sharpening adjustment

suggest a way to improve Neat Video
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barney
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:00 pm

sharpening adjustment

Post by barney »

I think a slight tweak to the sharpening adjustment that would be useful would be to add a checkbox at each of the H-M-L sliders to enable locking/unlocking the controls to one another, i.e., making any adjustment to a checked control makes the same adjustment to any other checked control. Clearing a checkbox would enable adjusting the control independently, as it works now.

Also, if the currently read-only field showing the numeric percentage for each control accepted typed input, it would be much easier to make the little 5% incremental adjustments than it currently is using the sliders (where I sometimes wildly overshoot).

I do find that I have to lead a little bit with the sharpening, though, in that I'm sharpening what only has the intraframe filtering applied (with the Virtualdub plugin). I have to add in a little more to compensate for the interframe filtering.
NVTeam
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Post by NVTeam »

Thank you for the suggestions and comments.

Regarding the read-only fields, they are actually writeable as well: click the digit and then type in the number. Also, try to use the mouse wheel over the slider, that may be easier than manually dragging the control left and right.

Thank you,
Vlad
barney
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:00 pm

Post by barney »

Thanks, Vlad. Using the mouse wheel on the controls means I can keep my eye on the preview while making adjustments. That's definitely the way to go.
barney
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:00 pm

Post by barney »

Vlad,

I knew that was too easy. I had forgotten that I'd learned early on to never use the mouse wheel when making adjustments to Neatvideo noise filter settings.

The problem is with keeping focus. First of all, I can click on any control in that window, but I never get any visual feedback showing which control currently has focus; I can only determine by moving the mouse wheel and confirming which control responds. Then as I'm watching the preview window while I move the mouse wheel, the pointer inevitably drifts away from the intended control and over another, bringing that control into focus. When I begin to wonder why I'm not seeing the expected changes in the preview window, the preview will suddenly zoom to another level as I bring the preview window into focus; when I look back at the controls, they're all misadjusted.

If bringing an item into focus by simply hovering over it is useful to anyone, it should be a selectable option under tools/preferences. There should be some visual cue as to what currently has focus, though. I'd prefer to only gain focus with a mouse click, get some visual feedback as to what's currently selected, and maintain that focus until another item is selected with a mouse click. Without that, using the mouse wheel to make adjustments while watching the preview window is impossible for me.

When my focus is on the preview window, I need to know where the program's focus is.
NVTeam
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Post by NVTeam »

You can create such a cue by pressing the Tab button on the keyboard one of more times. It will highlight the current control. You can use the arrow keys to move the slider and the focus will not go away when doing that.
You can then select (click or Tab) another control and the selection will move there.

Vlad
barney
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:00 pm

Post by barney »

Right, up to a point. I seem to have lost the highlighting of the controls with the new "reduced brightness" option. In the normal view, now I can see what's selected, and when it changes. I actually don't change focus by simply hovering over a different control. It changes when the scroll wheel is moved, if the pointer location has changed. The pointer location doesn't matter when using the arrow keys.

If you're not mouse-centric, like me, you can't understand how annoying this is. I can go days without touching the keyboard. The trigger to change focus according to pointer location should be a mouse button click, not scroll-wheel input. At least in this case. You should be able to see what happens when using the scroll wheel to make adjustments while concentrating on the preview window and allowing the pointer to drift.
NVTeam
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Post by NVTeam »

I usually use mouse to adjust those sliders and I often use the wheel. The difference is that my mouse doesn't drift. Once set in the area of the slider, I can scroll the wheel back and forth and the mouse pointer doesn't move, so no problem arises.

Perhaps the best solution for a drifty mouse in the current version of NV would be to click on the slider, keep it pressed and drag it back and forth, while looking in preview area. Even if the pointer drifts, it remains locked to that control and continues to move it, so you can really use the control without looking at it.

If you cannot move the mouse smoothly enough to get sufficiently-fine adjustments of a control, perhaps it makes sense to adjust the mouse settings a bit in Windows Control Panel to make it more stable, smooth and not drifty.

Hope this helps,
Vlad
barney
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:00 pm

Post by barney »

Vlad,

I guarantee you it's a user, not hardware, issue. I feel like I should be comfortable moving my hand (and mouse) wherever I like and the scroll wheel should still be controlling the item I last selected, and if I choose to select another item, I'll need to click on it. It's what I consider the expected behavior, but that's probably with no good reason.

I can see 3 variations of that with what I'm looking at now:

1) In Virtualdub, when I open Video/Filters, and click the "Add" button, I'm presented with a scrollable list of filters. If my pointer is in that list, or on that window, or it's parent window, or the Virtualdub main window, or even hovering over this browser window or the desktop, my scroll wheel still scrolls that list.

If I click on the browser window, I bring it to the fore and now I scroll this thread.

If I click on the desktop, there's nothing scrollable there and I scroll nothing.

When I move the pointer back to Virtualdub and click, then I'm back to scrolling the filter list.

That's the behavior I expect. Granted, with no good reason.

2) Within this browser (IE9) I'm typing in a scrollable text input box. My scroll wheel scrolls it right now. But if I move the pointer outside the box, but still on this page, the wheel scrolls this thread instead, even though I did not select it with a mouse click.

Even worse, when I move the pointer to the (scrollable) favorites list to the left of the browser window, it no longer scrolls the browser window or the input box, but it also does not scroll the favorites list, until I explicitly select a folder in the favorites list with a mouse click. Two different behaviors in the same program.

Let's not get into whether the favorites list is another program or process. I'm just saying that's counter-intuitive.

3) I forgot what 3 is, I've been typing too long.

Anyway, I'm sure there's an explanation for my Virtualdub example (i.e., there aren't any other scrollable items visible in Virtualdub in that instance), but how about a Youtube-like enable/disable checkbox next to each slider, with an enable/disable all sliders checkbox somehere on the page? That way I can disable all and enable the one I want to be active at the moment.

But thanks for reminding me that once selected, I can adjust with the arrow keys and know that I can move the mouse around with no consequences. And I never noticed that hitting the tab key would draw a selection around the control. But that selection is invisible in the "reduced brightness" mode. At least in my case.

If I just have to use the scroll wheel instead of the arrow keys, I suppose I could park my mouse with Velcro or something.
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