Some observations and suggestions

Legacy Software mocha
#1

Hi Guys,

Very impressed with Mocha’s planar tracker. A good investment for the future. However, Mocha is very sluggish and crashes a lot. Yesterday, while working on 720x576 PAL sequence of 250 frames, I had 15 crashes! Most of them happening while tweaking Bezier points and zooming/panning in the sequence.

A thing a noticed is that it can be very difficult to see the difference between the actual point and the tangent handles. Making the point a circle and the tangents square, would make things easier to see.

To make navigating easier, it would be nice to have zooming under the RMB, as panning is under the MMB. This will also eliminate the need to press F to enable the select tool again.

I use the timeline a lot to scrub through my sequence, but the timeline is very small as is the handle of the playhead; could the size be increased. Furthermore, it seems difficult to place the playhead on a keyframe using scrubbing.

Finally, could you add a nudge tool for bezier points, to make tweaking your edges easier? I would suggest using the numeric keypad (2, 4, 6, 8 for down, left, right, up and 1, 3, 7 and 9 for diagonal movement in subpixel increments, like in 3D Equalizer).

Hope this will help improve the software.

Best regards,

Ted

#2

First of all thank you very much for these suggestions let me address them one by 1

—Quote (Originally by Question 1)—
Hi Guys,

Very impressed with Mocha’s planar tracker. A good investment for the future. However, Mocha is very sluggish and crashes a lot. Yesterday, while working on 720x576 PAL sequence of 250 frames, I had 15 crashes! Most of them happening while tweaking Bezier points and zooming/panning in the sequence.

—End Quote—

We are continually striving to improve the quality of Mocha as well as the stability. The next few bug releases will have particular emphasis on improving stability, we are aware that the Mac (in particular the PPC) is most tentative of our platforms: and is something we are adderssing.

—Quote (Originally by Question 2,3,4)—

A thing a noticed is that it can be very difficult to see the difference between the actual point and the tangent handles. Making the point a circle and the tangents square, would make things easier to see.

To make navigating easier, it would be nice to have zooming under the RMB, as panning is under the MMB. This will also eliminate the need to press F to enable the select tool again.

I use the timeline a lot to scrub through my sequence, but the timeline is very small as is the handle of the playhead; could the size be increased. Furthermore, it seems difficult to place the playhead on a keyframe using scrubbing.

—End Quote—

Those are all valid points, we are looking to improve usabilty I will esculate these to the product manager. I especially like the point about identifying points from tangent handles (the simplist things are the easiest)

—Quote (Originally by Question 5)—

Finally, could you add a nudge tool for bezier points, to make tweaking your edges easier? I would suggest using the numeric keypad (2, 4, 6, 8 for down, left, right, up and 1, 3, 7 and 9 for diagonal movement in subpixel increments, like in 3D Equalizer).

—End Quote—

The nudge tool is something that we have been thinking about for some time. The nudge tool could mirror the functionality that you see in adjust track but for points on the bezier and X spline. Once again I will continue to esculate to the product owner in a push to improve usability.

Thank again for your comments. We do take them all on board when planning our releases: and we hope to take on these fine suggestions in the continious improvement of our software.

#3

Here, here…Those are all things I’d noticed - i concur!

All good points. Something like holding shift down whilst scrubbing, so it snaps to KFs would be a good fix - like in After Effects.

Also, I use a Wacom pen, so MMB and RMB are not an option for me, but how about the zoom function only bering actuive whilst the F key is held down, then reverting back to your current tool when you let go? Currently you have to go back to the toolbar to reselct the picker or whatever, which uses up valuable time!

Hopefully some of this stuff can be imnplemented in the next update…