MotionBend 1.4 New Features
In MotionBend 1.4 we have added support for reading more formats. In particular we wanted to add support for AVCHD MTS (MPEG Transport Stream) because it’s annoying to have to use some other software to convert the video before editing. Usually this is a simple re-mux to MP4 and does not involve further loss of quality, but still, it’s annoying. Now you can simply load the MTS directly into MotionBend.
MPEG-TS (AVCHD MTS) in MotionBend
We have also added support for MXF and WMV containers, DV format and more codecs for AVI. This doesn’t mean every codec in every container but many codecs; there are always new camera models and slightly different flavors of formats and it can be difficult to get hold of suitable footage for testing and development. We have also added support for HEVC bitstreams (using a .bin extension) and HEVC in an MP4 container [1]. There was even an opportunity to test working with 4K under XAVC-S thanks to one customer.
Seeing is believing, so here you can see screenshots of MotionBend processing 4K video from a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (obtained via Philip Bloom), some pre color graded 4K video from a Blackmagic URSA (obtained via Guy Fiorita), and some standard HEVC test footage:
4K Video from a Samsung Galaxy Note 3
4K Video from a Blackmagic URSA
HEVC Test Video in MotionBend
There are also a number of small improvements to the user interface. The Batch Processor can now add a postfix to the name of rendered video files, this should make it easier to find rendered video and avoid overwriting the input video. The active area box now shows how much zoom is being applied. New keyboard shortcuts make it easier to select a range of frames for processing, add motion events and open the Batch Processor.
It’s been a little while since the last release of MotionBend, so for the 1.4 series we’ve done a lot of “under the hood” work. We’ve rewritten a lot of code, improved efficiency, made some bits of the user interface a bit more consistent and squashed several minor bugs. We’re now in a really good position to continue improving and adding more useful features, hope you’re enjoying the journey.
[1] MotionBend 1.4 supports BT.2020 but only HEVC is using it at present.