How do I re-load a project?

[g6gak]

I've created a complex project of menus, still etc. and now I want to go back a change a few things before I burn a second copy. How do I reload the settings without having to start everything from scratch?

Thanks.

[delphi.stuff]

Sorry... Not yet...

I would like to do the load via the XML file (the save then alredy exists!)... This will allow also users to edit again an existing VideoCD, without having its original XML description.

It is huge task, more if I want to make something reliable (users may, or should I say will, edit the XML files...). Should I start such task ?... If I ask users this and not something else, I am sure in this case I will have answers...

[rec]

Having the ability to edit projects is very important. I understand the complexity of the task if you allow for the unknowns that external editing of the xml could cause.

There are a lot of xml parsers out there, though, and if you specify that the xml must be well-formed and can only consist of certain tags in a certain order you could avoid a lot of those issues. If you try to open a file and you can't parse it correctly you just reject it with a "You blew the edit, change it back" message. Most of us will only edit within your GUI anyway...

[Jestorius]

I don't have much clue abouth programing but if the software during the authoring remembers of all the elements and tasks of the project so why is it difficult to make a save project button to save the project and a load button to load a project again?

[LeveL_42]

Sorry... Not yet...

I would like to do the load via the XML file (the save then alredy exists!)... This will allow also users to edit again an existing VideoCD, without having its original XML description.

It is huge task, more if I want to make something reliable (users may, or should I say will, edit the XML files...). Should I start such task ?... If I ask users this and not something else, I am sure in this case I will have answers...

Delphi, I think the majority of the users are only waiting for a SAVE/LOAD option from the settings they made, and not so much importing XML's they editted by hand. Personaly, I can edit the finished XML when I want to change one or two things (like changing wait times, changing references to different items etc. The remark lines inserted by VCDeasy are a great help to make this relatively easy)

I'm not an advanced programmer like you, but I figure there is a structure you use to hold the variables that the user sets using the GUI. Why not dump this structure to your very own file format and make it possible to load this back ?

This would make life a lot easier for you (don't have to worry about users edditting XML files) and for us (no need to re-enter everything, with a big chance of forgetting something else, while correcting the other settings )

[jamessol]

Yes, I agree with LeveL_42. It is only really a save/load from VCDeasy that I would want. I am not concerned that VCDeasy cannot import externally written XML.

[THRAK]

Delphi,

If you're looking for feedback on whether your users want the ability to save and load projects, please count me amongst those who would highly praise such an upgrade!


Regards,

Bill

[plucas]

I agree with Level_42, jamessol, THRAK, etc. I am waiting for a SAVE/LOAD option from VCDEasy.

[mr_fuzzy]

I've just started using VCDEasy and I was surprised there was no way to save/load a project.

I agree with Level_42 that users do not need to be able to edit saved projects outside VCDEasy, they can save out the XML if they want to do that. You just need to dump whatever data structure you use internally.

Just keeping the noise up on this topic :-)

[StewartGilray]

I agree with all the guys asking for save/load.

I am also not interested in being able to import an xml file...

At the end of the day VCDEasy is the best VCD editing/creating software out there, but it lacks just that little something, which in this case is the save/load

Apart from that, this rocks...

[LeTrout]

I'll chime in with my agreement, esp LeveL_42's comments. Save to your own file format, only support load from that format. If we want to do our own tweaking in the exported XML fine, but we can't load those tweaks into VCDEasy. Seems reasonable.

This would be a huge improvement to the program IMO. This is an excellent app as is (great work, thanks!) but having to do everything from start to finish in one session is very difficult for me. I'm new to this stuff, and it's very rare I can get it right without rework.

[Matthias Kloppmann]

Sorry... Not yet...

I would like to do the load via the XML file (the save then alredy exists!)... This will allow also users to edit again an existing VideoCD, without having its original XML description.

It is huge task, more if I want to make something reliable (users may, or should I say will, edit the XML files...). Should I start such task ?... If I ask users this and not something else, I am sure in this case I will have answers...

OK -- this response is rather late, as I only learned about VCDeasy a couple of days ago. Anyway, while I agree with other posters that the main concern is to be able to store projects you have created using the GUI and be able to reestablish them, from a software engineer's point of view I very much like your idea of using the XML file format to do save and (re-) load. You should be able to make your life much easier by using a validating XML parser together with an appropriate XML schema definition for the XML file -- this way, you do not have to worry about any invalid XML, and could still allow your users to make changes to the XML (e.g., by using a schema-driven editor). Sorry if I am only pointing out the obvious here.

I don't know which language VCDeasy is written in. For Java, the Eclipse meta-object framework (freely available from www.eclipse.org) provides the ability to generate importers/exporters to "serialize" a set of objects into XML of a defined XSD and vice versa, by providing appropriate definitions, without coding (still complex, but very nice). Similar stuff might be available for other languages.

Just my €.02 ...
-Matthias

[dalrmi]

Yes, the save/load project option is REALLY REALLY important, for this lack I'm not using vcdeasy and prefer to use other programs also if VCDEASY IS BETTER.

Bye.

[StellaIndigo]

count me in for 1,000,000 votes on this. Although I'm only one person the number of votes is representative of the importance LOAD/SAVE project is to VCDEasy.

Stella

[zzyzzx]

Exactly how do I reload the XML?

[crystalclear]

I didn't even know what an XML file was, so saving and restoring one is of no consequence to me. I downloaded VCD easy, and it was the first free software which I could download and which ran. After 5 attempts, I got a super video CD which works. (Initial problems were a friend's old DVD player which could not handle it, and mixup between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats.)

Now I have a working setup, albeit complicated:
POVRAY to draw 3D pictures
Ulead Media Studio to turn image sequences into video, mix sound etc
TMPEGEnc to create MPEG video from the AVI files
VCD Easy to create BIN and CUE files
CDRWIN to write to CD-RW and erase CDs for reuse

The biggest headache at the moment is the lack of a save option in VCD easy. Anything else, if I make errors, I can correct and save. But with VCD easy, starting from scratch means later versions are likely to have errors that earlier versions did not, just due to menu sizes.

Synchronisation is important. I am animating a cut gearbox. Pressing 3 when showing second gear waits for the end of repeating second gear pattern, shows another video with a 2 to 3 gearchange, and then shows a video for 3rd gear. With about 20 other videos, showing gearbox clutch operation, explaining planetary gearset, etc, the authoring is a nightmare if it cannot be saved.

=============================

I am not criticising. Anything free is a bargain. But I see save and restore a bit like this.

The hard way to do it, is to methodically sort out the different things that should be saved and to do the right things with them.

The quick and dirty solution is to put all the variables connected with the current configuration chosen via menus and have them close to each other in memory. Forget clean efficient bullet proof error checking programing with optional filenames and whatever - copy the block of memory to VCDEASY.DUMP and be able to read it back.

That would suit me fine.
I would be happy for VCDEASY to crash if I did the wrong things, etc.

Just a block memory write to a file on disk, and a block memory read back, with the config variables being near each other in memory would get rid of my biggest headache.

In the words of Linton Kwesi Johnson:

Me not preach
Me not teach
Me just show you
How me see it.