Author Topic: Initial feedback  (Read 23231 times)

Critters

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Initial feedback
« on: May 30, 2017, 07:11:33 PM »
My camera arrived today, only had 20 minutes to play with it at lunch but here's my first set of feedback that is all software related so posting in this forum. Can't wait for you to open up the OS for others to tinker with, i'd love to have a play with the UI. Is that a micro SD card I spy in the bottom of the camera? Is that where the OS is hosted? Will firmware updates be done via USB or putting this card into a PC?

  • I think the UI should be on the left edge of the screen. When holding the camera your thumb naturally hooks around the dial and a few times it brushed the screen and triggered one of the buttons. If the menu was on the left then it would fix that and place the menu in a nicer location to operate with the left hand when holding the camera
  • The option to do the black calibration should be behind a confirmation popup that could also remind users to cover the lens, given it takes a while to process it's frustrating when you hit it by mistake then have to wait for it to finish then perform it again as the lens was more than likely not covered when it was accidentally triggered. Maybe B/W cal should be in a sub menu?
  • A way to manually adjust white balance would be nice, my bad for playing with it in lower than ideal lighting but it was hard to get it to calibrate "not enough light" (or similar) error message
  • The zebra exposure is perfect, the focus is confusing. It'd be super helpful to have the option to punch in (magnify the center of the sensor) to fine tune the focus

gyppor

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2017, 10:54:00 PM »
Great work on the UI, Kron Tech. It's not perfect but I really like using it, it's simple and you get used to it very quickly.

After a few days of using the camera, I like the UI on the right as I also like to use the jog wheel. If I used my left hand to operate touch controls on the left side, I'd have to switch hands or reach over to operate the jog wheel. I HAVE accidentally pressed some buttons, but usually the one that comes up is the record settings menu or black cal. The critical one, recording over the buffer, is protected by a confirmation dialog box. I like how this is implemented.

I also appreciate being able to do the black cal in a single touch. When you take a lot of shots at different exposures and frame rates you do a LOT of black cals. Having it in a sub-menu would get add a step to a process that is already involved, so I feel as though the current implementaion of that button is good.

Agreed on being able to magnify the center of the image. I've been lowering the resolution in order to help with focus, then once focused I bring it back up to whatever I'm shooting at. It would be nice to have a button somewhere to toggle a magnified portion of the image on and off.

Zebras are great, super useful.

I've used the focus aid, it's helpful at very low resolutions where it's hard to see detail or when it's very bright out and you have trouble seeing the screen.


I'll add a suggestion, I would like to be able to set the default encoding frame rate at 30fps. I often forget to do it and end up with 60fps clips that have to be stretched in post. Since I always work with 30fps clips this would be handy.
To go along with footage from HD cameras, it would be useful to be able to select 29.97 fps as well.

Also of note, I've found that inserting an SD card after powering the camera on will not allow it to be detected.  restarting the camera solves this, however if you realize you forgot the SD card after taking a shot, you'll lose that shot. Luckily, USB sticks seem to get successfully detected as soon as they're plugged in. You can therefore save potentially lost footage by saving to a USB stick if you have one handy.

G



Critters

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2017, 10:53:51 AM »
I must have extra fat thumbs ;)

The SD card thing... I've inserted a card after recording a couple of times (I keep forgetting to put it back in) and have had no issue with it recognizing it and letting me save within a few seconds of inserting with no reboot / no loss of footage

tesla500

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2017, 09:00:57 PM »
Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

  • UI on left option should be easy to do.
  • I've had requests to be able to enable/disable confirmation for both record over unsaved buffer and black cal, that should be easy too. Probably will have to wait until we have it remembering settings across power cycles to be useful. That's not done yet because if it's done wrong it will be a nightmare to propagate settings over software updates.
  • Manual white balance is coming, in fact the whole color processing pipeline is going to be updated. Right now the color correction matrix is based on a white LED spectrum, with white balance multipliers being applied after that. Proper matrix selection will be added.
  • Focus aid actually used to just zoom in, I changed it last minute to enable the focus peaking. Focus peaking admittedly isn't working that well yet, it's too sensitive yet not sensitive enough in some ways. Would you prefer me to restore that button to zooming in?
  • Once we have the saving of settings done, pretty much everything you can change will be remembered, so if you change the encoding frame rate it will remember that. At the moment the API for the encoder only allows integer frame rates, in the future we'll dig into that and make it support fractional frame rates like 29.97. After all, the encoder doesn't really know the frame rate, that's just metadata that tells it how fast to play back the frames.
  • If your SD card isn't being recognized when you insert it after power on, try a different card. The drivers are sometimes finicky and don't like to recognize some cards depending on the controller the card uses. Sandisk and Lexar cards seem to work fine.
  • One user has reported corrupt files if you eject the card too soon after saving, I havn't been able to duplicate that so far, it may be an issue with his particular card.



gyppor

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2017, 10:03:06 PM »
David,

I'm not sure how complex it would be but being able to customize the camera's menus and controls (like menu right/left), switching between zoom and focus peaking, or choosing which buttons we want confirmation dialogs for would be really, really nice. Also having an option to reset each setting to default would be handy - for example, if I accidentally do a white balance calibration and don't have a white sheet with me, I like being able to reboot the camera and restore the factory white balance. An option to do this would be good as one could reset individual settings to default while shooting instead of shutting off and resetting all of them.

I'd like to re-iterate that the beta UI is really quite good, there is certainly room for tweaking but I really like it in general. It's very easy to use and quite intuitive.

Another feature that would be handy is the ability to play back clips from the SD card or USB. This would help when you end up with a full memory card in the field and want to make some room to continue shooting.

Have you had any luck adding black bands top and bottom to allow for using fewer than 96 pixels?After seeing just how sensitive the sensor is, I'm really curious to test the FPS limits of the sensor.

Great work with the camera. It's amazing.

G

Critters

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2017, 12:07:25 AM »
Thanks for the reply David, I had a play around with the UI and had this idea:



Battery indicator top left, tapping could toggle showing voltage, not sure if that is useful to the end user or was a debug thing?
Resolution/FPS top middle
Option to edit the record settings is accessed via tapping the resolution text or button to the right of it
A new "general settings" button top right
Three programmable function buttons
Start recording
Slider for shutter

Pressing general settings opens a settings page that lets you tab between settings/trigger/util



From the settings page you can align the HUD left or right
Edit the focus peaking, toggle zoom, toggle zebras, start black cal, start white balance or manual white balance
Next to each toggle are radio buttons that let you assign that toggle to one of the 3 function buttons. You can see I have focus zoom, black cal and white balance set to f1, f2 and f3

Max

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2017, 10:13:20 PM »
Cheers on drawing the UI, I quite like how you styled the buttons and functions.

I do agree it would look alot nicer with the buttons having a more crisp box around them.

Cheers,
Max

nik282000

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #7 on: June 02, 2017, 07:13:47 AM »
I wanted to start by saying thank you, your camera is awesome! Better than the commercial system I have played with in the past as well as my old Casio.

I agree with most of the suggestions above and so won't repeat them. The one thing I think would be helpful to all user is an exposure histogram. I have been exposing as bright as possible then lowering untill there is no clipping but a histogram would make proper exposure a lot easier.

Other than that I had some jumpy footage but like your guide said it is likely related to my SD card and having bitrate set too high.

Thanks again!

BiduleOhm

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2017, 11:52:49 AM »
Hi,

I didn't received the camera yet but just wanted to say it would be even better to have color histograms (see why here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/yrgb.htm)

Thanks :)

Camoit

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2017, 06:20:26 PM »
No camera yet it's still sitting in Dave's garage.. BUT.... David does listen. Thanks for taking the suggestion and putting up a forum board. This will make things better so people can work out the problems they find with others and let you do other things besides tech support. It will come in handy.
Just 1 suggestion though. You should have it by invite only to avoid all the non owners that will start trolling at some point. Luckily for me the board I own and operate I have good mods to keep things inline.
Marty

AimedResearch

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #10 on: June 11, 2017, 08:07:25 PM »
How hard would it be to have pinch-zoom and pan?

If possible, it would be ideal to have the side bar buttons hidden to make room for a larger view.  Fastec has a top corner of the screen that you touch to access the menus (aside from pressing the menu button).

There needs to be a way to accurately adjust exposure while viewing the image.  The scroll bar is too short for accurate control.  Maybe the jog wheel would be a good control.

When in the menus, the keypad/numerals are small.  Obviously when I type in a resolution, frame rate, or exposure, I do not need alpha characters.  The numerals should take up the screen for clumsy, fat fingers.  Something similar should be changed for naming the file.  Maybe separate the alpha from numerals with a shift function.

We need better trigger settings.  Trigger delay in frames only is not ideal, it needs to be tied to seconds.  Having a timeline trigger slider like Vision Research, Photron, and may others is standard.


Electra

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #11 on: July 28, 2017, 06:38:33 PM »
As I'm not sure where else to add comments, I'll tack them on here.
For the most part the UI is basic but makes sense, requiring only minimal knowledge.
Only thoughts sofar:
  • If you used one of the preset speeds/resolutions, have the drop-down box remember what one it is. Or go blank(or say 'custom') if you change anything.
  • Let the jog wheel control the shutter speed in the main display. I don't think it does anything at the moment.
  • In playback, make jog wheel /toggle/ between fast and slow advance with an on screen indicator of what mode it's in, holding and turning is clumsy.
  • PLEASE add metadata recording. So every shot has the camera's settings somewhere in the exif(or equivlient), so when editing or afterwards you can see what framerate, shutter speed, etc, etc you used.

ThomasYiPP

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #12 on: September 04, 2017, 06:16:12 AM »
Just received the camera as well and I'm impressed at the quality.

But a few minor tweaks would already help:
- As Electra said remember the "Record settings" so it doesn't reset each time you go into the menu
- but also remember all last used settings when turned off/on (like zebra, peaking, record, trigger settings)
- the dedicated record button to say yes in the "unsaved video popup"

We're trying to use the camera for automated use, controlled via ethernet/PC. So we're desperately waiting for the network control. Is there a beta firmware test group which I could join? And is there a roadmap for when which features are estimated to be ready?

John Delonghi

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #13 on: September 19, 2017, 05:10:15 AM »
The one thing I think would be helpful to all user is an exposure histogram.

A BIG +1 for this!

thebishop

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Re: Initial feedback
« Reply #14 on: September 19, 2017, 05:51:43 AM »
The one thing I think would be helpful to all user is an exposure histogram.

A BIG +1 for this!

Definitely another +1 !