I've been playing around with some extended size Evolution Editor workspace layouts.
Trying to optimize things for MSG power users.
This is on a 27 inch imac, so the evolution display is large and taking up most of the screen.
So i'm definitely coming around to the notion of allowing much larger MSG preview sizes than we provided in the past. It's actually a pretty fun way to work.
Building one workspace specifically designed for MSG editing and nothing else, that you record in one of the workspace memories.
So i thought i'd start a discussion on this topic. Please feel free to offer up suggestions for other MSG power user features you'd like to see. Now is a really good time to discuss them since your ideas will probably get implemented fairly quickly if they are good ones.
Replies
my 21" cintiq is going to start feeling cramped. (hell it already does). Nice idea a MSG editing workspace.
I like it. I requested larger previews many months ago. I find the square preview is pretty unhelpful when you are trying to process 16:9 aspect video. So I'm very happy to see you working on this. You suggested at the time that you might build it in as preference that could be checked. Even with still images a square format is pretty uncommon.
The MSG process is pretty much the only way to get reliable flicker free video. In fact it is almost a video effects unit - or could be if the previews accurately reflected the videos aspect ratio.
I contacted the help desk awhile ago about an issue where the preview doesn't match the outcome unless the image is under a certain file size; is that still under investigation? Could be very relevant if you increase the preview size.
B_man
I've always been partial to the memories in MSG... creating paseqs from a series of MSG mems. would love to see those continue... maybe with some sort of live preview. it's amazing how almost 'real time' so many of the processes have become with faster computers. testing and developing new looks is really a free and fun process compared to back at the turn of the century. (by cracky!)
Actually, the MSG memories are still in v4.
And you can generate a PASeq Animation from what is in the Memories.
So you can still essentially do what you could do with the old animation memories in the old MSG Evolver application.
This is a screen shot from v5, but the animation memory strip at the top of the MSG Advanced Editor is there in v4 and can be turned on and off by choosing the appropriate MSG preference.
John,
IMHO, the best features you could provide for MSG would be documentation and tutorials. It's possible for a user to learn the basics of MSG by searching out and working through the tutorials, but these give only the basics and focus on only a few of the operators. The SA User Guide references an MSG User Guide, but this does not seem to be available from the Synthetik website. We need an organized and exhaustive description of what the operators do. Then we need an extensive set of tutorials that teach how to use them.
More documentation is always a good thing, so duly noted.
Here's the old MSG Evolver User Guide pdf if you don't have that.
Ignore the parts about the MSG Evolver application interface and focus on the parts that explain how MSG works.
A larger set of html help pages for individual processors in available in the doc/msgprocessor folder inside of your main studio artist 4 folder.
And all of the old configuration menus and the evolution commands in MSG Evolver are available as active links in the integrated Help part of Studio Artist.
EvolverUserGuide.pdf.zip
We're also trying to put together a lot of new MSG Configuration commands that cover all of the new processor features. So that non-technical users can just use those to generate random MSG presets with specific properties. Like make me random overlaid vector pattern tiling effects, etc.
Part of the double-edged sword of MSG documentation is that we find that a lot of users actually don't want detailed technical explanations of how it works. Or even if they do want it, they don't necessarily understand it when they get it. Or take the time to read and work through it all.
So features like the Evolution Editor and Configuration or MacroEdit commands are really the key to making it useful for those folks. That and a ton of different pre-built presets to work with.
I seem to remember an early option in MSG was to save the grid of images (not as an evolve config) but simply as an image.... just the grid. might be nice to have that again (or show me where it is now). and adding some settings to that export might be nice. rings like color of background, frame, border thickness, overall size, quality, etc.
it might also be cool to have a video export option that makes a movie of the entire grid with each square its own movie. so one could output a pre made video wall. (again this seems familiar... did that xiast in early MSG?)
I can bring back the save grid as image or movie frame features again.