SpeedSix.TrailAverage (Discreet Trailz Raptor)

PURPOSE

Trail generation optionally using optical flow based motion estimation and averaging the accumulation. The RGB components can be averaged at different rates.

INPUT CLIPS

1: Input Clip : Clip to have trails.
2: Background : Background to composite result over.
3: Matte : Matte of the input clip; use if compositing is desired.

TrailAverage CONTROL PAGE

Restart (Pushbutton)
When changing styles or skipping frames, the true image will not be created. Therefore to be sure, click on Restart and process a few frames to see the true picture. Many of the controls when switched will automatically do this for you.

With Motion (Checkbox Default: Off)
On: Turns on the motion analysis to add motion blur and a smoother result.

Image (List Box Options: Full Frame | NTSC Fields | NTSC Fields (Rev) | PAL Fields | PAL Fields (Rev), Default: Full Frame)

This specifies whether the images in the input sequence are frame based or fields based. If they are fields based (interlaced), it also specifies the field order (based on the TV system type). Output images will be frame or field based to match the input image type as selected here.
Full Frame: Images are not interlaced. This is the case with film and progressive video formats (and is, of course, the One True and Proper Way).
NTSC Fields: Images are interlaced, with fields in the normal order for the NTSC television standard.
NTSC Field (Rev): Images are interlaced, with fields the other way around from the normal order for the NTSC television standard.
PAL Fields: Images are interlaced, with fields in the normal order for the PAL television standard.
PAL Fields (Rev): Images are interlaced, with fields the other way around from the normal order for the PAL television standard.
Note: "PAL" and NTSC" don't necessarily imply anything about the image resolution in this case.

Plugin Status (Text String)
This gives you information on what the plugin is doing in motion estimation mode, and displays error messages if appropriate. Keep an eye on it as it
is very useful to know what is going on especially if you have any problems.

Type (List Box Options: Direct | Direct and Save Flows | Only Save Flows | Reuse Flows, Default: Direct)

Direct:Calculates the flow fields and draws the trails.
Direct and Save Flows: Calculates the flows, saves them to disk and draws the trails,
Only Save Flows: Calculates the flows and saves them to disk. No trails are drawn,
Reuse Flows: Reads saved flows back from disk and draws the trails.
Note: Currently all the saved flows are put into a fixed location with a fixed name.
Windows:The location is S6_HOME_DIR\SpeedSix\flow_store\flowa_<4digit_number>.ts6
The usual value of S6_HOME_DIR is C:\Program Files\SpeedSix
Linux or Irix: The location is S6_HOME_DIR/SpeedSix/flow_store/flowa_<4digit_number>.ts6
The usual value of S6_HOME_DIR is /usr/local/SpeedSix

Use Matte Clip (Checkbox Default: Off)
On: Take the red channel from the Matte input clip and use it for the matte information of the primary Input clip.
Useful if you wish to composite the result over the background and your input clip has a separate matte clip.
Off: Leave well alone. Any existing matte information will be kept.

Matte PreMultiply (Checkbox Default: Off)
On: Pre-multiply the Input clip by the Matte clip using the Red channel
Off: Do not pre-multiply.

Style (List Box Options: Straight | Boost, Default: Straight)

This selection is available in motion mode.
Straight: The Input clip is used.
Boost: The luminance can be boosted to emphasis the highlights.

Style (List Box Options: Straight | Stagger | Boost, Default: Straight)

This selection is available in non-motion mode.
Straight: The Input clip is used.
Stagger: Endurance values can be set independantly for the RGB channels, smearing the colours.
Boost: The luminance can be boosted to emphasis the highlights.

Endurance (Number Min: 2, Max: 1000, Default: 50)
How long, in frames, the traily effect should last.

EnduranceRed (Number Min: 2, Max: 1000, Default: 10)
How long, in frames, the traily effect should last for the red channel.

EnduranceGreen (Number Min: 2, Max: 1000, Default: 30)
How long, in frames, the traily effect should last for the green channel.

EnduranceBlue (Number Min: 2, Max: 1000, Default: 50)
How long, in frames the traily effect should last for the blue channel.

Bright Emphasis (Number Min: 1.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 50.0)
Degree to which bright areas are emphasised.

Composite (Checkbox Default: Off)
Composite the result over background clip.

Pre Multiplied (Checkbox Default: Off)
Is the result image pre-multiplied or not.

DoBlur (Checkbox Default: Off)
Use the Blur value to soften the trails.

Blurring (Number Min: 0.0, Max: 10.0, Default: 1.0)
The amount the image will be softened by defocusing it.

Restart On Process (Checkbox Default: Off)
If available turn On immediately before processing to ensure that the first frame is taken from the clip with no flowing affecting it.

Tuning CONTROL PAGE

Motion Samples (Number Min: 4, Max: 32, Default: 4)
This is the number of samples taken while the shutter is open. The samples are uniformly spaced in time over the shutter open interval, but the motion vectors at each pixel are perturbed randomly to an extent related to the time between samples to reduce potential artefacts due to sampling. (More samples means more computation, hence more time to calculate a result frame).

Flow Resolution (List Box Options: Full | Half | Quarter, Default: Quarter)

Resolution at which to compute optical flow. The basic algorithm used by TrailAverage System is optical flow. This treats brightness in an image as it it were a sort of fluid (like water), and it tries to see in which direction the brightness has flowed out of each pixel from one input frame to the next. To capture big motions, it does this on a "pyramid" of image resolutions, starting from the very small and refining the estimates up to a fairly high resolution (potentially the full image resolution). The maximum image resolution it will use for this pyramid is called the Flow Resolution.
Note: This not the resolution at which your result images are computed!

Show Vectors (List Box Options: None | Forward | Backward | Both, Default: None)

None: Motion vectors will not be drawn.
Forward: Draw forward motion vectors (from the earlier image of a pair to the later).
Backward: Draw backward motion vectors (from the later image of a pair to the earlier).
Both: Draw the forward and backward motion vectors.

Index