SynthEyes 2204 Highlights!

Gives an overview of new features in SynthEyes 2204 to look out for, PLUS talks about the new SyFlo2 license manager and the two new managed license types. Important: you'll need to upgrade everything to 2204 and SyFlo2 at once!

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Hi, this is Russ Andersson. In this video I'm going to give a quick overview of SynthEyes 2204 highlights, to give you some ideas about new features to go check out. I'm going to talk first about SynthEyes features, then about new license types and the new SyFlo2 license manager, so stay tuned. First up is Apple ProRes on Windows and Linux, for both read and write. It's improved for macOS too. All platforms support 16 bits per channel, and Apple ProRes 4444 and XQ can support an alpha channel. There is a new colorimetry setting when writing, and you can set up SynthEyes to bypass any color mapping and adjustments for Save Sequence, so you can write updated images with colorimetry that matches the original, automatically each time you save them. Apple ProRes is now even more suitable as an intermediate format, even on cloud workstations. As you might have noticed, SynthEyes can now burn in the frame number or timecode into Preview Movies, Save Sequence output, the camera view, and the perspective view. SynthEyes pulls timecode from some additional movie types too. And about those frame numbers... the Match Frames setting can now be set for each individual shot, on the Shot Settings panel. The preference, from previous SynthEyes versions, affects only the initial setting on new shots. That can be a GOTCHA if you're not aware of it. Taking better advantage of those matching frame numbers or time code, Change Shot Images now performs most common time-shifting operations by itself, or with your confirmation. That should make those edit changes easier. Let's move on to calibration and distortion. There's a new Rectify Lens Grid calibration tool for hard-to-model lenses that don't follow a good mathematical model. Messy anamorphics will be the typical use. It's important to have a properly shot grid, especially that reaches the edge of the image! Please read the manual to learn more, there's a LOT of terrible lens grid images out there, and they're just not usable. No grid, no calibration! Be aware that Rectify Grid is a last resort, not a replacement for a regular calibration of a reasonable lens. Both Rectify Grid and Lens Master Calibration need the same grid of trackers set up. You should probably always try Lens Master Calibration first. Both it and regular solving now support negative eccentricity, for anamorphic shots with pincushion AND barrel distortion. Both Rectify Grid and Lens Master Calibration will output image-distortion maps aka STmaps, which pose challenges for projection screens. A number of SynthEyes tools can now generate a different projection screen type for use with image-map-driven distortion; the screen uses UV coordinates instead of physical deformation. When image maps are written from the two calibration tools, a Sizzle script is also written to make it easier and more accurate to apply the map to other shots. Moving along, SynthEyes 2204 has a major new Universal Scene Description, aka USD, exporter. USD was developed by Pixar, and has been slowly but steadily catching on in different software packages; Maya and Houdini to cite a few. SynthEyes's USD is a full-featured exporter, including geometric hierarchy rig export via skeletons, vertex caches, projection screens, textured meshes, etc. There's more support for Flexes in 2204, which are curves in 3-D space and can be handy for some modeling tasks. Flexes can be exported to USD as well. So there really are a lot of features. Ultimately USD may be a full-fledged Filmbox FBX replacement. SynthEyes can write USD, but the file is then at the mercy of how well other apps read it. Hopefully USD will work out a bit better than FBX. SynthEyes 2204 also adds a new exporter for Brainstorm 3D's virtual set and real-time graphics products, so between that and USD for Unity and Unreal, there are some interesting new possibilities. And if you're pulling survey coordinates into SynthEyes from Google Earth, there's a new importer to help with that. I'll mention two other things because I like them. First, the everday: you can now enter expressions into spinner values, the simplest example being to enter 16 divided by 9 to enter an aspect ratio. On the flip side, there's an experimental "Camera parenting" post-processing script: it might help in situations such as a car with both interior and exterior cameras, and you want to export them both moving along together. It's a bit far out, so let me know if you give it a try. There are a lot of other new detailed features in SynthEyes 2204 that I won't go into here; please check the Recent Change List for full details. Let's move along to SyFlo2, SynthEyes 2204's floating license manager. SyFlo2 is a major upgrade to the original SyFlo. Don't worry, if you've already purchased SyFlo, you get SyFlo2 at no extra charge. Because SynthEyes 2204 can only work with SyFlo2, and vice versa, due to changed protocols, you'll need to upgrade to both SynthEyes 2204 and SyFlo2 at the same time. If you have a mixture of older and newer SynthEyes licenses, you'll need to upgrade all of them at the same time, even if the newer licenses aren't due for renewal yet. Again, don't worry: as always, the online store computes reduced prices for licenses being renewed early. So what does the new SyFlo2 get you? First, there are two new special license types now available through the online store. "Managed Seat" licenses are a cross between a seat license and a floating license. Normal SynthEyes seat licensing DOES NOT PERMIT installation onto virtual machines, ie in the cloud. Only floating licenses can be installed on virtual machines. The new Managed Seat licenses fill that gap. They can be installed on virtual machines, but they have to connect to SyFlo2 to run. Unlike a floating license, they can only be moved to a different single-sign-on user after a week; that's the trade-off. In return, managed seat licenses have a lower, intermediate, price point. The second new license type addresses a different issue: situations where you suddenly need to bring a surge of tracking artists into a project, likely onto your cloud setup, and you need SynthEyes licenses for them. They can't bring their personal licenses. Instead, you can get a batch of "Managed Temporary" licenses, for 30, 60, or 90 days, starting on a specific date. These are like seat licenses, not conventional floating licenses, so you need one per artist. There's a minimum order of 5 managed temporary seat licenses. So these are some pretty cool new options. Please check out the online store for specific pricing details. On to SyFlo2's features. There's a new web server interface to monitor and control the license reservation features for the new licenses. It automatically pulls down new license files as you make changes, and lets you claim new orders for additional or updated licenses, and pull down the new license file immediately yourself. SyFlo2 is designed to accommodate running on virtual machines, with more controlled port assignments and more extensive documentation on what's needed. There's specific support and documentation for setting up under Amazon AWS Elastic Cloud. SyFlo2 on VMs does require an external net connection to phone home and validate itself from time to time, and there's a new timezone change delay system. So there are some tradeoffs to the new setup, but there's a lot of good new stuff that it brings. One other such thing, for example: SynthEyes 2204 and SyFlo2 permit you to run a secondary SynthEyes BATCHER instance on a machine, just like you can on a normal seat license. I know you're excited, but please, be 100% sure to read the new SyFlo2 manual for details of removing SyFlo and installing SyFlo2. This wraps up these highlights; please check out the Recent Change List online for details! It'll take you a few minutes to get through, but might save you a LOT of time. Thanks for watching.