v0.9.0

What's new

Loading and saving presets from the plugins

This feature has been long requested. The plugins' usability was significantly hampered by having to manually tweak all the sliders yourself. No more--you can now take advantage of the wide array of presets that the ntsc-rs community has assembled!

ntsc-rs-preset-demo.mp4

Drag-and-drop support

You can now drag and drop media and presets directly into ntsc-rs to load them, and even install presets by dropping them over the presets manager!

ntsc-rs.dnd.mp4

Command-line interface

You can now use ntsc-rs directly from the command line, allowing you to do things like automate it via shell scripts! See the documentation to get started.

ntsc-rs.cli.demo.mp4

Smoother scaling

You can now select which filtering method to use when rescaling videos in the standalone application. This is especially helpful for scaling videos down to under half their original size, where the default method (while faster) can look rather pixelated. Look at the wires and tree leaves in the video below to see the difference:

ntsc-rs.scale.filter.demo.mp4

Since the new menu takes up more screen real estate, the scale control has been moved to the left pane, just above the effect settings. It's still independent from settings presets.

Persistent settings

While the effect settings were previously saved in the standalone app, the scaling and render settings were not, and had to be manually set every time you used the application. Now they're saved just like the effect settings!

More fixes

• Fixed a long-standing bug where videos with variable framerates were mistakenly considered still images (#8; 4ef10b0)
• Fixed the plugin not loading specifically in After Effects 2020 (#214; 6ca8272)
• Fixed compatibility with older Linux versions (#215; 75fa46e)
• File pickers now block interaction with the main window on Windows (#88; 1ad00cb)
• Scrolling in the timeline widget is no longer unreasonably slow (62f1407)
• Fixed a crash in After Effects when applying ntsc-rs to an adjustment layer with nothing beneath it (#220; ee32e2c)
• Disabled Nvidia-specific hardware video decoding because it is flaky and results in random errors when loading videos (6599522)

---

For installation instructions and further guidance, see the Getting Started guide on the ntsc-rs website.

v0.8.1

What's new

• Added an error dialog which should appear before most Windows standalone application crashes, allowing for easier error diagnosis
• Updated the GUI library used in the standalone application, which should result in crisper graphics
• Added the ability to pause and resume render jobs
• Moved the "Bandwidth scale" slider to the bottom, since it should be one of the last things that people adjust, not the first
• Updated the video preview to use the correct aspect ratio for videos with non-square pixels
• Improved the video preview's zoom. Nearest-neighbor scaling is now used only for 2x zoom and above
• Fixed a crash when scaling the input media to 1 row
• Fixed a crash in the standalone application when entering negative numbers into sliders' textboxes
• Fixed the After Effects/Premiere plugin not working in Premiere on macOS

---

For installation instructions and further guidance, see the Getting Started guide on the ntsc-rs website.

v0.8.0

What's new

macOS support

ntsc-rs finally supports macOS! Thank you to all the macOS users who helped test things out. This was my first time developing anything for macOS, so it took quite a while to learn the quirks of the platform--I've been working on this for the past couple of months, and I appreciate your patience.

Note

The code is currently not signed, which means Gatekeeper really doesn't want to run the installer(s). To install ntsc-rs on macOS, follow the instructions on the website.

Preset manager

You can now save and load settings presets directly in the app itself via the new preset manager panel! This should streamline the process of switching between different presets.

Preset.Manager.mp4

Currently, the application doesn't come with any presets. I'll continue to look into the best way to bundle them--I don't want users to end up accidentally deleting and overwriting the default presets and not knowing how to get them back, but I also don't want to annoy them with hardcoded presets that they don't find useful and can't hide or remove.

New default settings

The default settings haven't been updated since the very first version of ntsc-rs. I've updated them to something that should look more accurate out of the box.

Rewritten After Effects plugin

The After Effects/Premiere plugin has been completely rewritten! The original version was written in C and was difficult to maintain. It saw a huge number of bugs and regressions.

The new version of the After Effects plugin is written completely in Rust, thanks to Rust bindings to the After Effects API that weren't available when I first wrote the plugin. It should now be much easier not just to maintain, but to build as well! Building C projects across multiple platforms is already challenging, and the After Effects SDK requires some bespoke build tools. The Rust bindings handle that part as well!

As a user of the plugin, you shouldn't notice any differences in functionality (although I did fix a crash since the last release). If you run into any new bugs, feel free to open an issue, preferably including instructions for reproducing the bug or even an After Effects project file that demonstrates it.

Other

• A loading spinner now appears while the video preview is loading
• You can now adjust the application's zoom level in the "View" menu
• The volume slider now actually mutes the audio when set at 0%
• The filename of the loaded video is now displayed in the window's title
• Fixed a bug where the "snow" effect was less dense near the left edge of the video
• Some code in the OpenFX plugin has been cleaned up as well. Open an issue if you run into any new bugs

---

For installation instructions and further guidance, see the Getting Started guide on the ntsc-rs website.

v0.7.3

What's new

• Telecined videos now render properly with the "Interleaved output" option enabled

v0.7.2

What's new

• After Effects plugin fixes
  • Fix the "Bad parameter to PFp_SuiteGetPixelFormat()" error appearing
  • Fix a crash that occurs when rendering at proxy resolutions
  • Enable multi-frame rendering support

v0.7.1

What's new

• Fixed a console window appearing on Windows when the standalone application is open

v0.7.0

What's new

• Collapsible settings groups! While I do want to figure out a better way to manage all these settings, in the meantime I've added a way to hide groups of settings that you don't use or change.

  

• The "Composite noise" setting now has the same frequency and detail options as chroma noise.

• There's a new "Luma noise" setting for finer-grained and higher-frequency noise adjustments than what "Composite noise" can do.

• The "Composite preemphasis" setting can now be negative.

• Head switching artifacts can now be set to start mid-line, with a transient blip appearing where it begins. This should make it more closely match actual VHS.

• The "Chroma demodulation" setting has been optimized. The "Box" and "Notch" settings are 5-10% faster, and the "Comb" settings are both multithreaded now.

• Multithreaded FFV1 encoding is now enabled. This should make FFV1 as fast as H.264 on the highest speed setting.

• The After Effects plugin should now render properly at 16bpc color depth.

v0.6.2

What's new

• Fixed the Windows standalone application being counted as "Not Responding" while a file dialog is open

v0.6.1

What's new

• You can now copy a frame straight to your clipboard with the "Copy frame" button:
  
• The "Split" effect preview is now a rectangle rather than a single split line, allowing you to preview any rectangular region.

v0.6.0

What's new

• The effect now supports Premiere! Simply download and install the After Effects plugin to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore, and it'll show up in Premiere as well. If you run into any issues using the effect in Premiere, feel free to open an issue with a test case and instructions on how to reproduce the bug.
• The standalone GUI now includes a "Help" menu which provides a link to online documentation, an "About" dialog, and a dialog for viewing the licenses for third-party dependencies used in ntsc-rs.