Problems with Brightness control slider

[johnty]

There are a couple of issues with the Brightness slider in the Effect Colors box that I don’t understand.

The numeric value to the right of the slider doesn’t reflect the slider's movement on a Pictures effect. The slider will change the brightness but the value doesn’t change.  If I click on another effect and then back on the Picture, the number will change to the current value but won’t update on further movement.  The numbers do reflect the slider’s position for other effects.

Second, the brightness control won’t go above 100 without bad pixelation on Pictures and Videos.  I run all of my videos in the 200-400 range to give them increased impact.  Now that doesn’t work. 

I’ve downloaded and installed previous releases to see when the change occurred.  Things worked fine in 2017.44.  In 2017.45, the current issues appeared and continue with the current 2018.4 release.  I’m running the 64-bit version on a Win 7 Pro machine.

I’ve attached a test sequence showing the problem effects.  Was the brightness control’s operation changed because it didn’t make sense to go above 100 or was there some other technical issue that necessitated the change?  The value not updating on a Picture looks like a bug; I hope the range above 100 can be restored.

[Gilrock]

I don't think it changed.  Technically values can never go over 100%.  When you adjust the slider above 100% it will only affect those colors which are less than 100% and as each value hits 100% it clamps.  Can't set a pixel color to above 255.

[johnty]

Something did indeed change.  You only have to download my test sequence and run it under 2018.4 and 2017.44 to see the difference.  It's also the only way to explain why the value readout box no longer tracks the slider's position on Pictures. 

Going above 100 doesn't make any difference on internally generated effects but those that use external data - Pictures, Glediator, Video - big difference.  A video may have an average brightness level of 40% and the headroom of 400 on the slider could double the overall brightness of the pixels in the real world.  Now, going above 100 doesn't just clamp a value at 255, it changes the pixels color.  That shouldn't happen and it didn't until 2017.45.

Hopefully the other developers will read this and one of them may remember making a change that has caused this condition.

[Gilrock]

I'd love to help but the 2018.4 version won't install on my PC.

[Gilrock]

Ok we've tracked down the change that caused the color issues so it should be fixed in next release.  For the record the color issue with the Brightness slider was caused between release 2018.2 and 2018.3.  The text field not updating is unrelated and we haven't looked into it's cause yet.

By the way there is a slight workaround.  If you move the Contrast slider from 0 to 1 it triggers the old algorithm and fixes the colors.

[johnty]

Gil, thanks for the follow-up on the issue.  Setting the Contrast at 1 does indeed fix the color pixelation problem and I can continue working on this year's sequences.  The slider's text field value not being updated isn't as critical and I can wait for it's resolution while the cause is being sorted out.

Thanks again.

John

[keithsw1111]

The brightness slider will be fixed in .5 ... the problem relates to bulk edit and a name clash with the colour panel in the effect assistant.

[Gilrock]

The brightness slider will be fixed in .5 ... the problem relates to bulk edit and a name clash with the colour panel in the effect assistant.

I had a feeling the Effect Assist was going to have to be involved because Pictures is one of only 2 effects that use it.