NodeBox: Discussion

Catalina Movie: Door with Awning

2020-04-10T21:37:28Z

Ha - IMHO kind of an unexpected transition at the beginning, but I love the final image, it's very pretty!

(Also the awning pseudo-3d effect is great as well)

Catalina Movie: Door with Awning

2020-04-10T21:52:49Z

Thanks!

Yes, I wasn't completely happy with the initial animation either. I wanted to convey that the image was built out of individual vector-based shapes, with each element placed according to a specific geometry. And then I wanted the viewer to shift her perception to appreciate the door and awning itself as a fairly realistic piece of architecture.

It's a tricky shift to make, and there are a zillion possible ways of building the elements, so I finally picked one and called it a day.

I'm glad the pseudo-3D effect worked for you. As a NodeBox user you can appreciate how difficult this is to achieve. A 3D CAD tool with built in physics, skins, lighting, and camera angles could do this better and easier. Doing it in raw 2D was hard.

John

Catalina Movie: Door with Awning

2020-04-17T13:23:15Z

Hey John,

Lucas informed me of the problem you have with exporting. I wrote the code that did the movie export, but that's already 9 years ago so my understanding of it is a bit rusty to say the least.

The problem seems to be two-fold. First there is the ffmeg binary that does the heavy lifting, this one is still a hybrid binary able to work on 32 or 64 bit architectures, but since the arrival of Catalina only 64 bit versions are allowed, so it just won't run. This is easy to fix, I could just put a new 64bit only binary. But then the problem becomes that all the preset stuff written to make the original ffmpeg work won't work on a new version because, well, it's been 9 years and things have changed.

Also, a preset for ipod is maybe not the most necessary thing to have in 2020... I'm not sure what some sensible exporting options for NodeBox 3 would be nowadays...

I definitely want to help creating a fix but it's going to take a little while, since I'm not employed by St Lucas anymore and I have my hands full with my current job.

Kind regards,
Stefan

Catalina Movie: Door with Awning

2020-04-18T23:54:29Z

Hey Stefan,

Thanks for responding! I figured that was the issue.

I have also had an exchange with Frederik about this. I assume the two of you are working together.

I am aware of the unfortunate changes at St. Lucas and I hear you about having your hands full with your current job. I am in the same boat. All the work I do administrating this forum is done in my spare time.

That said, I hope you can pry loose a few hours sometime soon. We haven't had a new release for over two years now and I think it's essential to get out a fix for this and a few other urgent issues ASAP. We need to get at least one post-Catalina release out the door to keep NodeBox viable.

As for presets, my advice is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The first priority is to simply restore the core of the previous functionality. I think you could keep 25 fps as the default. That works well for me and is good enough for posting to sites like Instagram and FaceBook. Changing it would force me to update a lot of my past code. People who are more finicky can always use the Export Range option to get full control.

That said, you might consider adding the ability to change frames per second in the movie dialog (while keeping 25 as the default). We've had at least one request for that option in the past.

You should also make sure that the output will play nicely with QuickTime on the Mac. That is the default app for MP4 and comes with the Mac; it's probably a tool many (Mac) NodeBox users are used to. MP4 is the key format to support since it can be played on the web and most everywhere else.

I found this:

Encoding for dumb players

You may need to use -vf format=yuv420p (or the alias -pix_fmt yuv420p) for your output to work in QuickTime and most other players. These players only support the YUV planar color space with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling for H.264 video. Otherwise, depending on your source, ffmpeg may output to a pixel format that may be incompatible with these players.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

I think I will also start a new thread in the General Discussion forum to see if anyone else has advice on presets.

Hope that helps! Please let me know if there's anything else I can do. And thank you for all your long ago work on NodeBox. All these years later it's still a great tool that many people still depend on.

John