What would you like to see with future releases of Composite?

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

I know a lot of users are seeing the post to the apps exchange as the death of Composite, but I have reached out to Chris Vienneau about this and asked where a user like myself could send feature requests. With that I would like to start a thread to find out what others would realistically like to see in Composite in the future. By realistic I mean not feature-to-feature competition with AE, Nuke, or Digital Fusion, but where are the little things here and there that could really help to improve the experience? Also, what are the features that you find lacking in the other packages?

I plan to pass this thread along with my own list in a week, or so, to see what Autodesk can do with Composite.

-Eric 

[michaelwbell]

Thanks Eric for being so proactive with this! I have not used Composite long enough to give some valuable feedback. There are many on these forums who definitely have made some great requests though. 

I really do hope that the free release of the software makes some noise and helps build a positive future for the once dead app. 

I never really commited to investing time in learning the software because there was no future and a very small userbase. But with the app now being freely available to all (and not forever lost like combustion), both those drawbacks can be changed without the help of Autodesk. But if there was the help of Autodesk, the future of composite would be much, much more interesting!

[miketruly]

The first request that comes to mind is the Composite net-rendering hassle that I dealt with recently (workaround thanks to Eric!).

It ought to be possible to have slaves net-render via BB even if some slaves have their Composite install on drives other than C, such as D or E, etc.

MAX has no problem net-rendering if some slaves installs are on C and others on D or E, etc.  Deadline lets you specify all possible paths to the render executable such as C:\etc., and D:\etc. and at render time it searches those paths for the exe.  Seems like there should be a way Composite can deal with differing install locations and still net-render on all slaves.

Thanks!

[paulneale]

Stability should be dealt with first. 

[Steve_Curley]

Make it understand that we dont all have massive widescreen monitors - it's impossible to use at my normal resolution (1280*1024 on a 22" CRT) - parts of the UI won't scroll into view. Yes I can up the rez, then I cant read anything (too small).
Make the UI colours configurable - get rid of that loathsome dark "Corporate" UI...
Dialogs that don't go away after (for example) double-clicking a Project name.
File lists which only accept a double-click on the icon not on the name (of a Folder, for example) - and it seems to have its own ideas about what is and isn't a double-click. Appears to ignore the system settings (not proved, will try this one again)

Or in other words, make it Windows friendly (it's anything but at present).

[paulneale]

CRT? You still use one of those Steve? I don't remember the last time I have even seen one.

[Steve_Curley]

It was an expensive monitor Paul, it's going nowhere until it dies. Plus I really don't like the current flatscreen ones. they're just not as pin-sharp as a CRT and you can't (AFAIK) just pick any old resolution which suits you - you're stuck with what's provided. I worked it out once, I'd need a 27" to give me roughly the same (vertical) size at the same viewing distance (to compensate for the higer res). And 27" ones are not cheap either. I have to save up for things that expensive, so they have to last as long as possible.

[miketruly]

Hehe... that was just the first request that came to my mind... not necessarily the first priority.  Stability is definitely the first priority as I can make Composite crash simply by mis-entering the syntax for a path to files.  This happened repeatedly as I was trying to setup paths for footage or rendered frames, etc.

But now that Composite is officially free/abandoned, I would be surprised if any real effort was put into it in the future.  If they gave the code away free, perhaps someone could improve upon it.  But that then might threaten other AD products?

Anyway, I hope there is improvement in the future.

Thanks!

[Steve_Curley]

Stability could certainly be improved, but I don't use it a great deal, or with many complex interconnected nodes, so I tend not to see too many crashes. I failed to put it in my list 😮

[paulneale]

I don't think that I push it hard at all and I take it out quite often. Hard to say what does it as well as it will always be something different. Usually auto saves and I can keep going but it is a show stopper when it comes to real productions on real dead lines. I was just talking to a shop last month that said they tried to use it and it worked for everything they were doing except it wasn't stable. So they moved to Nuke. 

[femia]

- Stability

- Speed reading files over the Network (takes ages to display image sequences)

- Quick tool search like you have in Nuke with the tab button.

- Last file opened in the File list

- Drag and drop files and folders

- Stability

These would be great!

Femi

[wrbones]

Steve, the UI is not some evil corporate theme, it is made to comply with a SMPTE standard. It's supposed ot offer a neutral background that doesn't interfere with your perception of the image you are working on. I have found over the years that it definitely cuts down on eye strain (56 years old and I still don't need glasses).

[Steve_Curley]

And every monitor I've ever owned needed winding up (almost) full to see the ui properly leading to far worse eye strain. I hate that theme, always have, always will.

[wrbones]

You must work in a very bright room, which is not good for your work. Again, there is a SMPTE standard that covers this. You should check it out. These day pretty much all design software has a similar UI. How do you get by with Photoshop or After Effects?

[Steve_Curley]

Well that's pretty simple - I don't use any Adobe products for various reasons. You just gave me another...
Every other piece of s/ware I have uses the default Windows colours - my monitors are set up so White is not so glaring that I need sunglasses to use Notepad. Been like that since Win3.11 (and maybe even before that) and I object strongly to being forced by Autodesk, Adobe or some faceless "standards" authority into using something I don't want to use. It's a shame - I like the product - it always had great potential (if they could fix the incessant CTDs). So much of Composite IS configurable (colour-wise) that it makes no sense at all not to have main ui configurable as well. Except that as a free product that's never going to happen 😞 so this whole discussion is moot anyway.

[wrbones]

So let me get this straight, you don't want companies who have gone to a lot of trouble to comply with a standard written for the sole purpose of allowing you to do your job better but you're happy to allow other companies, who just randomly decided on some colours that looked pretty and worked acceptably well with spreadsheets and word processors 20 years ago, to decide your preferences for the rest of your life. That's weird, dude.

[Steve_Curley]

No, I expect them to not force it on me. Go look at Max - multiple "themes" which are configurable. Yes that includes, by default, the grey theme, but I can change it if I wish (and I do). Can't do that in Composite. It's all about choice. If they don't give me the choices I want I won't use the s/ware. And that goes for Max too - for which I've been on subscription since Max5. If they were to take the options away they'd lose my business. Instantly. Mind you, with the constant price increases and the move away from subscription to a "pay to play" means they'll probably lose it in a year or 2 at most anyway.

[wrbones]

Mete, every time I install MAX I spend half-an-hour customising it to try and get it close to the SMPTE standard, as well as getting my quads just right. One day I'll get smart enough to save the set-up on a USB drive so I can just load it. One day. Meanwhile, you shoudl re-evaluate the way you work, SMPTE don't do this stuff for fun, they are trying to help.

[Steve_Curley]

We are going to have to agree to differ Warren. These are MY systems running software I buy. They WILL work how I want them to work or not at all. Period.
I'm not going to argue this any further - the thread asked for suggestions so I gave mine, and with all due respect whether you like the suggestion or not is irrelevent.

[LenDoublet]

Nice idea, I am using composite a fair bit in production. A couple of things I would like to see are:
Low resolution preview option for preview speed.
The introduction of audio.
Being able to have the notes visible in the graph rather than just an icon to click.