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What is new in Mistika VR 8.8.5

Melanie Diaz

By Melanie Diaz,
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Melanie Diaz Enthusiast

Melanie Diaz

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Hi all, We are happy to Release the new version of Mistika VR 8.8.5 to all Mistika VR customers. The latest Mistika VR version is already available free of charge to all existing customers. You can Download it from your downloads page https://www.sgo.es/my-account/downloads Your license should support this new feature, as all existing customer licenses have been upgraded, but if you can not see the functionality, please, contact support at support.sgo.es What is coming in this new version 8.8.5 from beta version: New features:

  • Stabilization now has the “Prioritize Front” option. This allows the user to hint the system which direction of view is important, and stabilize it more precisely at cost of the opposite (back) direction. Also, improves on shots where back direction is best ignored because it contains something not intended to be stabilized, like the person hand carrying the rig, for example. Also, stabilization is now robust to large changes in the pole regions, especially common with drone shots.
  • Shot now can be selected by simple mouse click in the storyboard shots list). No Shift+click required anymore.
  • Preset added for the iZugar Z6X3D-C rig
  • Preset for ZCamS1Pro_2880X2880 updated to enable stereoscopy
  • Application added for renaming KanDao time-lapse shots so they can be imported by MistikaVR as image sequences
Fixes:
  • Projects and renders now can be stored in folders containing square [ ] and round ( ) brackets
  • KanDao movies with 1900×1500 resolution produced green border on their right margin, now fixed
  • Undo for Delete and Duplicate shots now works correctly
  • The top menu bar entries were updated to match the options available form the option pulldowns and contextual menus in other parts of the GUI
  • Drag&Drop of multiple movies now sorts the cameras alphabetically to assure the cameras order is the expected one
  • .pts files import crash fixed when shapes were used in PTGui
  • By default, ProRes encode now uses all CPU cores available, instead of being fixed at 8 cores.
  • Now, if frame rate is changed with Mistika VR GUI already open, the change will be applied to the renders, without need to exit and enter.
  • Now, if you select another project with MistikaVR already open, the file browser will change to showing the files of the selected project.
  • Autosave now works with Cyrillic characters in the file name
  • If importing twice from PtGui, the file browser path were wrong on the second import
  • Render to Prores 444+alpha did produce empty movies
  • The autosave timelines now use the .vrenv extension so they can be easily loaded
What is coming in this beta version: New Presets
  • Detu F4 Plus
  • Panasonic GH5 x2 with Entanyia 250 lens
New Features / Improvements
  1. New “Stabilize” pulldown menu containing the new stabilization features.
  2. "One Click" Stabilization.
  3. “Stabilization->Follow Overall Heading” toggle.
  4. “Stabilization->Follow heading after x frames”.
  5. Re-apply stabilization.
  6.  Edge Points menu options are now in an independent pulldown.
  7. Storyboard Clone Shot. Use right mouse click over an icon to access the “Clone Shot” option. The chosen shot will be duplicated, allowing mainly to experiment with multiple versions of the same shot.
  8. VR 180 support.
  9. SBS VR180 Stereo visualization mode added to the visualization pulldown.
  10. Left/Right VR180 Stereo render mode added in the Render->Stereo pulldown.
Fixed bugs: fix-1395 Error rendering to MP4 in batch with audio in movie. fix-1527 File Naming issues with cyrillic types. fix-1550 In&Out render marks were lost if importing a preset after setting these. fix-1440 Impossible to see the project structure when it is changed. fix-1555 WORK path lost after upgrading versions. Aditional info about the version: The Stabilization is the main new feature and the reason of this version. There is whole new “Stabilize” pulldown for this functionality set, next to the “Positions” pulldown. The Stabilize pulldown contains following entries: Stabilize: this is the one-click command. It will:
  • Bake in the Output camera setting to clear it for placing the stabilization information.
  • Scan the range defined by the time marks for overall scene movement.
  • Apply the stabilization according to the “follow” setting.
“Follow Overall Heading” toggle: If it is checked, the stabilization will only try to compensate the camera shake, but respect the overall heading of the rig, so the camera 1 will stay generally centered. This allows stabilizing the camera moving in a curved route, like a car driving around. If the toggle is unchecked, the stabilization will try to keep the view as steady as possible, however, it can get confused by one side of the scene advancing while other not, making the scene gradually roll or tilt. “Follow heading after x frames”: This is the number of frames the stabilization will settle on a new camera heading. Low number means swifter following, but possibly less smooth results. Large number means slower time of reorientation. “Re-apply stabilize”: This will re-apply instantly the last stabilize using new setting for the “follow” toggle and value, without a need of a rescan. To reset the stabilization, in the output tab, use the “Reset all values” option. How to use The Stabilization: Set the render marks to delimit the stabilization time range. Then, level the horizon approximately on a frame representative of the range to stabilize, so the stabilizer gets a reasonably leveled horizon to start with.  Run the Stabilize command, and after, level the horizon again, it will be applied on top of the stabilization. During the Stabilization scan, it may be a good idea to switch off the Optical Flow parameter toggle. Normally It would likely make little difference and would slow down the scan. Stabilization should be normally run after aligning your scene and matching the colors. Important Note: This functionality will not be included in the Evaluation Version until the final release is done. ------------------------------------------------------- MAINTENANCE RELEASE Fixed bugs:
  • 1583 Crash if a preset is drag & dropped twice
  • 1572 Refresh issue after stabilizing a sequence
  • 1534 Time bar right click works frequently on second try only
  • 1581 Crash when importing more than 32 cameras
  • 1592 Autosave could crash MistikaVR. This may explain some crashes during longer renders, or when MistikaVR was left unused for a while.
  •   1582 Now the path is correct when you save sequence for the first time
  • 1534 Set dragged flag only in drag event.
  • 1581 Fix to compile ReorderKandao on OSX
Improvements:
  • Max number of cameras increased to 64
  • OZO preset updated: more precise lens distortion, cleaner back seam in stereo.
  • iZugar Z4XL preset added.
  • ZCam K1Pro preset added.
 
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jamie.clay.007 Newbie

jamie.clay.007

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"This functionality will not be included in the Evaluation Version until the final release is done." Why?  It's not like the evaluation version can render  (not to mention it would generate fewer support messages of people not finding the feature) I'm MOSTLY interested in this feature.  I want to see how well it can 'fix' footage where the camera movement is extreme.   If it can, I'll be inclined to actually invest in the software. But maybe it can't.   Check out this footage and tell me if you think you can stabilize it.   It's from a cheap VR camera on a rocket.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=929y3qqGTaA

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agonzalez@sgo.es Newbie

agonzalez@sgo.es

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@jamie.clay.007 I am sorry, but there are a few simple reasons why we do this: as current clients, they have a really close communication with us, helping with the development of new features, with testing, etc. And because they are a "close" group, is easier to explain that a beta feature can fail or have bugs (because it's in beta). It is as well a reward for their compromise with us, make them participate in the development of Mistika VR. With the evaluation version, we try to offer the best possible experience. If we release beta features in the evaluation version and something fails, we can make a really bad first impression of Mistika technology, and we want to avoid this as much as possible. That's the reason why we only include final features in the Evaluation version. I hope you understand this. About your example, I don't think we can stabilize it. To be honest, I don't think there is a software out there that can do it, but this is a personal opinion and I may be wrong. The camera movement is extreme and the rotation of the camera is incredibly fast, making the track impossible. Again, I may be wrong, but I don't know of any stabilization system that you can use and expect that it will stabilize the horizon, the rotation and the shaking of the camera. As an operator, I will be very surprised if a software can achieve this. Maybe you can try to manually soft the movement, and then apply an automatic stabilization system, but it's a very difficult task in this particular case.  

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jamie.clay.007 Newbie

jamie.clay.007

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FWIW - I think  you shouldn't allow eval customers to download and run the Beta, no?   If your concern is the best eval experience, that's the last thing you should do. Also FWIW I've worked with many companies over the years helping them bring products to market (3dsMax, After Effects) and never known a beta to be crippled feature wise.  (or Evals that don't render with a watermark but hey, what do I know?)   You would be best to restrict Evals to only shipping product and to fully enable your beta.  (again, what do I know?)  :) I'm pretty convinced that the stabilization solution can be done in software  as  I actually reduced a lot of the spin 'by hand' using After Effects.  It's tedious but it can be done.   Here's the manual example after only an hour or so - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI5l_bPAmrI Just think, if you guys could stabilize THIS difficult of a shot, what kind of buzz you would get. :)

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agonzalez@sgo.es Newbie

agonzalez@sgo.es

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@jamie.clay.007 If we release a beta as an evaluation version, is because we are pretty convinced that it works almost as a a release, so people is not going to get any major problems (as Adobe or Autodesk do). But sometimes there are some features that are still in development that we prefer to keep in close betas (with our customers in this case) until we are satisfied with the results. And in general we work different compared with Autodesk or Adobe, they normally make a big release per year (with new features) and then update the software with bug fixes over the year. We don't, we release new versions with new features almost every month or two months, so sometimes we need to keep some features in close betas because we need a bit more time to develop them. But anyway, in this particular shot the stabilization can be done once you help the software manually. As a user I've tried to do it automatically with several softwares, including Mistika VR of course, and none of them is able to do it. It helps a lot if you first try to soft the movement by yourself, which makes sense, because as a human, is much easier for us to understand the movement than a machine, and in this case is really important to help the software, even if it requires a big amount of time. If you are able to find a software that can do it automatically, I will be very pleased to see the results and see how can we improve Mistika VR. We always try to make our software better, so it will be great!  

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jamie.clay.007 Newbie

jamie.clay.007

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If I can find something else that can track a shot like this, then I'll be sure to let you know.  Maybe I'll contact Adobe to get it into the next After Effects as spherical tracking seems like a natural evolution in this technology.    There are already tools to animate the rotation and position of the VR sphere and all the data is visible to be tracked, it's not like the data is moving from view or pixel tracking that new of tech. So, give your developers a challenge,  stabilize my rocket footage and be first to market with it! Otherwise, thank you for listening!

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Ryan Moore Newbie

Ryan Moore

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Hi, We're trying to use the Stabilize feature, but the button is not showing up after we install the new update. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, and it still hasn't appeared. I'm a paying customer, so I'm not sure eval software. What am I doing wrong? See attached. [attachment file=41967] Thank you! :)

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