We are very happy to announce a New Release of Impress!
What’s new in 8.6.1.14
Background Recording Mode
Allows users to Record a pipeline output in the background (outside Impress) as a job. Though this job will use system resources from your system, at the same time you can continue working in Impress trying-out variations of your pipeline or totally different strategies for enhancing the media file while the job runs in parallel.
A Job's recording time is not limited by origin's playback-speed, so if you have a 15-minute media file you would like to Filter and Record, depending on your pipeline and your system, your Job Recording may finish faster than a real-time recording inside Impress. (Because in the background the Recording speed can be faster.)
CUDA/GPU operations remain available for the inside-Impress operations so you can continue your work and quickly navigate your Timeline. The background Recordings Jobs will only use CPU.
[Gif] Demo of switching Recording Mode to Background Mode and initiating such a Recording. (Gif loops thrice.)
Automated Recordings
Besides the known image snapshots and video recordings, you can take fusion recordings of Frame Averaging Filter or the Super Resolution Filter. These filters combine several frames into one 'fused' image.
You can automate the creation of the Fusion Image End-Result.
You can automate the creation of the Fusion Recording of the filter combining the frames.
[Gif] Using the Recording Options Guide to take an end-result snapshot of a Frame Averaging filter which buffers multiple frames. The Job ran outside Impress. (Gif loops thrice.)
Quickly make Recordings of your pipeline in-app or as job.
Use the Thumb's context menu and start recording from the thumb to the outpoint.
Use the Recording's More button and start recording from the in- to the outpoint.
Improved Visibility & Accessibility of Alternative Recording Options
Quickly record your video to a folder-album of images.
TIFF, JPG, etc.
Quickly change your preferred Video Format.
Quickly change your preferred Snapshot File type.
[Gifs] Showcasing altering Snapshot's File Type and taking two Snapshots (BMP and TIF) which will appear in the MediaBin as usual as child-files. (Gifs loop thrice.)
Visibility of Recording Implications of your chosen file formats and source file.
The Recording Section now showcases the Pixel-conversion-journey that is happening to the file when you record. This will adapt to your input, your work-setting, as well as your output-settings.
[Screenshot] Example of Pixel Journey for Video and Snapshot output.
Impress can display the Pixelformat of the source-file allowing you to identify potential quality-impacting data-reduction techniques like chroma sub-sampling used in certain Pixelformats.
Example: your source file has incoming Pixelformat YUV420p, though Impress will record to Bgr24, data that does not exist in source file, cannot be manifested by Impress; it can only represent or combine existing information.
Example: you were given different recording-versions of the same event and need to quickly identify the file with the best chance for enhancement. Besides file size, filetype and codec, the used Pixelformat will inform you about this aspect of the quality of each version. If one is YUV444 and another is in YUV420p with the same resolution, the first will contain more data to calculate with.
Compression state of video recording output.
Impress defaults to the highest quality output level, however, previously offered via settings, for reasons like preliminary, fast or compatible sharing, one may choose to change the output format or type that uses compression. (Not new.)
Impress will now provide you with glancing information if your chosen video output format uses compression so that you are aware that your recording will be compressed. (New.)
Boths recording buttons will show the compression icon when relevant.
To prepare for future basic Audio support, Impress' Video Recording Technology has been updated to become compatible with an audio channel in the future. (Back-end infrastructure update mentioned for completeness.)
Raw image support: Importing of a large number of formats directly, not depending on the presence of a Windows image decoder. The raw pixel information, typically 10-16 bits per colour channel is converted directly into the internal pixel formats (32 or 64 bits per colour channel). Supported formats are:
(Adobe) Digital Negative: DNG
Canon: CR2, CR3, CRW
Fujifilm: RAF
Hasselblad: 3FR, FFF
Kodak: DCR, KDC, RAW
Leaf: MOS
Leica: RAW, RWL
Minolta: MDC, MRW
Nikon: NEF, NRW
Olympus: ORF, ORI
Panasonic: RW2, RAW
Pentax: PEF, RAW
Phase One: IIQ
Samsung: SRW
Sigma: X3F
Sony: ARQ, ARW, SRF
Adding the Frame Selection filter that allows for individual frame (de)selection.
[Screenshot] New Frame Selection Filter which can be used to skip duplicate or corrupted frames for downstream filters in pipeline.
Saving of intermediate filtering as a ‘Foclar Raw Image’ in RGB-96bit or RGB-192-bit pixel format. This is equal to the internal pixel format, thus no quality is lost. Limitation is that the format is an internal format and can only be loaded by Impress.
Version 12.6.0 of the CUDA Toolkit is now used. (Download it from Nvidia if you want to use GPU acceleration for supported filters.)
Heads-up: Microsoft and/or Nvidia is shrinking the time window of compatibility between Microsoft development environment and the toolkit, this will cause CUDA needing to be updated more often.
What’s improved
System Feedback
Media Bin File Information Pop-up via context-menu.
['Feedforward'] Record Buttons will now always display in what File Type (Snapshot) or File Format (Recording) one is about to Record when using default buttons.
System Performance
Aforementioned Foclar Raw Image intermediate output.
System General Feature Expansion
Updated pixel information in the corresponding status bar popup.
Video file (re-)indexing can manually be started from the media bin item's context menu.
Aforementioned Accessibility of Alternative Recording Options.
"View Media" outside Impress via Media Bin item's context-menu.
"Open location" outside Impress via Media Bin item's context-menu.
What’s fixed
Subtitle display was fixed.
Starting Corepro from Impress Pro fixed.
The HTML album page with links to frame images is fixed. (When recording frames to Album.)
Perpetual license startup issue fixed.
Previous: What's new since 8.5.0.0
File Conversion:
Video files can be converted to an uncompressed AVI file via the media bin item's context menu.
A video file can now also be partially converted to uncompressed AVI via the media bin item's context menu using the in- and outpoint as range for the partial conversion.
FFMS: Update of library from 3.0.1.0 to version 3.1.1.0.
Added 'Auto recovery' setting (Settings\Filtering) for acceleration regarding CUDA errors. When these CUDA errors occur a restart of Impress is required (for now) so that CUDA will become responsive again. This new feature automatically switches the filtering to the CPU to at least continue filtering. The accelerator GPU will be restored after the next restart of Impress. (Report CUDA errors/crashes experiences here.)
The Super Resolution filter has been extended with a registration plot showing the sub-pixel displacements of the registered frames used for the super resolution fusion stage. If multiple frames result in a Registration Plot with distributed points (on both axis) than the one may expect a better interpolation result than a condensed Plot. This indicator will aid users in determining if it is likely that information can be won from interpolating the frames. (Simplified speech: a little bit of movement: more information can be won; no movement: no extra information to be won.)
Screenshot of the Sub-pixel Plot (right-bottom) in Super Resolution detail window. (FYI: The right image is showing interpolated result based on video source file.)
Previous: What is improved
System General Feature Expansion
Hybrid deblock:
The Block Offset calculation has been improved. This automatic calculation will now display the certainty value (percentage) indicating how good the location of the Grid Offset of the compression blocks could be determined.
In the newly added manual mode (Automatic = Off) the offsets can be set by the operator to further tweak the filter result.
User Performance Facilitation
Extra guidance information is added to the Track tab page of the stabilization and Super Resolution filters, which shows the correlation landscape.
Extra guidance information is added to the Power Spectrum tab page of the deblur filters, which can be used for optimization of noise reduction.
Timeline Scaling:
The Time(line) Scale and Offset of the Timeline Control are restored when reloading a video file, so the user can quickly continue where they left off.
A zone option button (three dots) is added to the time scaling area with the options:
Reset time scaling.
Scroll to the thumb (available if scaling is active).
Set the scale to focus on the in- and outpoint range.
Screenshot of the Timeline Zoom control's Scaling options.
Visual updates
New layout of application popups
Previous: What’s fixed
Fixing the (single precision) float implementation of the Hybrid deblock filter.
Fixing missing index in converted media files in the media bin.
Previous: What’s new since 8.4.0.7
CUDA accelerated version of the Hybrid deblock filter. (Also speed and implementation improvements have been made to the CPU variant of the filter.)
Version 12.3 of the CUDA Toolkit is now used. (Download and install it from our User Portal or Nvidia if you want to us it.)
New basic instructions and tips in bottom right section of filter detail windows.
New buttons to the status bar to inform and easily control through popup windows:
Internal pixel format.
Render engine.
Accelerator used.
Screenshot: 3 Status Bar controls opened.
Previous: What is improved
System Feedback
When removing key frames, one has to confirm to protect the work of setting the key frame positions.
Warning added, if certain hotkeys are selected for keyboard settings that cause focus problems.
Error messages are added if wrong or double hotkey settings are selected.
System Performance
Speed and implementation improvements of CPU Hybrid deblock filter.
System General Feature Expansion
Adding statistics to pipet tools Squash, and Equal Luminance and colour.
In Spline mode the shape stays stationary before the first and after the last key frame position.
Visual updates
Adding icons to all main menu items and detail window for better recognizability.
User Performance Facilitation
The ‘Open Case’ menu option now opens the case selection window versus the standard windows open dialog.
Deselection of annotation shapes can now be accomplished by clicking on the image canvas (the area surrounding the image).
Previous: What’s fixed
Fixing the hotkeys for move next and move previous. These were by default Left Arrow and Right Arrow. These default values caused focus problems when used. Now the ALT + Left Arrow and ALT + Right Arrow are the default values if not changed by user.
When reloading a pipeline that contains one of the filters: Super Resolution, Stabilization, Frame Averaging or Temporal Smoothing, the video is automatically jumped back to the reference frame of the filter to avoid loading errors. To reach the final result of the previous session one has to play back to the previous location of the video file.
After reconnection to the current media file, needed for some settings no longer launches a blocking dialog, but an automatically closing popup window.
Fixing high CPU usage during idle time.
Fixing initialization errors of the Super Resolution filter.
Saving the main display subtitle settings has been fixed.
Recent cases menu items are available again.
Removing unnecessary network timeouts at application startup.
When you have any questions or feedback for us, please reach out to us, we are happy to answer any questions or assist you when needed.
![[Embedded screenshot showcasing Pixel Journey]](https://imagedemo.foclar.com/fe2674cc50fa85dae39b3e9db56e0b72afe91dd244ebec793989a09a9f2bf2af/PixelJourney_v1.png "Screenshot Pixel Journey 🤯😉")
