Frozen Death Knight

Downloaded the latest patch to see if this problem had been addressed yet, but I noticed that it was still present. The Navigator panel also gets affected by this bug as well. Here's a video demonstration as well as the file where I encountered this rendering bug. Desktop 2021.01.23 - 00.44.51.01.mp4 Designer 1.9 Testing.afdesign

Pretty sure the program was still on when I copied it. Can try again. Log.txt Don't know if it makes any difference, but I tried rendering out a new HEVC video before I copied the log again. Weirdly enough the Date Modified clock didn't seem to update for Log.txt after I did multiple things afterwards. Edit: The log seems to have updated after I closed the program, so here's the latest version below. Log.txt

Just did. Didn't work. Have to wait till the devs figure out what's wrong on my end. ^^

Just purchased the same codec and I am still getting 0-byte files. Something seems very off here. The problem was likely solved on your end since I recall you saying you had the "N" version of Windows in some other thread, so this HEVC codec solved your issue but not mine. Also, I was afraid of that. Video quality from the rendering has a very low bit rate which creates really ugly artefacts. Until more settings are allowed to be changed that improve bit rate in particular it will be hard to find practical use of this new feature.

Nope, I get the same results as you man. 0-byte files all over the place. The strange part is that rendering takes about the same time as using H.256, so something must be happening. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Mark Ingram This file? Log.txt

@Mark Ingram Apparently I have something like that already installed when I tried to check other versions of that online. However, I only end up with files like these. The format should be supported by my VLC player, but I only get errors when opening the file. This video is broken also when I upload it to this website. More value practicing 6.mp4

Are you able to replicate the Z-key bug? If you press Z the controls for your mouse/tablet pen change drastically from what you wrote down here. At least it does on my end.

Anyway, some feedback time! Right now the zoom values are inconsistent in that it is not possible to get 100% zoom with regular scrolling consistently. Apparently changing export size of your final image affects the % values for your zoom. When I typed in 2k in height for one project the zoom values became even so I could get 100% zoom values, but when I changed the values some more the base % values became uneven again, which makes you unable to get the desired 100% zoom value to check for any potential rendering artefacts (unless you break the controls by pressing "Z" on the keyboard which unlocks the values completely by zooming in every 1 percent instead of ever 10 percent like it is now). Another piece of feedback I want to give is in regards to the lack of feedback on the Preview window when the program begins rendering based on settings changed for a specific file format. When you switch between file formats you get this swirly loading bar at the bottom of the window, which is really nice, but when you do minor edits that can take a while for a specific file format (i.e. changing settings like Resample, Size, etc.) the only feedback you get that the preview is rendering is in a small section called Estimated File Size which says "Calculating...". I would honestly like it if the swirly bar at the bottom appeared in those cases as well, since at first I got very confused when I tried different Resample settings and nothing seemed to happen until I saw that small "Calculating..." text, which I think is inconsistent with the UI that has been created when switching file formats. P.S. I tried to upload a video of these problems, but got error -200 on the forums.

It works the way it is intended. As I mentioned in my preview feedback post about the feature, having the window close for file formats with no preview seemed like one solution to one of the problems plaguing the UI, and right now it works just fine on my end. Another thing that works really well is the Preview window remembering its placement and window size when closing down and opening, which is a much appreciated feature. I hope this gets added for other tools and features in the future.

@ChristiduToit I think a simpler solution is to just simply allow you to put markers directly in the History panel. For one, there is no need to create a small preview, since seeing the full sized version of the project is already available and moving back and forward in your History is already very fast. Not to mention there is pretty much no danger of ever losing progress by doing accidental edits when going back on the timeline because of branched history states, so doing it this way allows you all the benefits of Affinity's pretty solid history undo/redo system with pretty much no downsides to decide where to begin and end your render. As long as you add two graphical markers for "start" and "end" in the History panel and a toggable option in Export Timelapse which allows you to use those markers when rendering, it will be feature complete as farm as I'm concerned.

@Mark Ingram I tried doing this since HEVC keeps creating corrupt video files when rendering, but apparently this Media Feature Pack option is not available on regular Windows 10 that I am running (it has no "N" in the name). I do have Windows Media Player installed on that list, which I guess contains these features? Or should I manually download the Media Feature Pack online to make HEVC work? Because right now it is not even available when I search stuff on the list at all.

Hm, it seems like this "feature" could be considered a bug? Apparently this only activates if you press Z, which allows you to zoom freely on the canvas by breaking the regular controls like ctrl+Scroll Wheel to zoom and R click to pan the view. Was able to replicate this every time by pressing Z and then reset the bug by closing the Preview window and opening it by clicking Preview... again. Desktop 2021.01.21 - 05.26.45.01.mp4 Though, to be honest, I kind of like this kind of zoom feature with whole percentages for smooth transitions, and I would like to see it available by holding down ctrl+Mid click, which would allow you to zoom with tablet pens that have side buttons. Technically you can with Scrool Wheel type of settings, but it is nowhere as smooth as this. Hope it doesn't get fully removed and instead becomes just another option to zoom.

I got to say, zooming feels super nice with these controls. Very smooth. Makes me wish I was able to zoom in and out like this without the regular zoom cap (i.e. getting stuck at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% zoom with the current Zoom button) by holding down just Mid click when doing regular editing. Maybe add these zoom controls as ctrl+Mid click (by holding down) as to not interfere with Mid click to pan the canvas? Would feel very nice especially with tablet pen.

Agreed on all points. I would also like to add that the History panel should also allow you to choose where you want your recording to start and end. I think it just makes sense that you should be able to cut out unwanted pieces of your video rather than having to resort to using a video editor. Also makes rendering videos faster since you don't have to render out the entire timeline every time, especially when you are still trying out different rendering settings. Another thing I wish was improved was the zoom in feature for every history state. I have noticed that when drawing that the zoom feature zooms in super close to the canvas when you make smaller brush strokes, which often makes it impossible to get a good grasp of your overall progress of your timelapse. This is especially noticeable when you are using Artboards, which can make you jump to multiple canvases without having any idea what is going on based on the recording. If you were able to control how far the zoom actually zoomed in, I could see this feature being a lot more useable, but as of now I am getting really unreadable videos with this feature because of the current zoom levels for smaller strokes. Without this fixed the recording feature is not of much use on very large canvases and projects with multiple Artboards, since having the camera follow your history workflow with some zoom makes those types of timelapse videos a lot more appealing to look at and easier to follow. P.S. I have been trying to upload a video file showing the problem of the zoom being too close to the canvas, but I keep getting error -200. Finally, I would like it if we could improve the bit rate rendering of the videos. I have noticed a lot of low bit rate rendering artefacts which are especially visible when you zoom around the canvas with the previously mentioned feature. I'm on Windows right now so I don't know if this applies to Mac, but my VLC player simply refuses to play any video I have rendered with HEVC. Seems like the format creates corrupt files, so I don't know if that would help improve the video quality to remove the bit rate artefacts.