SliceX

Coremelt (Roger) has been more than responsive regarding the beta. I don't see what the Facebook fuzz is about? I'm sure you get email from them soon if you already have XSlice or have sent them email.

No, I was referring to the comments in this thread. It was my understanding that the beta was free for all to test, not just preexisting purchasers. Please correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption... Then we were told that the only way to test the beta was to sign in thru facebook, which I declined. So another FCP.co member Paurray offered to use his facebook account to drop them a line & ask if I could try the beta plugin. Having not heard back from anyone on the issue, I have no idea if they received Paurray's email, or what's happening. Thus my comment was just a general grumble on having to use facebook for anything (commenting here at FCP.co, or signing up for a beta test on a plugin).

Hope that clarifies.

Perhaps, in light of your suggestion, if by the end of tomorrow's business day, I haven't heard anything I'll send them an email myself.

Thanks

I also grumble about FB. It is something that TrixTrax9000 and I have in common. FB is the privatization of the internet! It is like a shopping mall where every thing looks squeaky clean. Anyone ever read the rules and regulations at the entrance of a shopping mall? You are not aloud to fart in there. Yawning loudly.

@ TrixTrax9000, I will PM you rogers email in case you do not have it. Definitely did send CoreMelt a message over F***Book. best Paul.

paurray wrote: I also grumble about FB. It is something that TrixTrax9000 and I have in common. FB is the privatization of the internet! It is like a shopping mall where every thing looks squeaky clean. Anyone ever read the rules and regulations at the entrance of a shopping mall? You are not aloud to fart in there. Yawning loudly.



Precisely paurray.

I just got my email from Coremelt for the releases. No FB involved since this is release and not beta.

I got a e mail this evening. Already installed Slice X with Mocha. No FB involved. Some crashes unfortunately but first impression is very good!

Ok, it sounds like the beta trial is finished (facebook or not), so now they're into the actual release, they probably don't need any more beta testers....


## EDIT ##

Just heard back from Roger at Coremelt, they're getting everything ready for their release & are very busy, as you can well imagine. He has graciously accommodated my request, but suggested we wait with our reviews until the press release is sent out probably this Thursday.

If you're having any troubles, here is some additional info.

==
For best performance with SliceX Mocha we recommend the following:

* Quadcore i7 Mac OS X system with 8GB of RAM or more
* FInal Cut Pro X 10.0.8
* Mac OS X 10.8.3
* Switch off background rendering in FCP X preferences and instead render the timeline using ctrl-r when needed.
• Intel HD3000 graphics is not supported. All other graphics cards supported by FCP X are supported.

SliceX powered by Mocha will work with earlier versions of Mac OS X and FCP X but you may see slower performance due to improvements Apple has made in recent updates.

A tutorial video covering usage of the plugin is here:
vzaar.com/videos/1237443

==

Hope that helps

No one knows about upgrade pricing yet? Couldn't find it on their website.

CoreMelt is asking reviews and details to be withheld until the official release announcement, which is soon.

We emailed people that pre-ordered a special download link today. General public release is still a day or so away.

Any problems please send them direct to us at support at coremelt dot com

ESPECIALLY if you get a crash, please do copy paste the crash report and email it to us, we will do our best to look at every single one in order to improve the product.

Upgrade Pricing is $79 for those than purchased SliceX previously ($149 Full retail price)

I'm really looking forward to the new version of SliceX but am slightly disappointed at the upgrade price which leaves existing users paying $29 more than new users who were able to take advantage of the special NAB offer of $99.

Existing users were not included in the NAB offer and with an original purchase price of $50 + $79 upgrade that makes $129 against the full price of $149.

Specials are a tricky thing, whenever we do one we make some people unhappy. We hope that once you use the product you will agree its worth the price and you still are getting a reduction off full price for new customers after the NAB special.

Existing customers like to feel they are special too.

Don't worry I'm sure we will all be upgrading because it's great software.

I agree with Mark. Being a happy user of old SliceX I was much looking forward to your new product. Had there been a chance I would have pre-ordered. There wasn't.

I understand it's hard to make everyone happy but I feel slightly disappointed.

Pre-order would have been more expensive than upgrading for existing users.

Sorry for not being precise. Let's say "special pre-order conditions for existing customers".

When's it available for upgrades? Must have it!

I’m new to SliceX, having pre-purchased the Mocha version but not bothered installing the Mocha-less version until Mocha was ready. I finally gave the full version a whirl yesterday.

Impressions:
1. Holy cow! This thing works stupidly fast! I have a retina MBP (8gb RAM, 2.6 gHz quad core). The process plays out before me at, I don’t know, say 1/3 of normal play speed?!
2. Blur is what throws it off, at least in my test where I was trying to track my son’s toy lightsaber swings. The lightsaber tracks super well, it was only during swings (thin object that becomes a color blur) that the track was lost. But when used for objects in focus the needed corrections are minimal. Bottom line is it really does work like the promo videos, which is to say it is mind blowing!

Here is what I’ve been doing:
First I find a good frame which has the object that I wish to track is clear as possible. In that frame, I make an outline of the object to be tracked using one of the shape tools. Then I track forward and immediately press the stop tracking button so I can assess the quality of the track immediately (correct it before it deviates too much). I use shift-left arrow to review the track in 10-frame increments. When I find the frame where the track started to deviate I manually drag a few points of the shape to make it conform to the object again. *Making this manual correction automatically propagates this new “fix” to the frames that had already been tracked (before I pressed the stop tracking button), no need to re-track again from the frame you adjusted the shape.

*This is my impression but I would like confirmation from Roger.

During this review process I will eventually reach the frame where I stopped tracking. I can tell I reached the end of the track because when I go one more frame forward the shape does not follow the object any more. At that point I go back one frame, press the track forward button again, and repeat the process.

I have a few questions:
1. In a specific portion of my toy lightsaber shot it happens that when I manually adjust the shape (thereby creating a keyframe) the “fix” that propagates to the shots will that had already been tracked is not a “fix” at all. Well if fixes a bunch of frames, but it also ruins an even larger quantity of frames that up to that point had a perfect track. Am I doing something wrong?
2. When re-adjusting the shape to an object, does it make a difference if I drag some points vs. scaling the whole shape to achieve the same effect? Does the Mocha algorithm pay more attention to scaling if I made a correction by scaling the entire shape instead of dragging points?
3. Is there a way to make the preview window fullscreen? I have only one monitor. When I maximize it FCPX goes automatically into play mode and I can’t edit shapes and the tracking buttons don’t show up. It’s very annoying having to continually re-size the different windows and having to zoom in and out to use SliceX.
4. I could not find a way to completely delete a mask other than deleting the entire effect. I can delete points by option-clicking but I can’t delete the entire shape. Must I really delete the entire effect if I want to start a mask from scratch?
5. I will re-shoot my lightsaber test at 120fps with a GoPro 3. I expect the blur de be drastically reduced, but this would quintuple the amount of frames I need to look at! So how do I go from 120fps to 24fps? How do I tell FCPX to delete 80% of the frames but leave every 5th frame so I can shoot at 120 fps but have 24 fps in the timeline?

Thanks.

I seem to be getting very poor performance and crashes (yes emailed Roger) I'm testing on a i7 MBP 16GB Ram and using a G-Raid TB drive. Tracking is tacking a long time.
Can't be to do with the external G-Raid?

Marc Lucas wrote: I seem to be getting very poor performance and crashes (yes emailed Roger) I'm testing on a i7 MBP 16GB Ram and using a G-Raid TB drive. Tracking is tacking a long time.
Can't be to do with the external G-Raid?

I’m working directly from the internal SSD drive and the tracking speed is extremely fast. Zero crashes so far. I sometimes get lag when trying to select the points on a shape, but that’s all. I have less RAM than you but most likely better GPU & CPU. My Mocha SliceX was a clean install. I did not have any SliceX version installed before this one. Maybe that’s a variable to be explored?