[ckohler]

I'm really looking forward to this Moki and I'm more than happy to pay $20 for the upgrade. I'm blown away by the capture capability being displayed here.

Quick question... I can see myself using this to do 1024x768 (full screen) captures and wanting the resulting videos to be scaled down to 640x480. Will it do this automatically or will I just capture at full scale and and then scale the movie down in QTPro?

[eevyl]

Originally posted by ckohler:
Quick question... I can see myself using this to do 1024x768 (full screen) captures and wanting the resulting videos to be scaled down to 640x480. Will it do this automatically or will I just capture at full scale and and then scale the movie down in QTPro?

You can actually do automatic scaling with the percentages in the main tab of SPX 1.0.8.

Do not see why it wouldn't be available in 2.0 as well

[moki]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
the movies seem to be processed with a similar sharpening/enhancing algorithm you have for images.

Or am I imagining things? Or was this in 1.0 already...

You are not imagining things; Snapz Pro X uses its ClearScale technology for scaled movies too. It has done this since version 1.0.6 I believe.

[tkrsp7]

Considering I just bought Snapz X about a week ago...would I be eligable for a free upgrade? I bought it with the movie support and it would kinda bum me out if I have to pay another $20...

[moki]

Originally posted by tkrsp7:
Considering I just bought Snapz X about a week ago...would I be eligable for a free upgrade? I bought it with the movie support and it would kinda bum me out if I have to pay another $20...

Probably not -- the product won't be out for a while anyway, we still have a good bit of work to do in order to make it a polished, well-tested product.

[workerbee]

Moki, do you think there's a chance I might lay my greedy fingers on a Snapzs Pro 2 beta?

I'd really like to make screenshots of how Dreamweaver MX 04 runs on OS X for the MX 04 performance survey Of course it would be best if those screenshots reflected actual speed as accurately as possible, which I fear Snapz Pro 1 will not do for large areas.

Thanks if it is possible, no problem if it isn't.

[sandsl]

I can't wait

We need a public beta - you've already handed it out to other people on the board so why not me and workerbee

If Snapz Pro2 is as good as you say it is then it could be really useful. The current version is somewhat lacking

[ambush]

Originally posted by sandsl:
I can't wait

We need a public beta - you've already handed it out to other people on the board so why not me and workerbee

If Snapz Pro2 is as good as you say it is then it could be really useful. The current version is somewhat lacking

It's really good and useful. If you still doubt it.

[moki]

Originally posted by sandsl:
If Snapz Pro2 is as good as you say it is then it could be really useful. The current version is somewhat lacking

Well, I'm not so sure if that's fair. It is true that the current version takes some work to get good videos from it, but companies like Apple, Adobe, etc. already use it to create their videos, so clearly it is possible.

We realized that movie capture performance was one area we really wanted to improve Snapz Pro X, though, which is why we focused on it.

Hopefully you will be happy with it when it is released. I don't believe in public betas; it only makes sense for certain kinds of software.

We're working on getting it done as quickly as we can, not to worry...

[Peter]

Originally posted by moki:

Snapz Pro X 2.0 (still capture) will remain at $29
Snapz Pro X 2.0 (w/Movie capture) will be $69 (up from $49)

whoa, $69? ah, the sign of a monkey addicted to those mini bananas as sold in Harrords and Marks & Spencers.

[sandsl]

Originally posted by moki:
Well, I'm not so sure if that's fair. It is true that the current version takes some work to get good videos from it.

If it doesn't capture in realtime then its lacking and if it wasn't lacking in anything you wouldn't be updating it So its somewhat lacking is a true statement, but it also applies to a whole lot of software.

I don't know about other peoples experience with the current version but my system finds its impossible to capture the whole screen without lossing frames - on a Powerbook G4.

Yeh its fine for somethings, or if you have the latest hardware I'm sure its great.

Ambush: I'm not even starting on you

[moki]

Originally posted by PeterClark2002:
whoa, $69? ah, the sign of a monkey addicted to those mini bananas as sold in Harrords and Marks & Spencers.

Actually, when we first implemented movie capture in Snapz Pro 2 for OS 9, the competing products were both commercial products that sold for $129, and didn't record as well as we did... so I think it's fairly reasonable.

[moki]

Originally posted by sandsl:
I don't know about other peoples experience with the current version but my system finds its impossible to capture the whole screen without lossing frames - on a Powerbook G4.

Right, the documentation talks about this. If what you want to do is full screen video capture, there are compromises that must be made.

You're right that we're focusing on alleviating this in version 2.0 -- but there are some pretty serious restrictions we're up against. *reading* from VRAM is incredibly slow, especially on PowerBooks/iBooks.

just hang tight, I think you'll like what we've done with 2.0

[Judge_Fire]

Moki,

some quick questions, sorry if dupes.

- From your log I noticed you used the file's comments area for some HTML. Could you make it lower case and end it with a "/" to make it XHTML compliant?

- Do movies do the same, ie. get some 'embed' HTML in there?

- Can annotations, such as creator or copyright, be defined by the user and saved along the movies? I've done it by hand now, but I'm hoping to use 2.0 more... there are other options such as scripting, of course.

TIA,

J

[absmiths]

Originally posted by ambush:
It's really good and useful. If you still doubt it.

That's funny, coming from Mr. I Won't Believe It Until You Send Me A Personal Beta...

[moki]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
- From your log I noticed you used the file's comments area for some HTML. Could you make it lower case and end it with a "/" to make it XHTML compliant?

Yes, that has been done. The major piece of usefulness from the file comments is the image height/width though.

- Do movies do the same, ie. get some 'embed' HTML in there?

Not currently, but that's a good idea.

- Can annotations, such as creator or copyright, be defined by the user and saved along the movies? I've done it by hand now, but I'm hoping to use 2.0 more... there are other options such as scripting, of course.

You mean comments embedded in the movie itself? That's another good suggestion.

[Judge_Fire]

Originally posted by moki:
You mean comments embedded in the movie itself? That's another good suggestion.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of metadata, such as image EXIF and the Info/Annotations stuff in .mov.

There's a huge list of them, if you check out 'Get Movie Properties' and hit the 'Add..' button in 'Movie : Annotations'. Maybe some of those could be used?

For example, it would be nice to be able to save the creation date IN there, as it might get stripped off in ftp/scp uploads etc.

As opposed to a still pic, it might not be immediately obvious what the movie is about, what version of the OS or app is used, for example, so it would be nice to store that stuff in there, too.

A short list would be:

- Name (as actual file name might become 1234_av.mov or whatever)
- Description
- Author
- OS
- Applications involved
- Date/Time

These could be pre-filled in app preferences and additionally, accessed as options at save time from the save dialog?

Other ideas?

J

[phillryu]

Moki, will I have to upgrade my registration to Snapz Pro for 2.0? Also, can it do smooth video recording on a 600mhz ibook? I find that kind of unbelievable hehe. Even if say, I was playing music?

[Peter]

how ever great this program is, I bet it cant capture fluid screen movement on my 700 iBook... No offense, but I think thats impossible

[moki]

Originally posted by PeterClark2002:
how ever great this program is, I bet it cant capture fluid screen movement on my 700 iBook... No offense, but I think thats impossible

Well, I suppose it all depends on your definition of the word "fluid" -- but give it a shot when it is released, I think you might be surprised.

[Peter]

Originally posted by moki:
Well, I suppose it all depends on your definition of the word "fluid" -- but give it a shot when it is released, I think you might be surprised.

I have $70 awaiting release

[fat mac moron]

Any closer? I can't wait for Ambrosia to release this.. hehe

[krove]

Ambrosia should offer student discounts. If I can buy Mac OS X 10.3 Panther from Apple for $69 as a college student, I find it difficult to swallow that this single application (despite it's wonderfully rich feature set) will cost as much.

<---goes and hides credit card for self-protection

[moki]

Originally posted by fat mac moron:
Any closer? I can't wait for Ambrosia to release this.. hehe

Yep, I get closer every day I work on it. I was away in Germany for a week though, so things were halted for a bit.

I updated the Snapz Pro X 2.0 progress logs with some images of preliminary interface changes that are fairly major, but I think for the better (in a big way) -- check out the last post:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/F...ML/000021.html

[moki]

I just seeded the testers with version 2.0.0b5. The changes are legion in this version, especially quite a few UI changes that I'm eager to get feedback on. Alas, I was not able to finish up a few things before packaging this up, but it is at a point where it is useful to get it in the testers' hands now anyway.

Details can be found here:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/F...ML/000021.html

[mgl]

What about the ability to capture a web page taller than the screen as one image? I have to do all my screenshots on a PC because of this limitation (unless I wish to print to PDF, which isn't my desired output format). So I build the pages on a Mac, move them to a PC, and snapshot them with a PC utility. All it does is take a pic of the active window's content area by scrolling it down automatically. (It does a jump to top, scroll until the bottom, then it's done. The mouse cursor even shows you the size in pixels as it's scrolling and capturing. Nice.

[Judge_Fire]

Originally posted by mgl:
What about the ability to capture a web page taller than the screen as one image?

I'd love this, too. All websites I build use different looking stylesheets for print, so printing to PDF is not a solution.

J

[moki]

Originally posted by mgl:
What about the ability to capture a web page taller than the screen as one image? I have to do all my screenshots on a PC because of this limitation (unless I wish to print to PDF, which isn't my desired output format). So I build the pages on a Mac, move them to a PC, and snapshot them with a PC utility. All it does is take a pic of the active window's content area by scrolling it down automatically. (It does a jump to top, scroll until the bottom, then it's done. The mouse cursor even shows you the size in pixels as it's scrolling and capturing. Nice.

This is something that's on the "do if possible" list for Snapz Pro X. Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as you might think. Because OS X walls applications off from each other, you can't access other programs windows to find out, say, where the scrollbar is, or how much information there is in the scrolling view of a window.

Using APE or similar methods to get in and do this would be possible, but it's something I want to avoid. I'm still looking for ways to accomplish this, however.

[Judge_Fire]

Originally posted by moki:
Because OS X walls applications off from each other, you can't access other programs windows to find out... [snip]

A multiple take snapshot, which would allow the user to scroll the window between takes? Then automated 'stitching' of overlapping pixels?

Perhaps a little too complicated for a single feature...

J

[moki]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
A multiple take snapshot, which would allow the user to scroll the window between takes? Then automated 'stitching' of overlapping pixels?

There are some possibilities that I'm pursuing. The main goals for Snapz Pro X 2.0.0 are:

1) Vastly improved movie capture performance

2) The ability to record Mac audio as well as video (cf our free WireTap product)

3) A significantly improved UI, with context sensitive palettes (see below)

4) Add as many requested features and fix as many lingering bugs as possible

We're doing good on all fronts. Currently I'm in the middle of step 3, finishing up the functionality of the UI changes (though I have fixed a number of bugs, and added a number of features along the way).

Once I get the functionality of the UI redesign all set, attention will be turned to fully towards step 4. :

[Judge_Fire]

[ posted at the ambrosia boards, too, but they're more quiet ]

While talking about features, here's yet another suggestion. Once you get 2.0 out the door, this might be a nice addition to some 2.x release?

Feature: Close up

Description: While capturing a scaled down movie, this key shortcut zooms in to actual pixels, centered on the mouse, and back. Easier shown than said:

Here's a full screen movie being recorded into a 400 x 250 movie. Great overview, but missing detail.



_

The 'Close-up' key shortcut momentarily zooms into 'actual pixels', a 400 x 250 close up shot. Great detail, when overview is not needed.



_

I hate video post-production, so this feature would enable me to 'edit' on the fly, much like in a multiple camera studio. Multiple sizes could be optional, but even at its simplest this could be beneficial.

Comments?

J

[fat mac moron]

Hi Moki, had a few more questions about Snapz. Recently, I upgraded to 1.0.9 for Panther compatibility (I couldn't wait, argh), and while using it I thought of a few things...

With 1.0.9, scaling captured videos seems to drastically decrease performance. Will v2 avoid that, with all the re-tooling that you've done?

Is there a way to specify the size of the selection, rather than full screen (since I'd only like to capture a 640 x 480 size video)?

Can you tell me about watermarking? Is it supported while capturing videos? or will I have to use something else to add to my videos?

Thanks for any information... I hope Snapz is coming along well!

[Dapp]

need snapz pto x 2 NOW!
why don't you make us a chrismas present moki

[-Q-]

Haven't seen Moki around lately so I'm going pimp the latest post I saw on Ambrosia's web board:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/F...ML/000021.html

Looks like SnapzPro will be available soon....