A new version of the Lazarus program VirtualU is available and it has some interesting new tools and features. VirtualU is a picture and video editor, clip maker and movie builder.
*The Help files, user prompts and on-site available information windows have been updated and are more numerous.
*The edging test on the Edge Softening page has been redone. It's less prone to problems.
*Previous versions featured an option that when activated would show alerts when the edge softening of videos or pictures being used in video mode needed to be updated before a recording was made but those alerts did not always appear when they should have. This alert option has been vastly improved so that they always appear when they are supposed to appear.
*A project duration can now be less than 1 sec. by pressing the "Remove 1 sec. dur. limit" button on the Film Options page.
*When the Edge Softening page was loaded then in previous versions some images that should have appeared didn't always appear. This has been fixed.
*Bug fixed: On some occasions after the Build Clip button on the Film Options page was pressed when it was flashing, it would erroneously start flashing again. On other occasions the Build Clip button would start flashing when it was not supposed to. We changed the code so that this will not happen again.
*To our dismay we discovered that on both the Edging page and the Playback/Recording page a video made of a picture import was not playing all the frames of the video made from that picture. This has been fixed.
*Many changes and minor fixes were done all through the program to strengthen and tighten it up. Crash protections and recovery code has been added here and there in key places.
*The Custom page no longer runs sluggishly before an imported video is built into the project due to the fact that timers are no longer used on that page. Other operations are also less problematic because of this.
*Bug fixed: This was a rare but very bad bug. In past versions on very rare occasions the Diagonal Object Movement Page and potentially the entire program would crash when the Record button was pressed because the program would sometimes attempt to open a text file that was already erroneously open through no fault of VirtualU. This has been fixed.
*On the Edge Softening page a user now has the option to use full screen for playbacks and edge softening operations.
*Edge softening methods 1 and 2 (VirtualU SoftEdge) have been improved so that they now produce higher quality images. They also function better.
*A new edge softening tool has been added to the program. This feature is called SoftType and the technique that it uses to soften edges is different than the existing edge softening methods 1 and 2 (SoftEdge). This tool produces edge softening that is similar to Apple TrueType and Windows ClearType but unlike them it is not limited to solid color backgrounds and it can also process videos. It can handle text as well as shapes other than text.
To illustrate what we say, look at the image yellowtogreen2.gif which was made from the attached raster scan image yellowtogreen3.gif. The image yellowtogreen3.gif was a TImage that was made transparent and then edged to a green picture background that was underneath it. The attached image blacktowhite1.gif shows a typical edge softening result using SoftType only for one edging pass. The attached image blacktowhite2.gif shows a typical edge softening result using SoftType only for two edging passes.
SoftType may not be able to handle all images but it can handle most images as well as text. One limitation is the fact that it is about four times slower than the default edging method (SoftEdge) in processing videos though it is better to have this capability than to not have it. SoftType will do the job if the user can spare the time. With skillful use of the pointer on the edging page you can combine the Default (SoftEdge) and SoftType edging methods to produce superb edging.
SoftType will work with solid color or fine grain multi-color foreground images in MPG or AVI movies and solid color or multi-color backgrounds (whatever is under the foreground image). If the foreground image is solid black then MPG movies will turn out okay but other solid colors will usually work only in AVI movies. SoftType can be run after the Default method to improve the results. It is well known that text and certain other particular raster scan solid colored images other than black and white images suffer some quality loss when recorded in MPG and other compressed formats. This happens even with TrueType and ClearType text with colors other than black and white. SoftType cannot currently handle raster scan solid white foreground images for MPG movies.
SoftType can be run multiple times on the same image. We will continue to tweak SoftType to improve it. It has been extensively tested.
VirtualU now has 3 de-edging methods and 4 edge softening methods including ClearType. SoftEdge and SoftType apply edging to each picture or video frame based on whatever images are under the edged picture or frame, even if those images are multicolored and themselves are moving around. The Default (SoftEdge) edging method works best with multi-colored complex foreground images that are edged to complex multi-colored backgrounds that are under the image to be edged.
TrueType and ClearType text is permanently edged solely to one background color and cannot be changed in each frame of a video but VirtualU SoftType and SoftEdge text and other shapes are individually custom edged to whatever images are under them for each frame of a video.
We are currently working on two new tools which will go into the next VirtualU version after this one. One of these tools will invert image colors on pictures and videos. The other tool will rotate pictures and videos. The latter tool is run by original code that rotates the image as well as code that flips the image as part of the rotation process. The flip code was obtained from this Forum.
VirtualU contains no known bugs though making substantial changes in a substantial program can sometimes cause undiscovered problems or mere kinks elsewhere in the program. If so then rest assured that any such kinks will eventually be found and fixed. VirtualU is currently a good prototype demonstrator that works reasonably well on all Windows machines.
VirtualU is can do edge softening, 3-D effects, de-edging, color editing and good manipulation and recording of pictures, videos and text as well as many other tasks. VirtualU is the king of transparencies.
The current download version of VirtualU contains the changes mentioned above.
VirtualU was made possible by Lazarus and help of incalcuable value from the Lazarus Forum.
We thank you Lazarus and Merry Christmas.
VirtualU is in a zipped folder named temp15.zip and it can be downloaded from:
https://od.lk/f/NDJfMTM3NDQ0OV8 A WordPad file containing instructions and developmental log reports can be downloaded from: :
https://od.lk/d/NDJfMjM2MDM4MV8/readme.rtf A documentary named wtf7 (World Of The Future) made by Fingal using VirtualU is available at:
https://youtu.be/88Vd4L6rVk8 (contains no edge softening)
A short movie that describes edge softening made with VirtualU can be downloaded from:
https://youtu.be/iGqzTDpph0g
Recent
