OT: Scenalyzer, where to find documentation

farss wrote on 4/10/2004, 3:46 AM
As so many here have given it a good rap and I have a real need for one part of its functionality I've downloaded the trial version.
Seems to work fine but I cannot find any documentation, forums or on-line help.

All I need it for is to create a cliplist and print it out so the client has an index of what's on the 15 DV tapes he just gave me. It seems to come close to doing that but...

I'll stop, I HOPE there's a better place than here to get some answers, their website seems to offer nothing.

Comments

InterceptPoint wrote on 4/10/2004, 6:46 AM
The last time I checked there is no manual for Scenalyzer but you can get help from Andi at Scenalyzer by e-mail to info@scenalyzer.com if you buy the product and maybe even if you don't. It worked for me. I think Andi is the software guru behind Scenalyzer and he was very helpful with a few startup problems I had with the program.
farss wrote on 4/10/2004, 7:42 AM
Thanks,
at least I know I'm not going nuts or missing the bleeding obvious. It certainly seems to do all they say it'll do but I'm trying to push it a bit further. Maybe it will go that bit more and maybe it wont but without some form of documentation it's kinda hard to know.
riredale wrote on 4/10/2004, 8:14 AM
As you probably noticed, the only help comes in the form of popups when you hover over a particular button or area. I do agree that a "Getting started" document would help. Here are a couple of steps, in case you are not making much progress:

(1) Connect your DV camera to the system with firewire. ScenalyzerLive ("SCL") should note that the camera is connected, and display a collection of control buttons on the left.

(2) Create a location where you want to save your DV files. Click on the grey box at the top center, and navigate to where you want your files.

(3) Put in a name for your captured files in the white box at the bottom-right. Try "Test.avi" at first.

(4) Navigate to the place on the tape where you want to begin capture, and then hit the "Capture" button. SCL should begin controlling the camera, and you should see a "filmstrip" at the top as the video comes in. The left represents the beginning, and the right the end. The red slash marks at the bottom of the filmstrip represent the frames, seconds (a little bit above frames), and minutes (a little bit above seconds). When there are too many slash marks to show each one individually, they become a solid red line.

(5) SCL will treat each separate clip as a separate film strip, depending on your settings in the File/Options menus.

(6) When you want to stop, hit "Stop." You can look through captured clips by dragging through the film strips, or by clicking on a film strip and using the blue play buttons at the bottom center.

(7) You can do a Proof Sheet by telling SCL to create a tape index. Just double-click on the "Create a tape index" box in the lower-left. SCL will rewind the tape to the beginning, then put it in fast-forward and begin recording. Of course, the video you capture will be of poor quality, but you'll be able to then print out a sort of contact sheet that basically shows everything on that tape. You will also be able to select a particular clip and have SCL go back and bring that clip back in with normal quality.

Kind of a clever program, though it has its own personality. Hope this helps.
RalphM wrote on 4/10/2004, 8:22 AM
Richard, I've been using Scenalyzer since my Studio 8 days (think I saw you over there as well) and I never knew about Item 7 (Proof Sheet). Thanks for the tip.
farss wrote on 4/10/2004, 3:35 PM
It's certainly a clever program!
I'd pretty much figured all of that out. What I'm trying to do is log around 15 DV tapes, the Proof Sheet is the main thing I'm interested in but when I print it out the first filmstrip is OK but on subsequent ones the font drops to about 2pt making it impossible to read. Also as the tapes have continuous TC I'm having to rely on Optical Scene detection and I'd expect that doesn't work very well at all, over 50 minutes of video it found only 3 scenes.
Seems to me the font size problem maybe a bug, I'm printing on an Epson Stylus Photo 900 printer and I've got another program that has issues driving it as well.
The other possible way I could log these tapes is to just burn the captured "FF" avi to CD, it's watchable enough for a client to quickly see what's on the tape. An alternate approach would be to use the Time Lapse capability of SCLive to make say a 10x AVI, I could easily fit 10 of them onto a DVD for the client to view but that is going to take a lot more work and it'd be nice if I could burn in source TC but I cannot see anyway to do that.
But thanks for the help, I'll have a further play around with it tomorrow and also email them about the printer issue.
riredale wrote on 4/10/2004, 4:26 PM
Farss:

I don't know about the tiny text. I do know there is a menu item that lets you set the size of the text under each clip, but I don't know if that would help on the contact sheet. Look under File/Options/Cliplist.

Regarding clip splitting:

As noted, SCL can do it by looking at timecode (digital tape) or at a major scene change (analog tape). But you can also do it manually by just hitting the "split" button at the bottom, or the "enter" key on your keyboard. I had thought there was also a way for SCLl to do this automatically every x minutes, but I don't see anything on the menu for that.
riredale wrote on 4/10/2004, 4:35 PM
Oops--you're right. The subset clips have teeny-tiny text. It's probably a bug in SCL.
farss wrote on 4/10/2004, 6:04 PM
Glad you saw that!
So it's most likely not just a Epson driver issue.
Trust me, if there's something broken in ANYTHING I manage to find it in about 10 seconds of use. I still cannot understand why I'm not a Vegas 5 beta tester, oh yes I do, I'd be finding so many obscure bugs they'd never get the thing released.
BTW That's no comment on the Vegas team, just my personal 'curse'.
riredale wrote on 4/10/2004, 6:30 PM
BUT, come to think of it, why not just capture the entire tape to disk, and then print out a contact sheet of those clips? The text would appear normal then. The only downsides are that it would take longer to capture at normal speed, and you'd be using more disk space.
riredale wrote on 4/12/2004, 7:49 PM
Farss:

I sent an email to the writer of the ScenalyzerLive program regarding the strange text behavior on printing, and just got back this reply:

--------------------------
Hi Rich ,

Thanks for the info - the printing will be completely redone in the next
release!


Yours, Andi
---------------------------


Imagine getting a quick response like that from Microsoft!
InterceptPoint wrote on 4/12/2004, 8:23 PM
>>>I sent an email to the writer of the ScenalyzerLive program regarding the strange text behavior on printing, and just got back this reply:

I had exactly the same kind of response from Andi. It is really refreshing to e-mail the author of a piece of software you really like and get a personal response back in hours if not minutes.

You gotta love this guy.
kentwolf wrote on 4/12/2004, 11:10 PM
>>...I had exactly the same kind of response from Andi...

I received an e-mail from Bill Gates, same evening.

I asked a question about something having to do with his newspaper columns (10 years ago), and later that night, I received a reponse. It was an Ask Bill "something or another."

I know there's no way anyone else would answer his e-mail... No way. :)
farss wrote on 4/12/2004, 11:41 PM
Rich,
thanks for that. I had thought of capturing ALL of it but 15 hours of video is getting a bit much. The other way would be to do a timelapse recording, say every 10th frame. I'd take as long s doing a full capture but the Vegas thumbnails would be perfect.

Think I'll buy the product anyway, if nothing else than to encourage people like that, it never hurts to have a few extra tools in the box.

Bob