Alternate -- a way to compare the effects of other filters.

[mg262]

This idea arose when I was a writing a post in this thread (not required reading)...
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Alternate

Brief description: Switches back and forth between versions of a clip to highlight the differences.

Search keywords: compare, comparison, CompareVersions, alternation.

Full description:
Have you ever been to the optician's and had the "Is it better with one... or two... ?" as they put different lenses in front of your eyes? Well, that is what is this mini-filter does. You can look at the screen and watch lines crispen up... and then blur again... and then crispen up again... . Or watch noise appear... and disappear - etc.

Alternate(clip A, clip B, "duration"=25) - with the standard duration of 25, returns frames 0...24 from clip A, 25...49 from clip B, 50...74 from clip A, etc.

Examples:

Alternate( mftoon.subtitle("mf") ) #decide whether to use a filter

Alternate( mftoon.subtitle("mf"), Chainmaxscript.subtitle("cm") ) #choose between filters

Alternate( TemporalSoften(4,4,8,15,1).subtitle("mode1"), TemporalSoften(4,4,8,15,2).subtitle("mode2") ) #choose parameters

Notes:

- If the result doesn't play back in real time, save it to a file and then play that back in a media player. Saving a thousand frames or so should be plenty.

- I know this could have been done with a script. I just prefer this.

- I could have made it it cycle through an arbitrary number of filters, but IMHO this isn't a good way to compare their effects. So I didn't.

- Some of the more complex filters seem to be unstable and/or interfere with each other. Then I save their outputs losslessly and compare those with e.g.

Alternate( avisource("9 mf.avi").subtitle("mf"), avisource("9 Pixie.avi").subtitle("Pixie") )

[Pookie]

Great stuff. I've been testing it out with various filters. Is there a way to increase the number of frames between "off" and "on" ? Perhaps my Syntax is wrong -

alternate(dedot().subtitle("dedot")) #this works fine

alternate(dedot().subtitle("dedot"),"duration"=90) # Syntax Error

Does the "duration" parameter only work when comparing two different files?
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Duh... I figured it out. No quotes in duration parameter

alternate(dedot().subtitle("dedot"),duration=90) #this works !

Thanks.