VSE: Proxy Panel Clean Up
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Authored by Peter Fog (tintwotin) on Oct 16 2019, 11:08 AM.

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Reviewers

William Reynish (billreynish)
Julian Eisel (Severin)

Summary

The current proxy panel is mixing functions which will work on active strip and selected strips, and this makes the panel(s) more confusing. And also leave all elements active while Custom File should make them inactive.

Before:

The main idea behind the design suggestion is to move active strip related proxy functions into the Strip tab and let the Proxies for Selected Strips stay in the Proxies & Cache tab.

After - Active Strip:

After - Active Strip - Custom File toggle:

After - Selected Strips:

I realized that using Custom File needs to disable except the Resolutions, because the selected resolution will only enable the Custom file, when Viewed in that selected Resolution. This is a huge part of what imo causes a lot of confusion in this panel - that buttons are used differently depending on what else is selected(same thing with the Rebuild Proxy in the old layout).

Make Build Proxy button inactive when no resolutions are selected.

In order to keep consistency for functions related to the active strip are in the Strip tab, the Strip Cache functions has been moved here too.

Several Effect panels where below the Adjust panel, ex. Scene, Text, Multicam Strips they are now above the Adjust panel, like the more general Effect strips.

The proxy building entry in the Strip Menu has been renamed to "Rebuild Selected Strips Proxies" so it is in consistency with the panel.

Diff Detail

Event Timeline

Peter Fog (tintwotin) created this revision.Oct 16 2019, 11:08 AM

Minor fixes concerning active states when no strips are in the Sequencer.

Peter Fog (tintwotin) mentioned this in T43857: Taken proxy.Oct 17 2019, 3:40 PM

Peter Fog (tintwotin) edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Oct 17 2019, 3:44 PM

Peter Fog (tintwotin) added a reviewer: William Reynish (billreynish).

Peter Fog (tintwotin) edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)

The main 3 proxy functions: Setup, Build and View could also be collected in a nifty "quick" menu like this:

(But this is not implemented in the patch, since the proxy view sub menu doesn't seem to affect the actual selection, and someone would have to help me with getting that to work)

I realized that using Custom File needs to disable everything except the Resolutions, because the selected resolution will only enable the Custom file, when Viewed in that selected Resolution.

This is a huge part of what imo causes a lot of confusion in this panel - that buttons are used differently depending on what else is selected(same thing with the Rebuild Proxy in the old layout).

So this is after Custom File has been selected:

And Custom File has been removed from the Selected Strips Panel:

Peter Fog (tintwotin) edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Oct 19 2019, 8:25 AM

Make Build Proxy button inactive when no resolutions are selected.

Use enabled instead of active, to limit interaction with non active widgets.

when my Delete proxy patch is committed will you add delete proxy to the panel

Peter Fog (tintwotin) mentioned this in D6139: Add Delete Proxy to Video Sequencer.Oct 29 2019, 3:19 PM

Peter Fog (tintwotin) abandoned this revision.Oct 29 2019, 8:12 PM

Peter Fog (tintwotin) reclaimed this revision.Nov 6 2019, 11:26 AM

Mattias Ohlsson (mon) awarded a token.Nov 6 2019, 12:14 PM

Looking more closely at this panel, one of the things I realize is that it is not possible to render proxies if non of the selected strips has a check mark in the Strip Proxy header. So in order to separate render proxy for active strip vs. all selected strips, would need a checkmark in the header of the selected strips header to add a check mark to all selected strips. And the Proxy and Timeline tabs isn't only for generating proxies, but also by the checkmark deside what strips should be viewed with proxies, or in other words you won't see the encoded proxy files by selecting their resolution in the Preview/View panel, you would also have to add a checkmark to all strips...

I think I'll have to conclude after attempting to simplify the proxy UI, that the proxy panel and proxy generation really needs a general redesign and rethinking - the mess of what relates to active vs. selected strips in the panel in combination with actually selecting what proxy files to view in a different panel, is simply too confusing and not very intuitive.

In order to simplify it, the proxy encoding settings could be moved into Preferences. And in the Sequencer UI there should only be a proxy resolution selector(25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, No Proxy), which upon selection automatic would encode proxies in the chosen resolution(if missing) of all strips(maybe using Richard's cool on-strip-encoding-progress-bars patch?). This is not something I'll be able do, since I do not code C.

Anyway, maybe @William Reynish (billreynish) can make a proper design suggestion on how to simplify the use of VSE proxies and I can close this patch?

Alternate Solution: Improve Proxy UX solution and Keep Current Functions:

As it is confusing what settings belong to either active strip and selection these things needs to be separated.
As it is confusing to set one or more proxy resolutions before building and remember the build values in order to set them in the Preview sidebar, this needs to be simplified.

In order to simplify it the general proxy settings needs to be moved into the User Preferences:

Maybe Overwrite should be added here too?
On the File Format option, the current format has okay playback, but do lack elements.

For equal playback but smaller files h.264 can be used.
For using opacity png in a Quicktime container can be used.
For high quality and good playback(but large files)DNxHD can be used(source needs to match the specifications for resolution), also supports higher bitrates(10+).
For high quality and high bitrates(10+) EXR should be used. For colorgrading on proxies.

On the Resolution, many codecs needs resolutions in fixed multipliers ex. x16, x8 or x2 to work.

On Quality, that is the bitrate.

On Timecode, some codecs do not support embedded timecodes(timecode usage is completely missing everywhere else in Blender).

For (Re)Build of the proxy of the current strip the options in the Strip tab could be limited to this:

A ‘Delete Proxy’ button could be added here too.
This panel should only work on the active strip, unless +Alt is pressed, in which case it should operate on the full selection.

For enabling and building proxies for the full selection that should be done through the menu: