is enabled via the session list popup menu item 'Show Stills in Folders' and case defaults for this can be established through the Edit->Preferences dialog.

If no use is made of folders and the option to show images is not selected then the UI experience will be essentially the same as earlier versions of VideoFOCUS.

When the show images option is selected and an image or still is selected in a folder the image will be displayed in the right. Images and stills can be 'undocked' into a separate window which allows for the comparison of different images in the same way as is available from the stills and frames panel.

Click to Rename

Both the folder labels and the media item labels in the session list are now directly editable. There is no need to open the properties to change the label. Select the item then double click on the label to change to an editable field. To end editing and commit the change either hit ENTER or click on a different item in the list. To end the edit without saving hit ESC

Note that because a double click now edits the name, the previous action of opening the media on double click requires that the ALT key is pressed when the mouse is double clicked.

Other Improvements and Changes

Toolbar Actions for Audio

The toolbar editing actions are now available for audio only sessions, allowing for quick temporal editing of audio that has no accompanying video.

Audio Capture

VF Source now includes the audio only capture facility. The control is opened from the file menu and provides for the capture of the 'what you hear' mix from the sound card. Currently the audio capture supports the uncompressed WAV format.

Consolidation of Edit (Remove of Paste In Popups)

In a previous version we consolidated most media editing actions into the player/image viewer panel (see player tools). These tools can now be used to generate all types of modified media that previously relied on a copy and paste procedure. Given that the copy and paste procedure is no longer needed to create modified media we have removed the paste action from session list (left side) and still view (bottom) and the main edit menu. Copy is retained to allow for the copy of entire videos, audio or images as sources for edit in the edit tool.

Features Introduced in Previous Versions

Introduced in VFSource Src 11.1

In Place Player Editing

In a continuing effort to improve workflow and reduce the steps required to produce results the cut copy and paste operations are now available as immediate actions in the video player toolbar.

Cut

Cuts the current player time selection from the displayed media and displays the result. Cut also copies the cut section into the clipboard for future use.

Copy

Copies the current player time selection into the clipboard.

Paste

Paste the contents of the clipboard into the displayed media and displays the result.

Timed QuickCapture

Timed captures are now available in quick capture. Select the option using the checkbox next to the duration field and adjust the number of minutes in the control. When the duration reaches or exceeds the specified amount capture will stop as if the stop button had been pressed. Note that a timed capture can be selected or adjusted after a capture has started.

Other Improvements

QuickClip Improvements

To provide consistency with export, QuickClip is now an option on items in the session list if those sessions are amenable to a QuickClip action. As before the result is presented like an export result.

Audio QuickClip is also available on suitable audio only media or after extracting the audio from video media.

Selection Mark In/Out Improvements

The player selection using the in and out buttons is revised to allow for simpler single selection and a experience more consistent with SHIFT and drag selection.

As before the default behavior is that a mark in action will adjust the beginning position of the current or closest next section to the playhead and remove any other selected areas. The mark out will equivalently adjust the end position of the current or closest previous selected section to the playhead and remove any other selected areas. Now, only if the CTRL key is held down while marking in or out points, will other selected areas that would have been removed be retained to allow for the composition of a multiple selection.

As before holding down the ALT key while pressing the in or out mark buttons will adjust the corresponding selection operation to video frame boundary time (start or end depending on whether it is an in or out point).

When the selection slider has focus the DEL key can be used to delete any individual segment of a selection that is under the playhead, and the ESC key will clear the whole selection.

Introduced in VFSource 11.0

Full Resolution Work Product

The demand for standards compliance in the science of media forensics is driving an ever increasing requirement for the forensic process to be transparent and comprehendible with respect to each and every media transformation that is applied as part of an end to end work product. Previous versions of VideoFOCUS have supported automatic step by step reporting to ensure that each step was described without risk of inadvertent omission. As the next stage in our goal of providing complete accounting with respect to every processing operation we have turned our attention to the elimination of any implicit media scaling in the media processing operation chain.

The new low level video processing architecture in 11.0 allows us to improve interactive performance with uncropped HD and UHD media while providing exported output where each operation in the case has been applied at full original resolution (note that some operations are dimension adjusting so the meaning of full resolution may be modified by the operation). This behavior is entirely transparent to the user and is automatically applied during the export step.

Player Tools

Continuing the theme of efficient workflow for the more straightforward tasks we have promoted the commonly used editing operations to the main player interface as single click toolbar actions.

Magnifier

Visualizes the image in the player in a zoomed form and provides for numerical control of the ROI location and dimensions.

ROI

Toggles the presence of the region of interest selector. If present the ROI is used as part of the crop and trim operations. The ROI can be adjusted with direct interaction or via the fields in the magnifier.

Snapshot

Produces a snapshot of the viewed frame. If the ROI is present then the snapshot is the area of the ROI otherwise it is the whole frame.

Clip

Produces a media clip of the time selection and/or ROI. The clip is enabled when there is an ROI or a time selection present. With no time selection, the result is a cropped full duration video and with no ROI the result is an uncropped video comprising of the selected times.

The magnifier, ROI and snapshot controls are also available operations in the still image viewer.

Thumbnail Rapid Review

VideoFOCUS has always had the ability to review many frames of video at once via the thumbnail view. We consider the ability to examine each and every frame of video as a collection of thumbnails as an important investigative tool that enhances the ability to identify and isolate brief but important events in the video.

To enhance the value of this capability when the media is of much longer duration we have introduced an new behavior in the thumbnail visualization. When the thumbnail frequency filter is set to anything other than every frame, each thumbnail becomes a motion gif that plays every frame in the period on a repeating loop. This allows the user to review every frame of many minutes of video simultaneously in a single view, and is particularly helpful in identifying brief motion in long periods of video.

Improved Tracking

The tracking algorithm used for video filters and tracked annotations is new and much improved and the interaction has been redesigned. The interaction now provides feedback to the user when the tracking is still computing tracks via a dashed motion border and when it has lost track via a red border.

Editing functionality

VideoFOCUS Pro edit and title capability has been re-introduced into VFSource. This change is part of our ongoing initiative to transition all editing capability into the player interface so as to make standard video editing actions as simple and efficient as possible.

Other Improvements

Full Duration Audio Waveform

The audio waveform duration now extends over the whole duration of the media by default and remains in sync with the scaling applied to the video time slider.

Selection In/Out Improvements

The player selection using the in and out buttons is improved to allow for selection adjustment and multiple selection.

The default behavior is that a mark in action will adjust the beginning position of the current or closest next section to the playhead and remove any other selected areas. The mark out will analogously adjust the end position of the current or closest previous selected section to the playhead and remove any other selected areas. If the CTRL key is held down while marking in or out points other selected areas that would have been removed are retained thus allowing for the composition of a multiple selection.

Holding down the ALT key while pressing the in or out mark buttons will adjust the corresponding selection operation to video frame boundary time (start or end depending on whether it is an in or out point).

When the selection slider has focus the DEL key can be used to delete any individual segment of a selection that is under the playhead, and the ESC key will clear the whole selection.

Introduced in VFSource10.1

VideoFOCUS 10.1 introduces a new QuickClip feature to further improve workflow. QuickClip supports the rapid production of MP4 video clips from certain source media while avoiding recompresion. This capability is introduced to compliment the MP4 encoding capabilities of QuickCapture and the increasing prevalence of h264 and hevc codecs in surveillance media.

Quick Clip

QuickClip is a menu action based capability that allows the user to directly produce MP4 export media from time and view selections of source media that have been imported or captured without the delay or potential quality impact of re-compression. We offer this capability to provide rapid turn around in situations where quickly extracting clips of original media is the primary goal. Typical original media might be QuickCapture output or imported proprietary or standard h264/hevc based media.

Using QuickClip

QuickClip is available as a right click menu from the frames and player popup menu. Since a goal of QuickClip is to work rapidly and avoid sample recoding it is currently only available on certain sessions that meet the following criteria

• The session's original media source must contain encoded sample types that are suitable for mp4 containers (e.g. h264,hvec,aac)
• The session must not have been produced by spatial processing of the source (eg. cropped, audio or video filtered etc) other than view extractions
• The session must not have been produced by temporal processing other than start time adjustments

Time Selections

When a time selection is active on the target session then the QuickClip action will attempt to produce media that covers as closely as possible the period of the selection. To avoid re-encoding, these clips must start on a source video key frame so extra frames and samples of audio from the source will likely be included at the beginning of the media. It is therefore important to review the QuickClip result to make sure no sensitive audio or video is included in this additional period..

The QuickClip Export Item

The QuickClip action will produce a resulting MP4 export item that appears in session list. There is no re-encoding applied to the target media when producing the QuickClip, so characteristics of the original source media including frame rate, dimensions, frame aspect are also retained unaltered in the resulting export.

The export item is identical from an operational perspective to those produced by a normal export, therefore all the actions such as reporting, open in system, drag and drop and save media that apply to normal export items also apply to QuickClip export items.

Other Improvements

Filter Selections

Filter operations are now configured with a default selection which includes a time selection spanning the entirety of the duration of the media and in the case of video filters the entire area of video frame. The first user time selection will replace the default selection's values for time, and equivalently the first user area selection will replace the default area selection. Selection behavior after the first user selection is unchanged.

Discard Frames

VideoFOCUS now visualizes frames with negative timestamps by attaching the "Discard" label to the frame. The "Discard" label is is available for typical label operations including selection and frame view filtering.

Export Item Visualization

In previous versions of VideoFOCUS the selection of an export item in the session list resulted in the visualization of the item's source session in the right side player/frames view. Now the visualization is of the export item media itself. This change allows for direct review of export results inside VideoFOCUS for consideration of quality etc or in the case of QuickClips the review of any preroll frames that are included in the clip. Note that because export items are intended as final results, further processing or modification operations are not available on these sessions.

Session Sorting Improvements

Session can now be sorted by label. This provides a limited ability to group items together by prefixing the session label with a common and user provided tag, or perhaps by a numerical designation.

Additionally the session sorting options order can be reversed by clicking the arrow button next to the sort choice drop down.

Close All Cases

The file menu now offers a close all cases to make interface cleanup more efficient.

Introduced in VFSource 10.0

The advances in VideoFOCUS 10 continue to be towards performance. Building on our use of the GPU to improve processing operations in version 9, in version 10 we have turned our attention to a major re-write of the screen capture capability, including the use of the GPU to provide 4K capture support and to offer a much more efficient UI experience.

Quick Capture

Although we strive to provide direct import for as many media types as possible, there are often circumstances where viewing the video in the DVR vendor player is the only option, or where the relevant video is hosted online and embedded web players with no download capabilities are the only option for viewing. Screen capture is the solution in these situations, but like all video, video from these sources is following the trend towards ever increasing frame size and ever increasing frame rate. As these trends continue a screen capture that is to meet the challenge must be designed with the highest performing approaches, and to handle the most demanding circumstances it must leverage the capabilities in the GPU. We have created the new VideoFOCUS 10 Quick Capture with exactly this in mind so our users will continue to have an option for all the video they encounter in the future even when there is no possibility of direct import.

Additionally, much about the workstation graphics environment has changed since the original VideoFOCUS screen capture was released. Multiple monitors with high DPI displays and screen scaling are commonplace, and users wish flexibility with respect to where tasks are run and interaction is performed. With this in mind Quick Capture has been designed to provide a very direct and efficient process for video selection from any source on any screen, and offer simple interaction as needed to do the precise selections often desired when capturing video for forensic purposes.

Feature Summary

• Full 4K MP4 capture (with suitable GPU).
• Capture up to monitor frame rate with zero frame drop (MP4 with suitable GPU).
• Significantly improved capture performance for non GPU assisted systems.
• Capture from any screen including scaled and unscaled HDPI displays.
• Direct selection and adjustment of capture location on any screen.
• Automatic magnified visualization for precise pixel boundary selection.
• Uncompressed video and loop back audio capture options.
• Efficient still image screen snapshot capability.
• Frame label record of frame drop locations in captured video.

Operation

Quick Capture can be launched from the toolbar, the file menu or using the F2 key. We believe that it will supersede the older capture in all cases, but the original screen capture is retained for the time being and is accessible via the F3 key and the file menu.

Source Selection

Manual

Activates manual mode. The selected area of the screen is identified by a orange dotted line. Adjustments to the position can be made using the mouse, or via the fields in the capture panel. Mouse interaction includes drag and drop to define the area, and drag of the selection edges and corners to refine the area. When near an edge or corner the mouse wheel can be used for fine scale adjustment.

Automatic

When in automatic mode OS application and child windows are automatically highlighted in red as the cursor moves near them. A mouse click will select the highlighted area and the selector will move to manual mode. Modern OS window edge decoration means automatic selection boundaries may not be exactly as desired, but a transition to Manual mode allows for fine scale adjustments to be applied. If a window is partially obscured a additional click is first required to bring the window to the front.

⯆

Additional menu offering selection of full desktop of each display.

Hide

Disables the selector, leaving the last selected area as the target area for capture. This mode can be used if window rearrangement is required, optionally returning to manual or automatic mode to complete the selection.

Selection Display

During selection the selected area is displayed in the capture dialog, either in its entirety, or when the mouse is close to the boundary in a magnified view. The magnified view allows for pixel precise selection of the edges of the capture area. While in magnified view the thin solid line displays the precise boundary of the selection.

The selection display also includes a informational banner presenting information on the selected display source. This information is important in the following ways.

Monitor Refresh Rate

The mechanism used to access the display data provides the highest performance available but even so the maximum rate of access to the video is the refresh rate of the monitor. For the majority of video sources the monitor refresh rate is sufficient to handle the frame rate of video, but when the video rate approaches or exceeds the monitor refresh rate this information can be used to decide whether a capture will be successful, or a reconfiguration of display mode and refresh rate might be required.

Coordinate Control

The coordinate control provides a continuous presentation of the pixel location and size of the area selected for capture. It also provides an alternative way to establish and adjust screen selections in terms of position and width and height. The fixed checkbox controls whether mouse interaction with the selection area on the screen adjusts the size of the selection area. When fixed is selected the manual mode mouse adjustments only move the selection area. This allows for situations where the capture size is known and the user is attempting to determine whether a player is presenting the video at that size and align that capture area to the correct region of the player window.

Encoding Options

The encoding options provide for both uncompressed and compressed video capture and the optional inclusion of audio. When audio is checked the capture system will also record what is known as the 'loopback' or 'what you hear' audio stream available from the currently selected audio output device.

Encoding options can be changed at any time when not capturing and changes to encoding will not adjust the current capture selection.

MP4 Compressed

H264 encoded video and AAC encoded audio in an MP4. This option is generally the best choice for any capture that is substantial in terms of duration, frame rate or frame dimensions. We have engineered this capture to make use of GPU based hardware encoding when available, so it offers the best possibility of no drop capture in most circumstances, and is a necessary choice in conjunction with a suitable GPU when attempting to capture UHD sized video at typical production video frame rates.

Uncompressed

Raw 32bit RGB video and PCM audio in an MOV. Unfortunately GPU assistance is not meaningfully helpful for uncompressed video (or any compression that is lossless) because data rates are in many circumstances too high so the uncompressed option is only applicable for modest frame rates or modest dimensioned video that must be captured in a lossless format. Maximum no drop frame rates are a function of frame size and data rates are substantial.

The label field allows for pre-definition of the label for the captured session and dictates the name of the captured media file in the case. The label name can be changed to any meaningful name and will subsequently auto advance with each capture.

Capture Actions

Snap

Creates a still image of the current capture selection area. This can be used to quickly capture images from any static or video source on the display.

Start (Stop)

Start capture with the current selection and audio choice.

Pause (Resume)

Temporarily pause the ongoing capture. Pause is not available when also capturing audio.

Cancel

Stop the capture without saving the result.

Capture Performance Information

Rate

The rate of frame update while capturing (average over the last 10 seconds). This provides an indication that can be used to determine the frame rate of video and whether that rate might be close to the monitor refresh rate and therefore creating a risk of exceeding maximum capture rate.

Frames

Provides a count of the total number of frames captured.

Drops

Provides a count of the number of frames where the windows system has indicated more than one display update occurred between the current and previous captured frame. Missed updates a.k.a 'drops' typically occur because the system cannot transfer and encode the frames from the display or store the frames to the disk fast enough.

Quick Capture records the timing of any drops and adds a labeling to the captured session that can be used as an aid in determining whether a potential drop is significant to the integrity of the capture video. These labels can be selected and reviewed by the section advance capabilities of the VideoFOCUS player.

The label is attached to the frame that immediately follows the point in time where the 'drop' was indicated. Ideally it would be a line between this and the prior frame, but we currently don't have the ability to indicate in that way.

Performance

Important points to keep in mind.

• Frame drops indicate that Quick Capture cannot run fast enough to acquire, encode and store the frames that are being displayed on the screen by the target player.

  If drops tend to show up sporadically then they are generally caused by the unavoidable fact that the Windows OS can interrupt any process at any time to do 'something else', hence delaying in an irregular way the part of our process that loops to obtain the next image.

  If drops show up in a continuous way and/or lead to a notable reduction in captured frame rate when using MP4/H264 then performance of the CPU and or GPU may be a factor. Notably a lack of performance of the disk typically only shows up for large frame size uncompressed capture since MP4/H264 samples are generally small enough not to overwhelm the storage system performance.

• Quick Capture can only attempt to capture the frames that the target player displays. If frames are lost because the target player skips the display of those frames due to for example insufficient performance or insufficient screen refresh rate this cannot be detected by Quick Capture and will not be recorded as frame drops, but it may be possible to infer that it is happening from a lower than expected frame rate indication.

• Target video with higher frame rates or larger frame sizes are more likely to lead to dropped frames and furthermore players are more likely to skip frames when playing such video. Where possible configure the target player to display the video at actual size to avoid capturing an unnecessarily large frame size.

• Players playing video at frame frame rates that exceed the monitor refresh rate will skip frames.

Computers with faster processors are less likely to drop frames and players are less likely to skip frames on such machines. Computers with higher end GPU's are less likely to drop frames especially for larger frame sizes.

Limitations

In this release pausing is not available when capturing audio is enabled as frame timing problems will occur in the captured result.

In this release loopback audio devices that work at sample rates other than 48000Hz or 44100Hz cannot be used for MP4 capture.

Drops are calculated from the system's information about the changed screen areas and erroneous drop indications can be generated if areas of the screen other than the capture area update multiple times during the time of a single update of the capture area.

Quick Capture is only supported on Windows 10 and GPU acceleration is dictated by the DirectX capabilities of the GPU.

Due to graphics limitations, area selection on OS scaled screens may show a slightly displaced dashed highlight in the magnified view, but the precise boundary line can still be relied upon to display the actual pixel level selection boundary.

Other Improvements

Sort Options for Session List

In an attempt to try to make the challenge of working with many sessions in a case somewhat simpler we have introduced the ability to sort the sessions in different ways.

Relationship

A sort that attempts to keep closely related items next to each other in an ancestor like order.

Item Type

A sort that groups items in the following order: demos, imports, captures, modification and processing, and exports.

Created Time

A sort that orders items according to the time that they were created by the user.

Floating Point Audio Import

The media audio track decode has been upgraded to directly produce 32 bit floating point audio so that original media containing high precision audio tracks (e.g. 24 bit integer or floating point) can be imported and processed without any precision loss.

Introduced in VFSource 9.0

The focus of version 9.0 is performance. We have upgraded the media handling architecture to support interactive performance for the larger media frame sizes that are now encountered in surveillance video. In addition to using GPU resources to accelerate filtering, in systems with a suitable NVidia GPU VideoFOCUS will use the GPU to accelerate h264 and hevc decode and encode, providing for a better general processing and export experience especially on larger frame size video.

Media Handling for High Resolution Video

An updated media architecture in Version 9 enables the possibility of interactive processing of high resolution video on a reasonable spec contemporary computer system. By automatically working with scaled versions of the video media right up to the point of the final export render the computing resource requirements when interactively processing high resolution video are substantially lower and hence interactive performance is improved. This behavior is automatic and requires no action on the part of the user.

Export as Two Steps

We were concerned that the existing VideoFOCUS export process does not make it easy to properly review the export product and fully leverage the value of VideoFOCUS's automatic report generation.

To address this we have split the export into two steps. The first step is the generation of the export media item and the second step is the copy of the export item to an external location. As such the export dialog now contains a "Render" and a "Export" option as a drop down button in the export dialog. The render option renders a version of the selected audio, video or images with the chosen formats etc, and adds those items to the VideoFOCUS case as part of the processing chain. This allows the user the opportunity to review the rendered media with actions like 'open in system' prior to saving them to an external location. It also allows for report notes to be added to the export item and the option to refine the report prior to a final save without the need to re-render the media.

For those who are satisfied with the existing export experience the export option provides a one step action very similar to previous export experience. The only difference being that the rendered items are also added to the case but that action can be disabled by deselecting the checkbox option in the export dialog.

Accelerated Media Export

Version 9 can now also make use of suitable NVIDIA GPU resources to perform h264 and hevc encoding. This option is on by default when producing MP4 but can be disabled on a case by case basis using the checkbox in the export dialog.

Notes on Encoding Quality

It may be necessary to fall back on software encoding for systems where instability or quality issues are observed when using the hardware encoding option. This can be achieved in export by deselecting the use GPU option and in capture by deselecting the hardware capture encoding option in the Edit->Preferences dialog.

By default H264 encoding now uses the "Main" profile. If quality issues are observed in the MP4 then the Edit->Preferences panel offers a checkbox to revert to using the "Baseline" profile of previous versions. This setting affects the encoding for both MP4/H264 capture and MP4/H264 export.

Capture Pause

We have introduced a pause capability in the screen capture to support the creation of single capture files that include non time contiguous sections of video.

The preferences dialog allows the user to control how the pause period is represented in the capture file. The preferences allows specification of the number of black frames that are inserted (between zero and 100) and the duration of each frame (expressed as a frame rate)

One possible use of pause is to append multiple DVR player time segments that are in different source files into one single capture file. Note however that if the capture target is selected in VF as a specific player window (via source selection) then that window cannot close between sections separated by a pause since that would cause VF to lose track of the source window.

Also note that in the current version the subsequent time setting or addition of a timestamp in the video is not likely to be meaningful for the whole video because of the non contiguous nature of the underlying real world time of each segment

Other Improvements

Player Controls

Version 9 offers interactive controls to position the player to a specific frame or a specific relative or absolute time. The controls are spinners and in the case of the time controls parts of the value fields can be selected to allow for advance by seconds,minutes, hours etc using the spinner buttons.

Tracking

We are planning to revisit our filter tracking in a future release but for Version 9 we have adjusted the tracking to prevent distortion of the track region when the track location is being computed. We believe this will improved the tracking experience.

Introduced in VFSource 8.1

MP4 Screen Capture

VideoFOCUS offers proprietary DVR media import however in some cases when a media file is unsupported the user typically resorts to the VideoFOCUS integrated screen capture. Prior to this VideoFOCUS version, screen capture has recorded the captured player as uncompressed video and audio. Now, because of the advent of HD cameras it is increasingly common for DVRs to record video at HD or larger frame sizes and it can be impractical to screen capture this into an uncompressed format due to the overwhelming storage requirements for large frame size uncompressed video.

To address this problem this version of VideoFOCUS introduces the option for MP4 compressed capture. The choice between uncompressed and MP4 can be selected directly in the capture dialog and can be changed between captures when capture is stopped.

Impact on Quality

The MP4 is encoded as H264 video and AAC audio with bit rates that correspond to typical high quality MP4 encoding. Although not lossless, for the vast majority of DVR media any adverse impact on quality or perceptibility of events in the original scene is associated with the original DVR recording processes (compression, frame rate reduction etc) rather than the additional MP4 encoding associated with the screen capture activity.

Impact on Performance

Although H264 encoding does require more contribution from the CPU, the benefits of the much reduced rate of data (~50-100 times less than uncompressed) act to compensate, with the net result that on contemporary machines overall performance appears to be improved in most situations. Furthermore, at the largest DVR media frame dimensions, compressed screen capture is the only practical solution due to the overwhelming rate of data that would be associated with an uncompressed recording.

Media Save

VideoFOCUS stores captured and imported media data in a simple directory based data store. A number of customers make direct use of the data within this store as part of their workflow. Often they do this to avoid the time associated with an extra export operation when wishing to make use of media files externally that have had no processing beyond only capture or import.

Although it is practical to access the store directly, officially the store is under the management of the VideoFOCUS application, and therefore there is always a need to keep in mind the possibility of unexpected file naming, and automatic file additions and deletions. There is also the risk that a user performing an inadvertent move instead of copy of a file from the store will leave the store in an invalid state.

To better support these users, this version of VideoFOCUS introduces a direct media save action. The action is available on sessions that have associated media, so typically captured and imported sessions. The save action is performed by a copy at the OS level and is effectively instantaneous for most normal duration MP4 screen capture files and imported media files.

Other Changes

Updated Frame View Selection

In prior versions of VideoFOCUS any mouse interaction with the frame view (e.g. clicking on a frame or a right click mouse action) would typically lead to the loss of the current frame selection, which can be undesired, especially if the selection is a complicated multi-select and difficult to construct. In this version of VideoFOCUS changes in the frame selection in the frame view when clicking with the mouse happen only when the shift or control key is selected. The behavior of the shift and control key is designed to be as close as possible to that experienced in the player view and consistent with normal text editor selection conventions associated with these keys.

Current Frame Labeling

To avoid confusion when labeling individual frames if a selection is present, the right click popup introduces the new menu action "Label Current Frame". This action offers the same options as "Label Selected Frames" but acts only on the focused frame. In the player view the focused frame is the visible frame, and in the frames view it is the one identified by the dashed border.

Old Version Recovery

When a project is opened by a newer version of VideoFOCUS than the VideoFOCUS version that last saved the project, the project file is copied to a backup and recovery instructions are included in the project folder. (note recovery is only generally possible if no media items have been deleted using the newer VideoFOCUS version). In conjunction with this change the naming of the project data file in the project store now offers a more direct indication of the VideoFOCUS version used in its creation.

Safe Mode Start

If the F8 key is pressed when starting VideoFOCUS, the user will be offered the option of starting without opening any projects. This can be used to avoid problems in a specific previously open project that prevent the proper startup of VideoFOCUS.

Introduced in VFSource 8.0

Copy and Set Time

To aid in the process of establishing the proper time relationship between related videos we have introduced the concept of copying time from a video and and setting time in a videos. In such situations an 'interesting event' would be located in the main player of the first video and followed by a right-click copy action. Among other things this will copy the current time into the clipboard. Then the second video can be opened in the Adjust Time dialog, the same event located in the second video, and finally the right-click set time performed. Doing so will adjust the time of the second video such that the event now occurs at the same time in both videos. This can repeated for further videos that are to be brought into a common time sync.

Other Changes

High DPI Displays

The majority of VideoFOCUS is now DPI aware, which means that the interface and text should no longer appear unduly small on screens that are high DPI (small and medium sized monitors with a high resolution). No user action is required, and dialogs and windows will be sized appropriately depending upon the specifics of the monitor on which they appear.

Unfortunately due to limitations in the Windows OS support for high DPI, we cannot currently offer DPI aware behavior for the parts of the windows associated with the Minilab and QuickEnhance audio interface. This means these parts of the filter interfaces will continue to appear smaller than desirable. This situation may change as Microsoft improves developer support for high DPI

Doc and Html Report Formats

In addition to pdf, exported reports are now available in html and a doc format that can be opened in Microsoft Word. The choice of format is made via a dropdown in the export dialog.

Improved Case Compatability Information

As part of advancing VideoFOCUS functionality it is often necessary to make changes to the data format for cases. Sometimes VideoFOCUS improvements add additional items to the data, which means that cases created with a new VideoFOCUS cannot be opened with older VideoFOCUS's and occasionaly VideoFOCUS improvements make changes to existing items in the data, which means that the new VideoFOCUS cannot open older cases.

In order to make this as easy as possible to manage for the user we have updated the behavior of the open case dialog. Firstly the open case file browser provides further visual hints as to the situation. It does so by coloring cases with a red icon if they can be opened by the version of videofocus being run or by a grey icon if they cannot. In either situation it annotates the case file name in the file view with the version of videofocus that last opened the case. Furthermore if an attempt to open a grey case is made VideoFOCUS will inform the user which version of VideoFOCUS is required to open the case.

Older versions of VideoFOCUS are available from our website and can be installed alongside newer versions to support simple access to older case work.

Features Introduced in Previous Versions

Introduced in VFSource 7.0

Reporting

VideoFOCUS 7.0 can now generate pdf report documents describing video and image items in a project.

A report can be created by selecting the desired media items and choosing the 'view report' item in the view menu. Alternatively individual image or video items can be reported on by using the 'view report' menu action from the session or still list popup menus. A report can also be created by selecting the option in the export media dialog. In this situation a report will be created that includes sections for each media item that is being exported.

VideoFOCUS will automatically generate a full 'steps to reproduce' section for each item in the report and will provide a basic summary of the properties of each item that is being reported. In addition to the automatically generated sections the user can also add item specific notes to each media item using the session or still property dialog and these notes will be included in the report. The VideoFOCUS cases now offer properties than can be set, including agency and examiner names, case number and title and an overall notes section and these properties will also be used in the composition of the report.

Unified Export

VideoFOCUS now has a single export dialog that supports the simultaneous export of images, video and audio. The items that are export depends on which export menu is used and what is selected. When the export is invoked from the session list popup the export is restricted to selected items in that list. Similarly when the export is invoked from the stills area popup the export is limited to selected items in that list.

If however the export is invoked from the main file menu the export will included all selected items in both the session and stills areas. When combined with the report option, this allows for a production of a single report including all items that a user may wish to export from VideoFOCUS. When there is a mixed set of media types in the export dialog the video, images and audio tabs provide for control over any configurable aspects of each specific type.

Other Changes

Item Labeling and Tooltips

VideoFOCUS has been updated to provide a more consistent methodology for the labeling of media items created by filters, modification, edits etc. There is now also a tooltip associated with each media item offering a short description of the process step that was used to create the item. The tooltip includes the label name of the item's source to aid in locating the source item

Project Time Zone

Projects can now use timezone that is distinct from the system or default VideoFOCUS time zone. The time zone choice is available via the File menu item 'project properties'. The timezone choice controls the presentation of times in both the interface and in and reports associated with items in the project

Introduced in VFSource 6.1

Key Frame

When the information is available VideoFocus will detect and display a "key frame" label identifying the frames that the video reader has identified as key frames (I frames). This label is shown in the player and also available in the "thumbnail display" drop-down and can be used to view all the key frames in a video.

Compact Video Listing

We have significantly revised the video list view to make for easier understanding of the origins and relationships between video in a case.

Items that represent the original capture or import are identified by a small disk drive icon. This indicates that they represent the original contents of a media file or proprietary DVR file. Items identified this way will have additional properties in their property panel describing details of the file such as size, hash codes etc.

Items in the list that represent the result of processing will have one or more arrows above them indicating the source of the item. If the item immediately above is the source then there will be an arrow in the center. If another item higher in the list is the source then there will be an arrow on the left. If both the immediately above and an other are sources then both arrows will show. In the case where the item has more than two sources a third arrow will appear on the right.

Video Visualization

Image Zoom and Pan

Time Zoom

The zoom controlling the extent and therefore sensitivity of the primary time slider has been made logarithmic to provide for better precision in selecting an appropriately zoomed timescale for the task at hand. The behavior when sliding the overview slider (the lower slider that becomes active when the time is zoomed) has also been refined so that there is a smooth centering of the primary slider when the overview position is moved. We believe these changes will help the user who is working with the longer videos produced from view combinations that may contain 10's of thousands of frames.

Tracking

Tracking within the filters, in particular to apply a blur or highlight, has been a popular capability but the interaction required to define tracks has been somewhat involved. In particular the interface has required that the region be redrawn entirely if the track goes astray and the region can become significantly distorted even if it does not depart from its intended target. A further complication involved the need to specifically select or deselect tracks for correction.

This update resolves all of these problems. Tracks that have departed from the intended target can simply be dragged back onto the target. Distortion is now much less likely as the region will retain its general shape, however if adjustment is required the regions can be resized by moving to their edge to display the appropriate resize cursor and dragging the edge or corner back to its proper location. There is also no need to explicitly select a shape as that happens automatically if a move or resize is performed, but the option to do so is there by simply clicking near the shape.

In addition, when a track has been moved or resized by the user the action can be undone by the newly added anchor control button.

File Hashes

All items that are associated with a file now have hashes automatically computed and displayed (MD5,SHA-1,SHA-256). For imported or captured items the hashes can be viewed in the item's property panel. For exports the hash is automatically computed and available in the export audit. The audit now also includes the hashes of all imported or captured items that were used as source material for the item being exported.

Features Introduced in Previous Versions

Introduced in VF 6.0

VFSource Includes Many More Filters

VFSource 6.0 now includes the Grayscale, Sharpen, Equalize and Blur video filters and the Quick Enhance, Noise Reduction, Voice Spectrum Equalization and Hum Reduction audio filters.

Known Issues in VF 6.1

Issues that have been discovered, but not yet addressed are listed below:

• The QuickEnhance plug-in interface is currently only available in English. Changing the Language preference in VideoFOCUS will have no affect on the QuickEnhance interface.

Introduced in VF 5.1

VFSource Is Now 64-bit

VFSource 5.1 is now 64-bit, and will only work with a 64-bit OS. The 64-bit version will allow VFSource to utilize more of your computer's memory and improve performance within the application. This will especially help with larger HD (High Definition) videos.

VFSource Direct DVR import

VFSource 5.1 will now directly import many DVR formats, allowing you to import proprietary DVR formats into VFSource quickly without having to screen capture or convert the videos.

Introduced in VF 5.0

Snapshot Feature

VideoFOCUS 5.0 includes a snapshot feature that allows the user to capture, as a still image, exactly what is being rendered to the screen. This is ideal for quickly zooming, panning and cropping an image detail into a stand-alone still image suitable for export or further processing.

New Look and Feel

VideoFOCUS 5.0 has been given a new interface theme to modernize the appearance of the application and align it with other Salient Sciences products.

Introduced in VF 4.6

Fast Import For Many Media Formats

VideoFOCUS 4.6 has eliminated 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.

VideoFOCUS import now 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

This version includes a revised 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 new 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 has been upgraded to present a goal oriented approach to selecting export formats and codecs. The new 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.

Demultiplex

The ability to demultiplex video containing video frames from multiple camera views is now available in VFSource. The processing dialog allows for demultiplexing where the number of cameras is unknown and does not rely on any special encoding provided by the multiplexing hardware so can be applied to any video.

Introduced in Version 4.5

Audio Support

VFSource 4.5 introduces support for audio manipulation and gain control for audio that is present in a video and for audio that is standalone.

Audio Import

The import capabilities of VFSource 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 VFSource 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 Extract and Combine

Extract

Video containing audio offers an additional "Extract Audio" action from the item popup menu or from the processing menu. The extract audio action will create an audio only project item containing all the audio tracks from the selected video.

Combine

When two or more audio items or a video item and one or more audio items are selected the combine popup or processing menu item will be available. In the case of an all audio selection the combine action will produce a new audio item containing all the tracks of the selected items, extending shorter duration audio items by silence where necessary. In the case of a combine with video the selected audio items will either be clipped or extended to match the duration of the video.

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.

Video Processing

The levels adjust filter can now be run on video in addition to still images.

Audio Processing

Audio gain control is available for audio items and video items containing audio. The operation can be selected through the Filter->Audio menu. The interface is the same as the video filter, offering original and processed displays, with the processed display player providing a real time update to audio and signal visualization for changes made to any of the processing parameters.

• Automatic Gain Filtering to provide automatic gain control with the ability to adjust the gain and to adjust the release time for the gain control algorithm.

Media Player Updates

Looping and Selection Play

"Loop Play" and "Play Selection" menu items are now 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 now 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

Introduced in Version 4.1

VideoFOCUS Video Format Converter

The VFSource 4.1 install now includes the VideoFOCUS Video Format Converter plugin install. This plugin provides extensive support for a wide variety of media formats and codecs and provides VFSource with the ability to import video with accompanying audio from a wide range of media file types.

If the VideoFOCUS Video Format Converter installation is successfully completed during the VFSource install no further action is needed to use this capability. VFSource will use this plugin to transcode all non MOV files to an uncompressed MOV format for subsequent processing within the application.

Batch Image Import

Image Sequences

VFSource now provides full support for the import of image sequences. Multiple images, typically representing a time sequence, can be imported directly and will be transcoded at a user specified frame rate into a video. This capability is available when using either the media import dialog or drag and drop import.

VFSource will automatically detect cases where multiple images could be considered as an image sequence and will order the images intelligently according to the filename name of each image in the sequence. An option to handle such sequences as a regular batch image import is also available.

Unified Media Import Dialog

The image and video import dialogs have been unified into a single new import dialog. This dialog allows for the individual and batch import of both images and video and the import of image sequences. To make selecting media to import simpler the dialog contains a visualization panel with a media player that allows for the instant review of video and images prior to their import.

If a set of images is selected all with a common file type the dialog will offer the option either to import them as individual images or as an image sequence.

Drag and Drop Import and Export

VFSource now supports drag and drop for media import and image export.

Drag and Drop Media Import

VFSource 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. Similarly individual or multiple image files can be imported by dropping them into the "Session Stills and Frames" 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 VFSource will prompt for the desired frame rate for the video.

Drag and Drop Image Export

VFSource can export video frames and images using drag and drop. When frames are selected from the video thumbnail view or images from the "Session Stills and Frames" area they can be dragged out of the application and dropped into a suitable location such as the desktop or a file explorer window. The images will be saved in the image file format specified in the Edit->Preference dialog.

Internal Drag and Drop of Images

In addition to import and export drag and drop, drag and drop can be used to copy individual or selections of frames from the thumbnail video view into "Session Stills and Frames" view. Frame thumbnails may also be dropped into "Captured and Imported Sessions" to produce a video.

Administrator Privilege No Longer Required

VFSource no longer requires elevated privileges when running.

This change allows for more flexibility in user security configuration on systems where VFSource is installed and reduces the risk of inadvertent modification of protected material. It does however mean that permissions on the file system must be configured sufficiently to allow each VFSource user full control over areas designated for storage of their cases or for any cases that they wish to open. (VFSource does not yet support read only access to cases). In order to support per user configuration all settings established from within VFSource including open case lists are stored on a per user basis.

Introduced in Version 4.0

Cases

VFSource 4.0 introduces the concept of cases to allow for better organization and management of separate work efforts. Each case is displayed as a tab of the main window and the contents of each tab are the familiar 'Sessions' and 'Stills' windows of previous versions of VFSource.

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 VFSource 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.

Notes on Case Media

Video and image data may be freely copied between cases (using copy and paste). When pasting into a different project VFSource will create a copy of the media. This ensures that the data will be still be available in the destination project if the source project is deleted or relocated.

The same applies for imported media. VFSource 4.0 will create its own internal copy of imported images and video and will not require access to the source material after a successful import.

Images

Images can now be imported into VFSource. Images are imported using the 'File'->'Import Image' action and will appear in the 'Session Stills and Frames' panel. Once imported the image is treated just like any other still and can be processed as such.

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 has been added to 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.

The screen capture source selection dialog can now be resized to allow for more precise selection of the capture window area.

Change Log

This table will be updated with information on fixes as new versions of VFSource products are made available for download.

Note that the changes listed cover all VideoFOCUS products and not all changes will affect VFSource

Revision: 28ba55825da7

Release Dates

Effective dates for the initial version of each VideoFOCUS Pro and VFSource product series:

Support Topics

Offline Licensing

VideoFOCUS attempts to contact the SalientSciences licensing server when necessary to update the product activation code to match the version of VideoFOCUS being used. When the machine running VideoFOCUS does not have an internet connection the activation code update requires the manual approach as described below

When your license is dongle based

Dongles can only contain an activation code for one version of VideoFOCUS at a time.

The simplest way to update the dongle to the correct activation code is to find any computer with an internet connection (e.g. web/email machine). Install the desired version of VideoFOCUS on that machine, insert the dongle, make sure the dongle light is on and then open VideoFOCUS and close again once the application starts. At that point the dongle will be updated to contain an activation suitable for use on any machine with that version of VideoFOCUS irrespective of network connectivity (e.g. an offline office workstation)

Alternatively you can install VideoFOCUS on your workstation, insert the dongle, make sure the light is on, then start VideoFOCUS. Because your workstation does not have an internet connection you will be prompted through a set of steps to complete the activation (and therefore the update of the dongle). These steps will involve saving a small html file and transferring it to an internet connected machine so as to open it and obtain an activation code from our license server. This code should be saved and returned to your offline workstation and then copied and pasted into the activation dialog.

To avoid a need to update dongle activations every time you switch between VideoFOCUS versions on the same machine VideoFOCUS stores a copy of the dongle activation data for its version in a local cache on the machine. By relying on the cached activation data, that version of VideoFOCUS can work on that machine as long as the dongle is present, even if the dongle contains an activation for a different version.

When your license is not dongle based (a.k.a a soft license)

Install VideoFOCUS on the workstation you intent to use it on, then start VideoFOCUS. Because your workstation does not have an internet connection you will be prompted through a set of steps to obtain an activation code and complete the activation. These steps will involve saving a small html file and transferring it to an internet connected machine so as to open it and obtain an activation code from our license server. This code should be saved and returned to your offline workstation and then copied and pasted into the activation dialog.

Log Files

VideoFOCUS log files can be found in the following locations. In each case there may be more than one log file each with a different integer value for [n]. If providing logs to help resolve a problem it is generally useful to provide all files matching the patterns described below.

%USERPROFILE%\java[n].log
and
%LOCALAPPDATA%\SalientSciences\VideoFocus\Logs\videofocus[n].log
or
%APPDATA%\SalientSciences\VideoFocus\Logs\videofocus[n].log

In a standard windows installation these will resolve to the following paths

C:\Users\[username]\java[n].log
and
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\SalientSciences\VideoFocus\Logs\videofocus[n].log
or
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\SalientSciences\VideoFocus\Logs\videofocus[n].log

Note that the text %USERPROFILE% and %LOCALAPPDATA% or %APPDATA% can be used in the path bar of a windows file explorer to facilitate easy access to the actual locations (especially if their values are not standard)