From BlenderWiki

[edit] 2.49b Release

[edit] Improvements 2.49b

• EDL importer for the sequencer. supports:
  • audio, video edits
  • fades, wipes, speed changes (video only)
  • importing from multiple reels
    • Example import from final cut pro.
    • http://www.graphicall.org/ftp/ideasman42/edl_in_blender_px.png
    • http://www.graphicall.org/ftp/ideasman42/edl_import_ui.png

[edit] Bugfixes 2.49b

• IPO curve-deletion resulted in non-working effect
• easy retiming only allowed enlarging of strips, now shrinking is also possible (easy retiming: use the right display handle of input strip and shrink or enlarge, will make the speed of the strip exactly fit the effect strip's length)
• frames after end-of-display of input strips can now be accessed.
• frame blending can now be done on more than two frames, enabling really fine grained motion blur if you speed up a sequence with high factors (bigger than two).
• Scene-Strip rendering with compositor scenes failed, if they had no camera attached.
• Fixed hdd-audio for sample formats other than 16 bit (8 bit eg).

[edit] Bugfixes 2.49a

• Scrubbing sound could create an echo
• Fixed two cases with crashing FFMPEG
• "duplicate strip" always increase the user count for ipo now.
• Work around crash in dv-reader of ffmpeg, that can happen, if some frames don't contain audio
• free_imbuf_seq() didn't free all scenes. That will lead to steady memory growth in case of nested timelines with several scenes.
• Big Proxy fixes, addressing hopefully most complaints on mailing list and in tracker
• Fixed color balance tool. Problem was: we pretended to do Lift/Gamma/Gain, but in reality we did (1-Offset)/Power/Slope. (slightly modified ASC CDL). So now, the GUI is able to switch modes between ASC CDL-mode and real Lift/Gamma/Gain.
• Syncing audio to 3D window works again

[edit] 2.46 Release

[edit] Sequencer

This adds "[#6766] Transform Sequencer effect" by damiles.

• Configurable interpolation: no, linear, bicubic
• Makes it possible to specify coordinates in units of pixels or by percent

 of the picture size

It makes the code a lot more clean, since new imbuf functions are used.

This patch also fixes [#6829] Limit on VSE Transform Effect

[edit] Sequencer

This patch adds prefetch buffering to the sequencer (see the tracker for additional details:

https://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&aid=7307&group_id=9&atid=127 )

We create seperate render threads (currently one, because of the fact, that sequence rendering modifies global structures...), that render up to the defined userpref value "Prefetch frames" in advance. (Pressing Alt-A will _first_ fill the buffer and then start playing.)

Bassam and I did some extensive testing, so it should work.

If you don't configure your number of prefetch frames, prefetching is disabled! (Sane defaults... :)

Also: if the machine is definitely too slow and runs out of the prefetch area, prefetching is disabled automatically and we are back to good old frame skipping mode.

My Dual Athlon is able to handle 4 parallel DV streams at once (sometimes a little bit choppy, but prefetching is never disabled!)

I fixed also a long standing bug in the audio code, that made playback run backwards at the beginning...

[edit] Core

This adds fractional FPS support to blender and should finally make NTSC work correctly.

NTSC has an FPS of 30.0/1.001 which is approximately 29.97 FPS. Therefore, it is not enough to simply make frs_sec a float, since you can't represent this accurately enough. I added a seperate variable frs_sec_base and FPS is now frs_sec / frs_sec_base.

I changed all the places, where frs_sec was used to my best knowledge.

For convenience sake, I added several macros, that should make life easier in the future:

FRA2TIME(a) : convert frame number to a double precision time in seconds TIME2FRA(a) : the same in the opposite direction FPS  : return current FPS as a double precision number

             (last resort)

This closes bug #6715 Standard framerates not supported / breaks sync -- 23.967 29.967 etc.

https://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&aid=6715&group_id=9&atid=125

Please give this heavy testing with NTSC files, quicktime in/export and the python interface. Errors are most probably only spotted on longer timelines, so that is also important.

The patch was tested by Troy Sobotka and me, so it most probably should work out of the box, but wider testing is important, since errors are very subtle.

[edit] Sequencer

Peach request: display last mapped frame in status bar of speed control effect. (To come: auto-resize based on this information)

[edit] Sequencer (Peach request)

Make the "Sync" button work when sound is disabled, Animators use this as a way to play animations at the right speed, could be renamed to "Drop Frames" and work even when blender built without audio enabled.

(do not forget to give credit to me :)

[edit] Playback (peach request)

Correct playback frames per second when "Play" is pressed. (Play spawns a new instance of blender, it could pass an argument that sets the frames per second)

(double credit :)

[edit] Sequencer (includes a little bit of Peach :)

Reworked image / movie loading, to add the following features:

- Mute strip - Lock strip (peach request :) - Crop / Translate _before_ image rescaling - N-keys editing of start, startofs, endofs, startstill, endstill

Added (currently disabled) data structures for

- proxy support - strip blend modes (currently only "REPLACE" works, which always did :)

Planed:

- automatic FPS rescaling - command keys to lock/mute a bunch of selected strips

 (which would complete the peach request to lock tracks)

Caveats: now the N-keys dialog is four-tabbed. I think, we should move those tabs into the panels dialog in the future...

[edit] Sequencer

• Make Lock flag work for metastrips

[edit] Sequencer

Moved N-keys dialog into panel (sub panel of "Scene") _much_ better :)

Since UI-code isn't directly my main field of coding, please check thoroughly...

[edit] Sequencer

Moved status info bar into panels. It was always shown on the wrong place... Added anim-startofs and anim-endofs, so that one can specify the range of _input_ that should be used.

There is a subtle difference to start-ofs and end-ofs, which will show, when you use "Reverse Frames" or "Speed Control". Both effects operate on the input-range and _not_ on the display range! Now you can control both in a comfortable way. Only thing missing: a button to copy start-ofs and end-ofs to anim-startofs and anim-endofs. (Andy: that was the feature you missed, when storyboarding with the sequencer and the speed control effect :)

Also: added File-Name and Dir-Name to redirect input as needed.

[edit] Sequencer

Attention! Rather large sequencer rewrite:

• Implemented layer blending using implicit effects. (works like layers

 in "The Gimp" or Photoshop.)

• Fixed Space-Bar start-stop in preview windows.

 You can start playback using spacebar within a preview-window and it _works_!

• Fixed Flip Y (didn't work for float)
• Fixed premul (didn't work for float)
• Added IPOs to _all_ tracks. In blend-mode REPLACE it drives the

 "mul"-parameter in all other blend modes it drives the effect.

• you can meta single tracks.
• moved "mute track" from "M" to "Shift-M"
• added "Shift-L" for "lock track"
• changed inner workings for Metas. Now all ImBufs have to use the

 reference counting mechanism. (Only interesting for coders :)

!!! Really important change, that affects current files!

Since you can mute tracks and now there is real layer blending capabilities in place, I changed the silly behaviour that chose the output track.

Old behaviour: if we have an effect track visible, use the uppermost effect track. If there is _no_ effect track visible, use the lowest input track.

New behaviour: always use the uppermost track. With blend modes active: work our way down starting from the uppermost track to the first "replace"-mode track. This is the way the gimp, photoshop, basically _all_ other applications work...

So if this change ruins your day: please try to fix your files using "mute". If this doesn't work out, I can still restore the old behaviour, but I really hope, that this is _not_ necessary!

Rational: most people won't get affected by this change, since you can't really do anything usefull with the (old) sequencer without at least one effect track and then you are on the safe side...

New features:

• opacity can be used in replace blend mode
• the scene within in a scene track can be changed now within the panel

Also:

• [#7842] Note: setCodec in FormatTab disappeared...

 should be fixed by this. (Not a big change, so I just commit and see :)
 http://peter.schlaile.de/blender/sequencer/codec_buttons.diff

[edit] Sequencer / Imbuf

Added a faster linear interpolation scaler to IMB_scaleImBuf. Only handles common cases when we either

enlarge both, width and height or shrink both, width and height

but that is pretty fast:

• does only blit once instead of two passes like the old code

 (fewer cache misses)

• uses fixed point integer arithmetic for byte buffers
• doesn't branch in tight loops

 Should be comparable in speed to the ImBuf ..._fast functions at least 
 for byte-buffers.

For the rather seldom situations that e.g. width is enlarged and height is shrunken, the old code is still in use.

[edit] Sequencer

Show input geometry also on MOVIE and SCENE-strips.

[edit] Sequencer

Updated image preview a lot:

• Added a histogram-scope
• Added optional title-safe margins
• Re-arranged header, so that only usefull buttons are shown in image

 preview mode

• Added zebra-mode for visual feedback of over-exposure regions

 (helps in before and especially after color correction :)

• Added color-seperation-mode for waveform-display
• Show 10%, 70% and 90% hints in waveform-display

[edit] Sequencer

New feature: color balance aka 3-way-color-correction aka lift/gamma/gain on input (folded into byte -> float conversion, so _very_ fast in that case). Interface is inspired from Rebel CC (but not as complete yet, you can't choose white and black points right now).

[edit] Sequencer

This adds low resolution proxy support to the blender sequencer, so that even HD editing should be possible on slower machines.

The proxies are stored as directories of JPEG-files and are only activated, if you use preview-resolution rendering.

For your final render, just switch back to full resolution and the original files are used again.

It enables even proxying of whole effect pipelines and scene-strips (but you have to your own custom directory for file storage then, since blender has no filename, which could be taken as a sensible default directory reference)

Make glow effect ipo driven

[edit] 2.43 Release

[edit] Documentation

[edit] Usability Enhancements

[edit] Reconnect existing effect pipelines

In the case you messed it up and want your effect strips to be reassigned in a different way, there is the new "R"-key. Just select three arbitrary strips and press "R". If you don't create a cycle, those will be connected to a new effect chain.

[edit] Active sequence strips are now easier to spot

The active sequence strip is now displayed with a light instead of a dark outline, which makes it easier to spot, and is especially useful for the tools using the active sequence strip.

[edit] Channel tuner enhancements

Ability to view the final result when editing inside meta strip. The channel button was modified to also allow negative numbers, where -n is n levels up the meta stack. There is probably a nicer way to specify this, instead of (ab)using the channel button, but this seems to work quite efficient.

[edit] Minor enhancements

• Let the sequencer detect an active sequence strip if none is defined, to get rid of annoying error messages when trying to add an effect to a selected sequence strip right after loading a file.
• Delete is less destructive. If you delete somewhere between other strips, Blender now tries to relink in a reasonable way.

[edit] New Effect Strips

[edit] Color generator

This effect simply adds a generator for solid color frames (with a color picker in the 'N'-keys dialog to choose the color).

Makes finally 'black.png' and 'white.png' obsolete!

[edit] Transform

Translate, rotate and scale all in one little nifty effect strip. Just specify start / end parameters and control amount of effect using the IPO. Default is as always to smoothly fade from start-parameters to end-parameters within the effect range.

Examples can be found here: Transform example

A detailed explaination can be found in the new Sequencer Manual.

[edit] Speed control

Now you can retime your strips freely in post production. It is rather sophisticated and supports everything from simple retiming to real frame matching (to make e.g. certain video frames appear exactly at a given audio position.). It also does frame blending by default, to make this a smooth experience!

• Simple usage: just add the effect and drag the right handle of the input strip to enlarge (and thereby slowdown the strips arbitrarily). Right thing, if you want to have fun with your storyboard and find out the correct timing.
• You can control the global velocity of the strip in the N-keys dialog. 1.0 means normal speed, larger float values speed the strip up, lower float values slow it down.

When it comes to IPO-control, there are two modes available:

• Control by velocity. The IPO is the velocity just like the global velocity parameter and even accepts negative values! (Yes, you can make the strip run backwards!)
• Control by frame-number. The IPO X-coordinate is the input frame number, IPO Y-coordinate is the output frame number. By default, both values are scaled down (X: 1-100, Y: 0-1). That's enough to play with it and have some nice flickering effects. To do real frame matching, you can switch off this behavior in the N-key dialog. (X: switch on "IPO frame locking", Y: switch off "IPO values run from 0..1"). Now open up the N-key dialog in the IPO-window and place your frame exact control points!

A simple demo-blend file is here: Speed control example

A detailed explaination can be found in the new Sequencer Manual.

[edit] Bugfixes

• gamma plugin now correctly works with float images.
• scene strips now get Z buffers again. This is only in float format, containing actual distances from the camera.
• a lot of minor bugfixes, mainly crashing in obscure situations.
• rewrote the core of the sequencer to make the code a lot more maintainable.

[edit] 2.42 Release

See CMS release notes for 2.42 at blender.org.

[edit] Sequencer

 Adds for additional buttons for the new sequencer code to distinguish
 the display of timeline, output, U/V scatter plot and Luma waveform.

Add several usefull sequencer-plugins:

 - color-correction-hsv & color-correction-yuv
   Do color correction in HSV or YUV-space, rather sophisticated but slow.
   You can control setup, gain and gamma and saturation (seperated by
   shadows, midtones and highlights).
 - gamma
   a simple RGB-Gamma plugin, but very fast.
 - dnr
   Dynamic Noise Reduction (plugin ported from VirtualDub).
   This helps mpeg encoding alot, by ignoring noise /movement
   below a given threshold between frames.
   It is also a lot faster than the original VirtualDub-plugin preserving
   it's quality.

 Log:
 Adds support for frameserver rendering to blender. This is done by
 integrating a mini-webserver (around 300 lines of code) into blender.
 Using the VFAPI-plugin in contrib/windows it enables blender to
 directly feed its output into TMPGEnc, a commercial high quality MPEG-Encoder.
 Since it is a mini-webserver, you can probably easily use it for other
 interfacing purposes.

 Log:
 Enables sequencer ipos for effect plugins and audio-tracks
 to be locked to frames instead of the range from 0-100.
 Comes very handy on long timelines...

 Log:
 FFMPEG-render support.

 Log:
 * Adds userdef-types for memcache limitor and frameserver-rendering
 * Boosts the blender frame limit by changing the type of the frame number
   from short to int everywhere. Without this, timelines longer than a few
   minutes are impossible to handle.
 * Adds several types for ffmpeg input/output, hdaudio-tracks in sequencer

 Log:
 * Add memcache limitor-support to imbufs
 * Add ffmpeg-read support in anim.c and util.c
 * Makes ImBufs refcountable. You can now increase an internal refcounter
   in ImBufs (using IMB_refImBuf) which is decreased by freeImBuf.
   This makes it possible to simply pass ImBuf pointers around in the
   sequencer saving a few memcopies.

 Log:
 * Adds configuration buttons for ffmpeg-output
 * Large sequencer rewrite to support:
   - Audio-tracks, which are not completely loaded into memory (hdaudio) but
     kept on disk instead.
   - A dependency tree, that builds only the Imbufs, that are really needed
   - Cleaner sequencer code
   - Per instance data in sequencer plugins (without this, the Dynamic
     Noise Reduction plugin would be impossible)
   - A Luma Waveform display
   - A U/V scatter plot display
   - Memcache limiting in sequencer
   - Buttons changed according to the boosted framecount limit

 Base library to support hdaudio-tracks (using ffmpeg only for now).

 Log:
 - Header changes to support hdaudio, memcache limitor and framecount boost.

 Log:
 Adds a VFAPI-Plugin for TMPGenc to connect to the blender frameserver.

 Log:
 Adds ffmpeg-support on Linux-platforms. Since ffmpeg is installed
 always statically (you have to force it to build a dynamic library) the
 resulting binary is redistributable.
 
 The code is made ffmpeg-version independent using #ifdef's.

[edit] sequencer

 Log:
 Restored the free_imbuf_seq_except() in sequencer, to free all memory
 of sequencer, except current frame. Apparently the cache limitor doesnt
 work for floatbuffers yet... and while rendering, I prefer to have all
 memory available for the render itself.
 
 Schlaile; you might check on what is wrong, in case imbufs have have
 a rect_float or zbuf_float, the cache doesnt work yet?

[edit] sequencer

 this patch features several cleanups and bugfixes for the sequencer:
 - blur works again (this was a serious bug in gamwarp...)
 - seperates all sequence effects into a seperate file with a clean interface
 - thereby fixing some obscure segfaults
 - seperates the scope views into a seperate file
 - adds float support to all effects and scope views
 - removes a bad level call to open_plugin_seq
 - FFMPEG seeking improved a lot.
 - FFMPEG compiles with debian sarge version cleanly
 - Makes hdaudio seek and resample code really work

[edit] sequencer

 Sequencer now outputs float buffers to render too, when available.

[edit] Sequencer

 This patch is mostly a usability patch for the sequencer, mainly written by
 Anders Gudmundson and twisted a little bit by me.
 
 - Lock Time to other windows
 - Possibility to switch the X-Axis between frames and seconds-display
 - IPO-Frame Locking for plugins (T-Key)
 - Additional Popup to add HD-Sound and Movie at once
 - In Timeline-Window: Sequencer windows only playback
 - Make the IPOs a little bit IPO-Frame-Lock friendlier (doesn't jump;
   the frame that is drawn has the right dimension)
 - Wheel-Mouse buttons make the sequencer window zoom again.
 - The "This is not a sound/movie-file message" now reads "... or
   FFMPEG-support not compiled in!" since I learned some prominent
   people who complained, that hdaudio does not work for them ;-)
 - Make SPACEKEY open up the "Add Strip"-Popup on the timeline and start
   playback in the preview window.

[edit] sequencer

 a tiny patch by Luis de Bethencourt Guimera (luisbg) adds RETKEY as completing a transform for consistency

[edit] Sequencer

 - Added early-out optimisation to add-effect (the case, where fac == 0)
 - Bugfixes:
   * hddaudio: ffmpeg does not seek always to the correct frame,
     if the SEEK_BACKWARD flag is used. Now we account for this and
     seek a little bit further... (hack, urghs)
   * hddaudio: on long timelines, the new seek code didn't work
     (forgot a long long cast)
   * the audio mixdown code now also calculates meta-strip IPOs

[edit] 2.40 Release

[edit] Cut Sequence Strips

You can now cut sequence strips using K. Any selected strips (except Meta strips) will be cut at the current frame.

[edit] Strobe

Strobe - In the N Strip Properties panel, you can set "Strobe" to something other than 1 for only displaying each nth picture of the strip. You know the effect from movies :)

"Strobe" is a float value - this way you can get a strobe effect synced exactly to a beat, for example, by using non-integer values.

[edit] Reverse

Option to play sequence strips (Movie, Image, Scene) in reverse. New toggle in the NKEY buttons for sequence strips.

[edit] Zoom

Sequence editor image preview supports zooming out

[edit] Misc

Added right mouse click to cancel a sequence strip transform, like everything else in blender.