Apple’s 2D slider UI patent

In August 2010 (almost a year before the introduction of Final Cut Pro X) Apple applied for a user interface patent that is relevant to colour correcting video clips. They were awarded patent 8,468,465 today.

Although Apple has chosen a different UI for colour correction in Final Cut Pro, the UI shown in this new patent may turn up in future Apple applications.

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a computer program that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for controlling an application. The GUI includes a contiguous two-dimensional sliding region for defining several values. The GUI also includes several sliders for moving within the sliding region. Each slider selects one or more values from the several values based on a position of the slider within the sliding region. The selected values are parameters for controlling one or more operations of the application.

Excerpt

Apple’s timeline animation patent: Final Cut Pro with a little more Motion

Four years ago, Apple applied for a patent that is relevant to animating parameters of clips and other content in a timeline. They were awarded patent 8,458,593 today.

I’m not reproducing this to start a debate on whether this sort of thing should be patentable. This patent shows how future Apple applications might show timelines of animatable values, and how more than one value can be changed at a time as well as controlling the shape of the graph joining two keyframes.

You can see from this drawing of an imaginary application interface, this patent applies to a media editing application that users can use to set keyframe values for clip parameters such as scale and position with editable graphs.

The example application shown in the patent looks like a version of Final Cut Pro that uses some elements from Motion, but not so many that editors are turned off. The editing temperament is somewhat different from that of motion graphic designers.

However bear in mind that this patent represents Apple’s thinking back in May 2009, in the intervening years, they may have moved on from these ideas.

The rest of this post is made up of most of the text and images from the new Apple patent

Apple’s ‘Gesture control of multimedia editing applications’ patent

Today Apple was awarded an interesting patent. It was applied for in 2004, so developments over the intervening years may have superseded some of its concepts, however it shows how gestures can be used in non-multitouch enabled situations.

Here’s a long edited excerpt from Apple’s patent:

The first part explains why using gestures is a good idea:

The use of gestures to control a multimedia editing application provides a more efficient and easier to use interface paradigm over conventional keyboard and iconic interfaces.

First, since the gestures can replace individual icons, less screen space is required for displaying icons, and thereby more screen space is available to display the multimedia object itself. Indeed, the entire screen can be devoted to displaying the multimedia object (e.g., a full screen video), and yet the user can still control the application through the gestures.

Second, because the user effects the gestures with the existing pointing device, there is no need for the user to move one of his hands back and forth between the pointing device and keyboard as may be required with keystroke combinations. Rather, the user can fluidly input gestures with the pointing device in coordination with directly manipulating elements of the multimedia object by clicking and dragging. Nor is the user required to move the cursor to a particular portion of the screen in order to input the gestures, as is required with iconic input.

Third, the gestures provide a more intuitive connection between the form of the gesture and the associated function, as the shape of the gesture may be related to the meaning of the function.

Fourth, whereas there is a relatively limited number of available keystroke combinations–since many keystroke combination may already be assigned to the operating system, for example–there is a much larger set of available gestures that can be defined, and thus the user can control more of the application through gestures, then through keystrokes. 

FIG. 1: The user interface includes three primary regions, the canvas (102), the timing panel (106), and the file browser (110). The canvas is used to display the objects as they are being manipulated and created by the user, and may generally be characterized as a graphics window. In the example of FIG. 1, there are shown three multimedia objects (104), Square A, Circle C, and Star B, which will be referred to throughout as such this disclosure when necessary to reference a particular object. In the preferred embodiment, the multimedia application is a non-linear video editing application, and allows the creation of multimedia presentations, including videos. Accordingly, the objects displayed in the canvas at any given time represent the “current” time of the multimedia presentation. 

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.8 update

Today Apple released its Final Cut Pro X 10.0.8 update. It is 60% about fixing bugs, there are a few new features too. Although the NAB professional trade show is just around the corner, this isn’t a industry-shaking update.

From TV and film industry point of view, new features supporting ARRI ALEXA and Sony F5 and F55 cameras hint that Apple are interested in courting high-end full-time editors as well as the hundreds of thousands of creative people that use Final Cut Pro as part of a non-editing job.

Apple also added a pair of case studies to their Final Cut Pro X In Action page on their website. One shows how Final Cut is the right tool for journalists and reporters, the other covers an example of modern feature film workflow.

Bug fixes

The biggest news for the majority of Final Cut Pro users is that tricky graphics bug has been fixed.

A problem introduced by the 10.0.6 update was a fault that affected many important third-party plug-ins: random green and upside-down frames in renders. This was probably a side-effect of moving rendering from Mac CPUs to GPUs. This fault was not fixed in 10.0.7, but Apple says it is gone in 10.0.8.

Here are the rest of Apple’s release notes on the update with some commentary:

- Resolves performance issues that could occur with certain titles and effects
In 10.06 and 10.0.7 some effects worked best when rendered by CPUs, so they were slower until they were optimised for GPUs in 10.0.8.

- Mono audio files in a surround project export with correct volume levels

- Drop zones no longer reset to the first frame of video after application restart

- Fixes a performance issue which resulted from selecting multiple ranges on a single clip

- Fixes an issue where the Play Around function did not work properly on certain clips when viewed through external video devices

New features

- Ability to use key commands to adjust Clip Appearance settings in the timeline
Control-Option-up and down arrow cycles through the clip appearance controls, and each appearance is associated with numbers 1 to 6:

- Support for Sony XAVC codec up to 4K resolution
To use Sony XAVC footage at up to 4K,
1. make sure you have the most up to date ProApps QuickTime codecs: choose Software Update from the Apple menu. If they need to be installed, they will appear as an item in the Software Update window. If the ProApps QuickTime codecs do not appear as an item in the Software Update window, they up to date, so you can skip this step.
2. Visit the Sony Creative Software Download page and download version 1.1 or newer of the XDCAM Plug-in for Final Cut Pro X. Read the release notes about Sony XAVC clips and camera support.

- Option to display ProRes Log C files from ARRI ALEXA cameras with standard Rec. 709 color and contrast levels (without extra rendering time).
This viewing mode only works with footage shot on ARRI cameras that have been updated using version 6.1 or later of the ALEXA Software Update Packet.

- Time reversed clips render in the background

- Ability to view reel number metadata located in the timecode track of video files

Additional minor changes

The metadata tag for file size has changed a little: In 10.0.7 and earlier File Size returned the size of the  file associated with a clip in bytes. In 10.0.8 the Size metadata tag stores the size of the file rounded up to the block size of the disk (the amount of space taken up by the file on the disk instead of the actual size of the file in bytes).

There is a new metadata tag to define whether a clip uses Log Processing.

The default keyboard shortcut for typing special characters (Command-option-T) has been removed. The command is still there, but if you want to use a keyboard shortcut to get quick access, you’ll have to add your own (Using the Commands… sub-menu of the Final Cut Pro application menu.

Small changes to the User Guide and online Help system

The updated user guide is now available as a PDF. and the help system has been updated also.

Page 141 / Online help ”Adjust Timeline clip appearance and height” keyboard shortcuts

Page 281 / Online help  How you can create an audition with a duplicate of a clip using the effects and attributes from another clip.

Page 369 / Online help  How to control ARRI Log C clip display.

Page 404 / Online help  A new note about how when duplicating projects with files imported as reference files (pointing to media outside the Final Cut Events folder), only the reference files are copied, not the source media.

Getting the update

To download it, go to the App Store on a Mac where you’ve signed in with the Apple ID that bought your copy of Final Cut. Click the Updates button in the tool bar to see the updates list. It works on OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and newer, Lion 10.7.5 and newer, Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and newer.

If you’ve bought Motion 5 or Compressor 4, you’ll see they’ve been updated to 5.0.7 and 4.0.7 respectively.  Apple haven’t announced any new features in these updates, they are maintenance releases.

If you are in the middle of a project, its best not to update Final Cut Pro until you’ve finished. In all the Final Cut updates apart from 10.0.6, no major bugs were introduced in new versions (unlike in the updates to pre X versions of Final Cut Pro), but it’s best to let others test 10.0.8 before you risk your work. Richard Taylor has written a useful article on best practices for upgrading Final Cut Pro.

If you want to update Motion without updating Final Cut, plug-ins edited in Motion 5.0.7 work in the last two versions of Final Cut Pro – 10.0.6 and 10.0.7. For more on plug-in backwards compatibility, visit my ‘Is your version of Final Cut Pro X new enough’ post.

Free Final Cut Pro plug-in: Alex4D Time Remap effect

Last year I made a set of generators that could be used on video clips to get more precise control over speed changes using an animation graph similar to that available in older versions of Final Cut Pro.

Since the 10.0.6 update to Final Cut Pro, the generators I uploaded in March 2012 no longer work. Here is an effect you can use instead.

Here’s a comparison between a time remap graph in older versions of Final Cut Pro and my effect:

With these graphs, the steepness and direction of graph determine the speed and direction that the video clip frames play. The Y co-ordinate of the graph controls which source frame is displayed.

In this case the clip will play back in slow motion (because the angle of the graph line is shallow between the first and second keyframe – the Y co-ordinate is changing slowly), then in faster than normal motion. The video will then freeze between keyframes three and four (because the Y co-ordinate of the graph isn’t changing – the line is horizontal). Between keyframes four and five the video will go into reverse, as the Y co-ordinate is getting lower over time. Between the fifth and last keyframe the video will play back very quickly because the value of the graph’s Y co-ordinate is changing quickly.

Free Final Cut Pro plug-in: Alex4D Ribbon transition

My new free Final Cut Pro X transition slices the outgoing clip into two parts and pulls them apart with a horizontal ribbon appearing based on the pixels at the slice position. The ribbon crossfades into a ribbon representing a single column of pixels from the incoming clip. The two parts of the incoming clip to the left and right of the column then join together on screen:

Here are the controls:

Final Cut Pro + iBooks Author + iTunes + Game Center = The Future of TV?

On the latest episode of the Critical Path podcast Horace Dediu and Moisés Chiullan talked about the future of TV. Horace said that he thinks that the future of TV is in applying software engineering tools to story and interactivity development. Apple have some tools that could achieve some of this.

I wonder if the Final Cut Pro Share menu will one day include the iTunes Store as a destination

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

@alex4d So you can directly upload it to your own seller profile page?

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Marc Lucas (@MarcLucasHQ) February 07, 2013

Apple have a section for self-published authors in the iBooks section, @MarcLucasHQ. Perhaps they'll be an equivalent section for video…

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

@alex4d definitely possible! So to further the integration you could have an export to iBooks Author from #FCPX

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Marc Lucas (@MarcLucasHQ) February 07, 2013

#fcpx + iBooks Author = interactive movies that would only work on iPhones, iPads, OS X and Apple TV, @MarcLucasHQ @gruber

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

@alex4d @gruber that's what #Apple wants to have there tools create content all from within their walled garden.

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Marc Lucas (@MarcLucasHQ) February 07, 2013

Apple tools could support development of a 3rd party iOS/OS X-only semi-interactive 'House of Cards', @MarcLucasHQ @gruber

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

Apple could also modify Game Center to organise shared viewing experiences via AppleIDs, @MarcLucasHQ @gruber

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

Perhaps Ping was designed to be a network to support live conversations while watching or interacting with media, @MarcLucasHQ

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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013

@alex4d very coincidental you say that because I'm just looking at Popcorn.js which l;oohs very very interesting

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Marc Lucas (@MarcLucasHQ) February 07, 2013

Popcorn.js

Could you use PixelConduit to make Final Cut Pro plug-ins?

Where does PixelConduit come when comparing the various methods for making Final Cut Pro plug-ins?

The post powerful Final Cut Pro effects are FxPlugs: implemented in Objective-C, using the same kinds of tools that make OS X and iOS apps. This is the hardest method.

PixelConduit and Final Cut Pro X – first look

Today Finnish company Lacquer updated their Conduit Live product and made it free for Macintosh users. Renamed PixelConduit, it is a video effect development system for motion graphics designers.

It was conceived as a live video performance tool. The application was designed take multiple video sources, apply many complex effects in real time and distribute the results to multiple screens. In recent years, it has been designed for more uses (from the manual at PixelConduit):

- Previewing visual effects on set.
- Theatrical shows and other video-based performances.
- Video installations.
- Compositing and other finishing work.
- Post-production workflow automation.
- Rendering custom graphics in post.
- Live graphics with custom control interfaces, e.g. for TV productions.

In order for real-time video effects to work, the UI metaphor is based on flowcharts that can be quickly manipulated while live video is being fed in:

My Webinar showing how to create effects for Final Cut Pro X

On Tuesday January 8th, 2013 I appeared on a webinar at Moviola.com hosted by Michael Horton of the Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group.

The web broadcast was free to watch live. The webinar is available for download on demand for $15.

Download the on-demand webinar to see me change the default settings for built-in Final Cut Pro X effects, bring the additional effects available in Motion 5 into Final Cut, and combine Motion’s advanced controls into single Final Cut Pro X effect controls.

The final effect that I make in the webinar corrects the kind of fish-eye distortion that some wide angle lenses can add to footage. I show how it corrects narrow, medium and wide angle GoPro footage.