Beta 5.005 – new beta keys for Windows

Hi everyone,
We released an update to Filter Forge 5 beta:
https://filterforge.com/more/news/1063.html

We didn't have enough courage to call it a "Beta stage 3" since there are too few user-centric improvements. Sorry, no more distinct beta stages this year: "killer features" are put off till the final release.

However today's update contains two important infrastructure improvements that may need testing by beta testers. The first one is the new licensing engine for Windows. Installing 5.005 will invalidate your beta key (for Windows): please request a new beta key on the website and report any problems.

The second one is rehauled filter import. It is not as simple as it sounds, actually is a pretty complex process which previously could have caused freezes and memory allocation issues. This should no longer be the case. If you have a large filter collection (large = over 10,000) we'd appreciate if you install 5.005, then copy old filters to the new location (as described here) and check the startup time.

Thanks for reminding, CFandM. This is a top priority issue for the release.

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Still have that importing issue when first installing FF5....This is the issue with the MY FILTERS folder pointing to the FF4 MY FILTERS folder...Once one of these filters is edited or even open in FF5 then one can no longer use them in FF4....

I can confirm this, I had the same experience (I was lucky to have a copy of my own FF4 filters).

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Sorry, no more distinct beta stages this year: "killer features" are put off till the final release.

I see that the upgrade (preorder) price fr om Pro 4 to Pro 5 at the moment is 65 dollar without taxes.

Questions for GMM :
1. Can you give me a clue what these "killer features" in the release version will be to justify an upgrade?
2. Will there be a "last call" (newsletter) before release, that will make it possible to decide to buy or not to buy an upgrade for the preorder price?


P.S. Killer features for me would be :
1 A batch renderer that can output automatically multiple frames (pictures), where each frame is rendered with a different value of an user defined parameter, between user defined max and min values, with uses defined number of steps and with user defined characteristic, like linear step values or exponential step values. At the moment it is only possible to render with different presets from the commandline (FFXCmdRenderer-x86). Would be nice for animations and video!
2 Not a software feature but a documentation feature : A specification / description of the ffxml filter file format (seems to be xml) and picture (thumbnail)file format. This will make it more easy for other people to build tools like I described above.

I think we kinda have a glimpse at what the "killer features" are so far... although might be a small list... these are pretty general features so it's got big potential.

Currently whats known: 1. Randomization locks. 2. Pixel Awareness 3. Modulo 4. bomber improvements which adds quite a number of unique properties.

And who knows. Maybe a couple more general things. Usually software companies don't disclose every part of the feature stuff coming up anyway. And the point is you can just decide later to buy or not. That's a choice.

ThanKs for all the answers and I understand the reason behind this

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GMM In Filter Forge, select View > Preview Size > Reduced

YES, of course that i already know about this option and I use it all the time, BUT on many filters, this is still slow, so maybe instead of a 4 parts pass, it could have maybe 8 so you could have a faster rough view and see if it could be good enough or not

i should have put that it should be an improved version of this already included preview mode