Hidden Feature in Video Enhancer 1.9.6

[Manoman455]

While snooping around using 3rd party software I notice there is a "Out" and an "In" button located right beneath the Player and atop the Slider. These 2 buttons are disabled by default and are not accessible, UNLESS........
Sike naw I couldn't get them to be accessible. I did get them to appear and get some info on exactly what they do. The button on the left is labeled "In" and the one on the right is label "Out" these 2 buttons from what I can gather are start and end set-points. Setting where you want video enhancer to start from on the time line and also where it ends. If i remember correctly these were features listed sometime before on the forums as requests but didn't think they were already implemented.

My journey onto activating these two buttons started with a resource editor to try to enable these 2 buttons, at first I thought I had succeeded but when I go and actually render a file it seems like that is where my journey Ends, I think it would have worked if it were any other program but I think the braniacs behind video enhancer have foreseen my evil intentions in doing this and implemented a means of disablement If I were to ever succeed. The UI now has the Out and In buttons but when I click start or even preview it would just nogg (do nothing)...and I would then have to close it from the task bar.

Here are pictures to show the buttons.....

Heres the buttons activated and moved to a better location......


Here the out and in button doing there thing......


PS: IF by doing this is against rules please mention so, I will refrain from doing the sorts again......
PSS: Still is a nice find I think!!! LOL

[Dee Mon]

LOL
Indeed there are those two buttons and they meant to mark start and stop positions in the file to process only a part of it. Unfortunately at that time we failed to implement this behavior correctly for all possible input formats, so we just disabled the buttons and now even if you enable them they will not do anything.

If you enable them by editing program's resources then the checksum of exe file will change and it will not work - it should just close after you press Start (that's a part of protection against cracks). You can try to enable them by sending proper messages when VE is running (without changing exe file), this way protection will think it's ok but you will not get them to work - the functionality behind them is still missing.

This feature - to process only selected part of file - is planned for sure for v2.0 but may appear earlier (in 1.9.x).

[Manoman455]

LOL.
I figured it would be some sort of protection method/scheme.
I'm not a cracker and don't know how to crack, so that can be a guarantee from me to you that I will not be cracking your program.
And sending the right messages to the program while its running is too much work, i figure it would require a debugger that attaches to a running process (videoenhancer.exe), and then sending the right messages (strings if I recall correctly), other programs like (cheatengine) would probably be a nightmare.

Wouldn't it be possible to create some code in video enhancer to use the duration from beginning to the set-point mark and place in a delay with a negative value for the "in" button, and shorten the entire duration of the video for the end set-point for the "out" button?
I know very amateur idea, but just throwing some ideas that I use everyday, for ex (MKVTOOLNIX).
I think avisynth might be able to do the same...

Also nice to hear the features will be added and working correctly in future release, if it comes out for a 1.9.x version oh wells since I'm still waiting on version 2.0 for a "for-sure" purchase.
Right now I'm running trial version, and reinstalling windows every month or so.

Another great protection scheme I think that will be great is PC binding, that way people will have harder time cracking your software, to be honest I already know of cracks for previous versions of video enhancer, trials are way more stable tho, to be honest again I've tried them (sorry). PC binding shouldn't be that hard to implement I'm thinking (I wouldn't really known, I have very little programming experience), but its just another idea.

[Dee Mon]

It's easy to play the first part of file (start to In) without processing, then process required part (In-Out) and then stop. But if the file is long and In position is far from start, that's too much time to waste. Good approach is to jump directly to In position without decompressing the beginning of file. And this is a bit trickier to implement correctly.

I saw some "cracks" for previous versions but don't remember any of them working. I.e. cracked version doesn't ask for registration when it runs, but when you choose a file and press Start it just closes or crashes. But I guess I didn't try them all, most of them fire up too many alarms if you send them to virustotal.com, they're usually full of trojans. If you know some really working cracks let me know (by Personal Message or email).

[Manoman455]

OK I will, actually I still have one of the previous version 1.9.3 and the crack, I'll send it to you. It works when it wanted to or in other means randomly, but none-the-less worked,it crashes like 25 percent of the time and wouldn't process files another 25 percent of the time, so in all it only worked properly ~50 percent of the time, at first I thought it was the program itself but then I installed the trial and the trial worked perfectly right out of the box.

regarding in and out buttons,

It's easy to play the first part of file (start to In) without processing, then process required part (In-Out) and then stop. But if the file is long and In position is far from start, that's too much time to waste. Good approach is to jump directly to In position without decompressing the beginning of file.

I think the Jumping to frame position directly would be easier to implement on the window screen after the start button.
This is what I'm thinking.
Set the in and out position in the first window and also any filter and what not, those settings can be saved in memory....
once start is click, I'm guessing video enhancer starts processing right away in the order giving in the list, instead video enhancer would implement the in and out first, then start the processing.
Just another Idea and last one surrounding this particular piece in video enhancer, I believe you guys already have a working version.....

Another thing I would like to say is if this feature is planned in future versions, I hope there will be a UI change since working frame by frame is not possible in current version of video enhancer's UI.
There are many features relate to the UI that I think are good to have for people who use video enhancer on every day basis, like....
Forward one frame, backward one frame, make the slider longer - preferably from end to end of the window for more precision.
A full-screen button because I don't do anything else while using video enhancer, also video editors usually have high resolution monitors anyways. full-screen would allow more application real-estate.
The many files button could be present on the main screen as a job list, and each job can have its own settings, a new "apply current settings to all jobs" button might be handy for people then too, also an add/delete job button.
I don't know why this isn't available in virtualdub either but maybe you can shed some light on it....why does there have to be a move up and move down button?, isn't dragging filters around easier?

Here are features that are not GUI related and also in my opinion hard to implement, the ability to process files over multiple computers, preview should have popup dialog after a set time telling the user he is in preview mode and in the dialog would have "process video", "make changes", "Continue Preview", and a check box "Don't show again", I would click on preview sometimes and forget, wasting a couple hours and generating heat and wasting electricity LOL.

Well I'm off to send you that crack, I'm guessing your gonna analyze it for what ever means.....
Peaces.

[Dee Mon]

Thanks! Here's what VirusTotal says about this crack:

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=89b9419f098541fd829dbcbc8cf287b29078594acb290095a64b3e7ad236240e-1297081952
26 antiviruses say there is a trojan. So use it at your own risk. That version is more than 2 years old and is not very stable, not to mention the speed and quailty which improved a lot since then.

Thank you for the suggestions.
Up/down buttons: we just completely forgot about dragging! Will add it in the next release.

Frame-accurate seeking: doesn't make much sense now, when whole file is processed, but will be in v2.0.
UI in version 2.0 will be very different: much more like Photoshop or After Effects, with the video on whole screen, frame-accurate positioning and seeing effects of all filters and SR right away. Adding a filter will be like adding a layer in Photoshop. You  will see the results immediately and will be able to switch each layer (filter) on/off to see the difference with and without it, without having to modify filters sequence.

Fun to hear about your wasted time watching preview. In recent versions of VE it already shows what it does: preview or processing, it's hard to miss.

Interesting ideas regarding jobs (batch processing). Need to think about it.