more than one output

For me, there is no problem. I can use the output of a group multiple times.

oh I see what the problem is, outputs from components with in the group

yeah, it's not that I'm an idiot for not noticing should read ..... Cannot create group: outgoing connections from with in the selected group ..... or something like that

yep something more descriptive

Here's a mockup I did a couple of years ago (if not earlier). The yellow outline around the thumbnail indicates that it is shown in the preview. The letter overlays indicate which output is outputting what (e.g. H, L and S for an Extract HLS component). The lock preview eye icon (not shown) would also be displayed somewhere within the thumbnail, as the lock is now per-output, not per-component.

The problem with this feature is that it's a lot of work, both on GUI and infrastructure side, but the main benefit is mostly convenience. Our entire infrastructure is built on an assumption that a component has a single output, and I have no idea what problems may rear their ugly heads during the rewrite.

Also, it provides no speed benefit to sample-based components (because samples can hit any output at any coordinates so there's no way to share precalculated data between outputs), and there's no benefit to this outside the Filter Editor (i.e. owners of the Basic edition won't even notice this feature).

As for outputting multiple different results (of the same type, e.g. green or blue) from a group, there's a workaround:

1. Inside the group, create a Control Component for switching output mode (a Checkbox or an IntSlider), and name it "Output Mode" or similarly.

2. Wire it to a Switch, along with different output signals to switch between.

3. Plug the Switch into group's output.

Now you can get pseudo-multi-output by instancing the group and adjusting Output Mode for each instance.

Hello ! I'm a new user. I try to understand the group feature but with difficulty. How to group ? What to group ? Why to group ? I'm a visual person and I need examples with its results for a better understanding. Someone can give me a visual help, please ?

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Gisoft Hello ! I'm a new user. I try to understand the group feature but with difficulty. How to group ? What to group ? Why to group ? I'm a visual person and I need examples with its results for a better understanding. Someone can give me a visual help, please ?

I am also a visual person and also like more visual examples for a better and easier understanding

How to group is easy to answer, and is explained with graphical screenshots in this page here and also how to edit them

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Creating groups is very easy. Just select components you want to group and click the Group button that has been added to the top toolbar of the Filter Editor:

Also you can make a group clicking on the right button on windows to open the menu and select "group"

What to group is a less easy question, but this depends of what you want to do, and it could be many possible things. One example could be that you could have an snippet and instead of having all the components "in the wild" you can make a group of all of them and have just the output.

Why to group is something also subjetive, 3 reasons I have found is that this way you can reduce the clutter on a complex filter and can organize it better and also that a more important thing perhaps is that you CAN NAME the group, so you can know what this group of components is for and what it does, and would be better to understand when you want to know what it does the things.

Also as said above you can convert snippets (that are NOT surface ones and does not have the lighting tab) into one group and so it would be easier to manage and to use.

Surely there can be more answers to all 3 questions, and is up to other to complete this.