2007 DS Wish List Finalists - Round 1

Organized and compiled by Sean Stall from suggestions and votes on the DS List, the idea of this group of lists is to prioritize a few of the most wanted additions and modifications inside specific categories. Round 2 further narrows down the wish list. For the complete, un-filtered list of wishes, click here. (added 3.13.07)(updated 3.31.07)


Editing Finalists


1. a. Clip color scheme for clips that are partially online. Offline clips are red, maybe these could be a nice blue or yellow or something.
b. Clip color. A great MC feature that allows quick & really useful organization of stuff. Under User Preferences, allow user to select "Show offline media" and if selected all clips in timeline (not just audio) with missing media show up as red. Also, right-clicking a clip either on the timeline or in a folder should allow you to set clip color with the same sort of color section as the locators. The sub-options here could be for "This Clip", "All instances of This Clip", or "This Source" . Hey, could we maybe even conform clip color from the AFEs as well?
c. Node color. Along the lines of clip color, how about node colors, to help organize trees.

2. Animation editor enhancements. A smarter keyframing/animation editor interface that easily and quickly allows the user to see/manipulate all of the keyframes that are relevant at the time across multiple layers and nodes, and eliminate those that aren't. After Effects is pretty good at this. I would love to be able to select any number of nodes in a tree, and bring up an animation editor that shows only the curves for those nodes, and only curves that have user added keyframes in them. Also, it would be great if it were possible to optionally link dual curve parameters such as X and Y scale into a single curve for easier manipulation.

3. The ability to open multiple timelines at the same time.

Honorable Mention:

Insert sequence as reference. The ability to drag a sequence into the source viewer but cut/replace parts of it onto the timeline as a reference sequence


Effects Finalists


1. Completely rebuilt tracker. Unlimited tracking points. (Perhaps Avid could license Motor? Or encourage Imagineer to port Motor as a plug?)

2. AVX2 and OFX support.

3. Particles. Much more than Wonderstuff, and the ability to use alpha or luma channels as spawning points for the particles.

Honorable Mention:

HM1. UOV. What DS has always needed is a global "dope sheet" style keyframe editor for when you want to adjust keyframe timings without looking at the curves. All animated parameters (including rotoshapes) should be displayed and are easily multi-selectable, etc. (UOV – Universal Object View. A way of seeing all assets within a project in context, in a time-based view. Graphics objects are no different to captured media, so let's see them in a global view to enable their repositioning – likewise selectable keyframes, etc... the list is endless.). What DS has always needed is a global "dope sheet" style keyframe editor for when you want to adjust keyframe timings without looking at the curves. All animated parameters (including rotoshapes) should be displayed and are easily multi-selectable, etc. (UOV – Universal Object View. A way of seeing all assets within a project in context, in a time-based view. Graphics objects are no different to captured media, so let's see them in a global view to enable their repositioning – likewise selectable keyframes, etc... the list is endless.)

HM2. Tree/Expression Master Node. UI Widgets added to the master node (in an encapsulated node trees) so you can wire sliders, checkboxes, color pickers, etc to parameters on the node tree inside. So just like Shake where a node is made up of internal nodes but you can create your own UI for your effect.



Capture/Frame Rate Finalists


1. Native Support for Firewire-based formats. (P2, HDV, DVCProHD)
- A P2 IMPORT FEATURE that creates clips (including audio) and preserves the timecode (see FCP).

2. Skip remaining file imports. When recapturing from timeline, could we have a requester box with an option to “Skip ALL file imports” YES or NO before the DS starts parsing the timeline… huge time-waster if you’re just looking to load stuff from tape and haven’t gone through the timeline to weed out all the video mixdown slugs and quicktime movie references to files that you don’t have yet.

3. Better management and options of TC breaks on capture.

Honorable Mention:

Recapture threshold parameter. When recapturing a new version of something, you can tell it to skip clips with less than 'x' number of offline frames. This helps to avoid having to load 60 tapes to digitize 2 additional frames at the end of pre-existing handles.

Smart Capture. When selecting Capture from Timeline with Options, there should be an additional option to Capture Clips with Visible Missing frames only, perhaps called “Smart Capture” that would work nicely with handles selected. So, if I select this “Smart Capture” with say, 10-frame handles, then only the clips that are missing media for frames actually visible in the sequence (i.e. NOT in missing from handles) would be flagged for capture—and those would be recaptured with the 10-frame handles I specified.


Conforming Finalists

(added 3.16.07)

1. Total Conform.

2. Proper conform of dissolves, dip to color, fades, etc. from Media Composer. I have posted this using the support tool as a software bug, never heard anything, please don’t flame me, but I’m really p’d off that here we are in v8 QFE3 and we’re still not conforming a friggin’ dissolve properly! MC dissolves etc. do *not* include the zero or one hundred percent values of the effect timing curve in their duration, as the DS does. This means that *all* such effects conformed from MC have incorrect timings. On longer durations it’s not very noticeable, but when you get to about ten frames or less, we always FIX them because the result can be quite different especially on very short dip to color effects. For example, the DS conforms a 2-frame dissolve from MC, but it looks like a cut. Here’s why: the incorrectly-conformed timing value in DS for frame 1 is zero and for frame 2 is one hundred. No dissolve there, it’s essentially “first frame is this shot, second frame is the other shot, no blending”. But in MC, since the zero and one-hundred points are *outside* the effect, the correct timing values are 33.33 for frame one and 66.66 for frame two. This will match what the MC editor did, and it’s a simple bit of math that works for *all* dissolves, dips, fades, etc.

Honorable Mention:

3. Decompose. So that DS can keep track of Master Clip references for source based color correction.


Graphics Finalists

(added 3.23.07)

1. Fully Keyframeable Shapes that show up in the Animation Editor and everything.

2. Motion Blur in Graphics.

3. Much More Animation Options in graphics (like handwriting, draw on, and kerning but involving scattering and all sorts of FCP type fx) and motion blur for moving objects.


3D Native Compositing Finalists


1. Real 3D Compositing. Including the ability to import 3D shapes, cast shadows, adjust lighting, apply plug-ins in 3D Space (ie, T_Glow, surrounds an object in 3D space)

2. A new 3D Graphics Tool with tons of cool, but easily customizable type animation presets and transitions. Like LiveType. Also, a one button title fade up and fade out tool that also includes the shadows and borders please.

3. 2D and 3D tools written so that it is one proper feature set instead of 2 unrelated ones.

Also:
- OGL accelerated when possible for previewing.
- Always continuously vector
- Motion Blur
- Animateable shape points (in 3D)
- Customizable edge extrusions with large library of presets (like Zaxwerks Invigorator)
- Proper cameras that access 3D tracking data


Audio Finalists:


1. Support for ProTools Audio Plugs. Or at least give better feedback and UI for the DS sound nodes.

2. Being able to Save and Import Mixer Settings, per sequence, per audio container, per project.


Export Finalists:


1. Multiple Inserts to Tape, instead of one at the time. A method to Batch Export to tape.

2. Batch File-Based Export

3. Export OMF for MC - files, audio and video


Metadata Finalists:


1. Modify Effect. Ability to modify clips to include/exclude tracks after logging.

2. Decompose in DS, so that the source side color can work more like Symphony, with Masterclip/Subclip etc., but we can still digitize individual clips from the bin.

3. Source Side Effects Enhancement. Mirror the color model in Symphony so that I can apply a Masterclip effect, then change it to be clip specific without removing or altering from all the other clips.

Honorable Mention:

4. Archiving Enhancements. Powerful, sophisticated archiving that allows for project revisions to be updated without re-archiving the entire project, to multiple tapes if necessary. Partial restores for the same purpose.


Color Correction Finalists:


1. Real Time Secondary Color Correction Wheels (steal from Symphony).

2. Better color grading interface with multiple real time secondaries/selectives, grading history on clip (saving presets w/ snapshots), support for tactile surfaces, with parallel input & feedback on multiple parameter changes (no more "release control to update viewer").

3. Log Space Color Corrector.

Honorable Mention:

4. Big Ball Support in all Color Correction Modes (USB/JL Cooper).






Revised: May 7, 2007 2:27 pm