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<p>This is totally frustrating as the new timeline doesn't allow the
same multitrack compositing as the old does. Things that worked
for several years in Kdenlive cannot be done anymore in 19.04.
Nada. Don't work. And this is not just an "import problem", it
also happens when you create the same project anew in 19.04. What
reason is there to completely change the track compositing
mechanics during refactoring? Please give me some clue why things
get completely broken for what is called the new "stable 19.04"
Kdenlive.<br>
</p>
<p>Alas, here's what is happing; project is attached. And no, this
ain't a superficial and artificial project to annoy devs. This is
the simplified and neutered version of what I was doing in many of
my daytime company-internal video projects. And I have to admit
that there's now almost no day where I don't seriously consider
throwing the towel and shelling out money for a commercial video
editor for Linux. It's not that I haven't raised several important
issues during the refactor branch with existing project. All I got
was "oh, importing existing projects isn't of any importance to
us". Well, you could have used that to quickly gather tons of
real-world tests instead of a small set of artifical unit tests.
And to add more insult, I get told during café that my Kubuntu
disco OS setup "must be special" when things break, so it's
obviously my fault.<br>
</p>
<p>I already experienced a rough transit during those days back of
0.9x to 1.0/15.xx -- and I invested lot of patience as did JBM
with losts of real-world examples that broke during transition,
the same bugs getting squashed and returning multiple times during
transit. So, I understand how difficult such transits are. And I
perfectly understand JBM and the other devs to be done with such
difficult and exhausting transitions as a major refactoring. Been
there, lived through that. But there was a different attitude
then.<br>
</p>
<p>What, to my personal experience, is different this time is that I
experience more or less an attitude getting more and more
bordering on what feels to me like "get off my lawn". Not least
reaching peak in that ugly "importing existing project isn't of
any importance yet" some weeks ago when I raised my issues.
Honestly, I don't feel any need to file Kdenlive gitlab issues
after that treatment even up to the café. I know from my daytime
job the importance to take user feedback and bug reports very
seriously, more so when refactoring a product that worked
sufficiently good for the existing user base (notwithstanding that
it needs refactoring nevertheless).<br>
</p>
<p>Just for the record, I'm also doing development during my
daytime, to verify my architectural suggestions, so prototype
novel ideas, and to keep knowing what's like in a rapidly changing
world of software. I'm not talking ex cathedra, I leave that to
others.<br>
</p>
<p>***<br>
</p>
<p>This is the minified example of a typical track compositing I use
very often. Track compositing is set to "high quality". So, some
video "background" on V1 (to use new terminology). I then need to
focus viewers on a certain area in this background video by
darkening the unimportant parts in the video: using a full-frame
gray matte on V2, from which I cut out the region of visual focus
using a "cutout title clip" on V3. V3->V2 is
composite&transform with "destination out".<br>
</p>
<p><img src="cid:part1.F4BC2CB5.7E49E4DF@gmx.net" alt=""></p>
<p>The V2->V1 composite&transform is just for a fade in with
an alpha ramp from 0% to 100%.<br>
</p>
<p>Now, on top of this is some text with a title bar, on V5 and V4
respectively. V5 and V4 each get faded in with 0%->100%, and
composited onto V1, the bottommost background/video track. As you
can see here, this works as expected: the title and its bar slowly
fade in, and also the matte with its cutout also correctly fades
in. Also, at the end of the transitions for V5 and V4, the text
and its title bar correctly reach 100%. Keep this in mind for
comparison with the new refactored behavior.<br>
</p>
<p>alpha 50% <img src="cid:part2.C93F69CC.76E996F2@gmx.net" alt=""
width="205" height="118"><br>
</p>
<p>alpha 100% <img src="cid:part3.978CCCD4.1B910205@gmx.net" alt=""
width="205" height="118"></p>
<p>So, no rocket science here. Just plain multi-track compositing to
get things done.<br>
</p>
<p>Head over to 19.04, same project loaded; but you achieve the same
results when you recreate from scratch. It doesn't look like an
import issue, and in fact I've found out when working on a fresh
19.04 project from scratch.<br>
</p>
<p><img src="cid:part4.9F8F375D.6E96969C@gmx.net" alt=""></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>alpha 50% <img src="cid:part5.74EFA2A2.4BF18CB6@gmx.net" alt=""
width="168" height="95"> ... seems to like fine on a first
glimpse, but the compositing is already different, so compare the
last frame of the fade in c&t.<br>
</p>
<p>alpha 100% <img src="cid:part6.329F910C.6A27E62F@gmx.net" alt=""
width="181" height="102"> ... no, this doesn't make sense at
all.</p>
<p>First frame after the V4/V5 transitions ended: <img
src="cid:part7.7E23BDC3.09C0BEB4@gmx.net" alt="" width="189"
height="107"> ... this is correct, so the previous frame should
have (almost) reached this.<br>
</p>
<p>I've tried this on this day's <a
href="https://binary-factory.kde.org/job/Kdenlive_Nightly_Appimage_Build/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/kdenlive-19.04.1-dfe2c78-x86_64.appimage">kdenlive-19.04.1-dfe2c78-x86_64.appimage</a>.<br>
</p>
<p>So why did you change multitrack timeline compositing? What
compelling reason is there to do so? And what sense does it make
considering my example showing that the explicit transitions
behave totally different from the implicit transitions, as opposed
to behavior of the long-term stable Kdenlive series?</p>
<p>A stopgap measure is to throw in lots of unnecessary transitions
to basically override the implicit transitions almost everywhere.
But seriously, that cannot be a rationale for user experience for
a refactored product, can it?<br>
</p>
<p>Harald</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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