I have a gift for you ! No, not this one, another one...
But to know what it is and to be able to use it, you first need to update your HD Video System and/or your RemVision because I had to substantially modify the process script (the one that turns videos into frames for SL) so that it can handle non-square videos with non-square numbers of frames. It doesn't sound much, but it makes it a LOT more powerful than before. In the past, it could only process square videos and that was very limiting. The same goes for the screens of those two products, which too have to be able to display non-square videos.
In this update, you will find the following changes and if you pay attention, I think you will have a hint of what the gift is all about. If you don't already have a clue, that is.
HD Video System
* The two screens are now able to handle non-square videos.
* The player can now display times longer than 100 minutes without shifting the Play symbol.
* The screen seemed not to be able to display colors for subtitles (unverified and unheard of, but I have corrected the code anyway, just in case).
To update your HD Video System, simply rez the update orb contained in its folder and you will get your new HD Video System automatically.
RemVision
* The screen is now able to handle non-square videos.
* Increased the chat limiter to 110 lines from 90 (it should still not trigger the infamous chat throttle).
* When a new tape is being copied, it displays static over the eyes during the copy for a nice little effect (*), then resumes playing if it was playing before. It also re-shuffles the playlist if the playing mode was "Random" (otherwise it switches back to "Sequential").
* Made the inner lenses (the surface where the projected picture is) glow 10%. You can set it to whatever you like manually, the script does not modify the glow at all, but I find 10% to be good. (*)
* The lenses displayed tall pictures (pictures that are taller than they are wide) stretched the wrong way.
* The ear pieces are now invisible by default. It makes more sense because they don't restrict hearing by default.
* The outer lens (the one that shows the texture you select, like Blank, Realistic and such) is now invisible in the "Lock" lock, but you can still turn it visible by selecting "Always max" in the Lenses Opacity menu of RemVision. (*)
* The screen seemed not to be able to display colors for subtitles (unverified and unheard of, but I have corrected the code anyway, just in case).
* When clicking and dragging the screen, it limits the dragging in a way that you can't move it away enough to see what it was hiding before dragging it. This now takes the state of the background ("None", "Black" or "White") into account, meaning that if the background is invisible, the screen will use the visible prims (the ones showing the movie) to know how far you can drag it and where to stop. In the end, you can't see what's behind the screen no matter how far you drag it.
(*) If you use the unrigged lenses instead of the rigged ones, you need to use the new ones after getting the replacement, as the old ones don't have that feature.
To update your RemVision device, you need to go to one of these locations :
My Little Shop
Chorazin's store
Roper's Dark Playground
Dark Wishes
Once there, click on the updater and follow the instructions. You need to choose "REPLACE". Don't forget to save your times before requesting a replacement. If you do not get a "REPLACE" option, contact me (Marine Kelley) to get a manual replacement.
There is a known issue that does not have any solution that I know of. Since now the animated pictures can have empty frames in their textures (but you won't see them since the screen won't play them, it plays only the non-empty frames), clicking on the screen will reset the animation back to its first frame. It's not a big deal, but it's a change from before when clicking on the screen would re-synchronize at the current frame. Now it re-synchronizes at the first frame, that's all.
Python scripts for movie creators
(This section is relevant to you only if you create movies and/or slideshows)
It's funny, but the core of this update is not even the HD Video System nor RemVision. It is mainly the AviToTextures.py script, the one that is used for turning an AVI file into a set of textures with frames that SL can display as an animated picture over several prims.
Before this update, this script could only handle square videos with a square number of frames, or would decimate the frames until reaching a square number. This was good but too limiting, in particular when dealing with animated GIFs from the Internet, which can have arbitrary dimensions and numbers of frames, but small enough a number making decimation out of question.
As a result, you now need to specify the dimensions of the AVI when calling this script, and you now have the ability to specify the target number of frames you want in the final montage (or indicate a decimation factor like before). It will organize all the frames composing your video into the textures in the best way possible while sticking to the original ratio (Width / Height) to avoid any deformation. The result on-screen is much better than before. I'm thinking of ways to make this script obtain the dimensions and the number of frames of a video by itself so you don't have to specify those data in the parameters anymore.
I have updated HdTextureToSdTextures.py to get rid of the requirement of specifying the dimensions of the picture, now it figures it out all by itself.
I have also created a new script named RenameWithDim.py that will automatically rename all the images in a folder on you hard drive with the appropriate dimensions so you don't have to do it yourself.
If you want to update the Python scripts on your hard drive, simply go get them from my Dropbox account, the urls are in the Director's Manual notecard of the HD Video System, and in the blog post linked below.
I have reflected all those changes in the Making Movies - Video blog post.
The Gift
So... You've read this far and you really want to know what this gift is all about, don't you ?
Now I can tell you what it is !
The gift is a box containing three tapes full of bondage pictures and videos coming from the Internet. The pictures are more or less organized in themes (Fetish, Ropes, Cuffs, Sex, Straps, Duos and some other sections) and all three last three hours average, counting one minute per picture or video. This means hundreds of pictures and videos ! And not the shabby ones either.
This is where you see the new script shine, as all the animated pictures come from GIFs without losing too much quality. Some are even exactly like their original files without any loss.
The tapes are designed to be played in random order for a better experience, so the sub never knows what to expect. The section names are very short because they are stored in the RemVision plugin, which would crash if they were any longer. They are usually just a letter and a number (not always consecutive due to how I had to move some pictures from one tape to another) and reflect the type of the pictures and videos. R for rope, F for fetish, X for sex, S for straps, D for duo, C for cuffs.
You may ask yourself, why this gift and why now ? There's no special occasion. I've just wanted to improve my animation script for a while to allow for non-square videos and to prove how easy it is to use once it was operational. So I will probably write a blog post to explain how I made those tapes (pictures, videos and tracks) to encourage you to do the same :)
You can get the box containing the tapes for free at My Little Shop :
Have fun !
Marine
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