What you say about this:
Possibility to watch the record lap Smile So like there would be "R" on back of the lap time where you can press it and see review of record lap. I dont know how that could work out because there are usually something like 50laps where the best is lap number 30 or so... But this kind of system would be nice and helpful too.
What do you guys think?
Ah, maybe good time to remember this, Jarno.
Right, it would be nice to have such kind of feature and i think about working on an autovideocut-tool (example: videocut of all laps where player xy drove a laptime faster than a defined time in an edit-field).
My thoughts about videos to records concerning this topic:
In the near past, there existed online server statistics like:
http://212.32.183.87:8888/ or a database of logfiles uploaded from a local TS folder:
http://lzan.host.sk/
What i was and am aiming for was, to have some kind of easy linked statistics, where Lzan came already close to (though there might be probably errors in his script etc.).
Race Results, taken from LogFiles (and since TS 1.00: automatically a link to the race video).
And also with the records, i thought about the possibility to link to the records date concerning logfile.
But in both these cases, it is not always the same case, where the logfile and the videos are located at - the relative pathnames are with every player different and sometimes not all logs or videos are saved or some are renamed and some logfiles have got errors in its completeness (a TS crash for example cause that a logfile is not perfect anymore). So, next to a certain setup, there is the problem to deal with some logfile bugs. For local users this can cause bigger problems - for dedicated online servers though, there everything works cleaner, so long the serveradmin is not changing too much manually. Oh well, there might be some background infos i just skip to tell now for not loosing too much the topic...
Back to the records:
Following steps show what you (and i) might want to have:
1. Importing records
2. Selecting a track and a selection of cars - all players
3. Refreshing the list, which shows now the records with the cars of all players in the selected track
4. In best case: if there is existing a video to the race, where a record in the list was made, then there could be generally an additional row with the title "Video" and shows for the record the number of the lap (maybe including additional "of driven laps" information), like: "38" or "lap 38" or with additional info "38/50" or "lap 38 of 50", if the record was driven in lap 38 of 50 driven laps, where the 50 laps though is not the racelapsnumber, instead it is the number of laps, the player with that laptime has driven in that race. With a slow car and other players with faster cars the driver would have driven maybe only 45 laps, while others drove the race to the end (50 laps).
Well...and to connect now the record to the video, this "38/50" will be marked as link with an underline and get automatically the procedure MouseOnClick, where, if you click onto this "link", the video of the race will be opened.
Of course, instead of having an extra row "Video", for example just the laptime can be underlined and work as link instead, which saves place.
5. In the very best case, there exists a feature, which is automatically cutting the video, if existing, to a short video of ~1 lap. In additional settings, there can be set the number of seconds before the lap is starting, for having time to see for example how the player goes into the lap (how to take speed) or just to have time for switching the focus to the player, which is driving the laptime. Probably, with another setting and auto-recognizing that the player of the record is the executer of the RecordViewer-Tool, less seconds can be set, since it is not necessary to change the focus anymore to the player who drove the record...
But this is just some additional feature which is not that necessary.
However, if there are many drivers in the race, it takes probably more time to switch the focus (ok, in small tracks it is not necessary to switch the focus anyway, by the way, but there are also bigger tracks you know...). So, usually 5 seconds are reaching, if it is a record by yourself - if it was another player, you need to push TAB to see the playername, then searching the player, which can take much time with 20 players for example.
So, a default time for pushing TAB (1 second) and a default time for searching a player in a mass of x players (<=1 second * (x-1 -> x-yourself)): maximal 1+<=19 seconds. In my opinion it should not take more than 10 seconds to find the focus of a player with many players included...in >95+x% of the cases.
Solutions: 5 seconds (or configurable ~1-10 seconds) default time before the lap, either how many players are there and either who made the record, to keep it simple. Or to make it easy for the user: 5 seconds + 0 sec if the trackwidth/height is <= width/height in sliders.ini settings (usually this means: if the track is small enough) OR + ~2 sec for TAB pushing and searching the player on the screen, if >=1 local player are in the race (auto: fit in screen) OR + 1 sec TAB...+ 1 sec default time (kind time of watching who is there in the race...) + 0.25 sec * (racing players - 1) to search the right player.
Well, i worked on that kind of auto-videocut idea yet a long time ago and actually it might have been already nice as tool, but as such feature here it would work surely very nice too. Note: by clicking on a link of a record, then...if a video exists, a file would be created with this recordlap and automatically named with a certain filename (maybe if 2005.09.16-03.16-flowjump.tsr is the name, then it would get the name: 2005.09.16-03.16-flowjump-AntiSlider-12.600-Lap-38.tsr, if the record was driven by AntiSlider in lap 38 with a time of 12.600 seconds. Adding the playername into this filename is probably a very good thing, but then there have to be made case sensitive decisions, since not all filenames may be created with including the correct drivername, since drivernames can include chars, which are not allowed in filenames (in Windows and in Linux). 2005.09.16-03.16-flowjump-Mike_Nike-AntiSlider-12.600-Lap-38.tsr would be for example a valid name for systems where a blank " " is not excepted, so these are replaces by "_" for example.
Well, either the path, where this videocut would be saved AND the relative filename itself can be a question of manual configuration, written in an ini file.
Examples to add into the ini file:
SETTING FOLDERS
PATH LOGFILES: log
PATH VIDEOS: video
PATH VIDEOCUTS: video\records\RecordViewer
PATH TRACKS: tracks
PATH RECORDS: records
...
END SETTING
SETTING FILENAME
FILE VIDEOCUTS
VIDEOFILENAME_EXTENSION_EXCLUDED
"-"
NICKNAME
"-"
CARNAME
"-"
"Lap-"
LAPNR
EXTENSION
END FILE
END SETTING
Though tracks, records, video and since TS 1.00 log are static paths.
I just listed them to show that i am speaking of relative paths to the main TS path, which is handled as workdirection in the tool inside.
In this example videocuts generated by a record viewer would be automatically created in the relatve path video\records\RecordViewer (dynamic said: into VIDEOS\records\RecordViewer).
By the way, EXTENSION would be in this example ".tsr".
Back to my idea of a general videocut tool, instead of having it as feature for a recordviewer tool:
This tool would be based on the necessity to have logfiles as help to know the race and the lap etc. for creating a base for automatic videocutting.
Like partly said, some kind of features like this would be nice:
1. Importing logfile information
2. Imported Races are listed, for example in many listboxes like:
2.1 Months (with items for example: 03|2004 ... 10|2005)
2.2 Days (with items for example: 1 or 01|04|2004...28 or 30 or 31 as last, depending on the month)
2.3 Race (with items for example, if possible: SESSION_ID RACE_ID HH-MM-SS; example: Session 2 | Race 10 | 19:40:55)
This would work like: you select a month in the 1st listbox, then you select a day, then you select the race (since logfiles are not always 100% correct, sessions (log started / ended...) cannot be always recognized so good or there can be probably errors with race IDs and the time is not always matching the time of a videofile and in TS 0.86 there have not even existed timestamps in the logfile.
Whatever, if a race is selected, we come to step 3.
3. (Omg...i just have the feeling that i write this videocut-tool documentation a 2nd time (maybe it is somewhere else in this or another forum or local or i wrote it once, but skipped and deleted the post^^...)
Well, the information of the race will be shown in for example a table or some listboxes, where you could select players in a list and then select 1 (or more with multiselect) laps in a 2nd list. Or you select even laps of different players by selecting cells in a table.
Both, as standalone tool and as feature, the videocut-system would be based on searching by the nickname, the date, the car and the laptime in the logfile of "date" and there...
As feature it would search the "laptime" with the "car" (search by car kind not possible for "no-laprecord"-laps in TS 0.86 though, but there were anyway no videos available...) in any race of the logfile, which is found by the "date" information. So this search takes more time, since no race information exists.
As tool it would search in the selected "race" easily the laptimes by the selected laptimes or lapnumbers of the selected players...
As additional feature, like said, there can be selected the cells (laptimes) in the table of players/laptimes automatically with a certain squery script, like some GUI part, which is letting you write so many scriptlines you want. A scriptline would be generated though by a GUI part, where you could select for example ALL players and as condition: LAPTIME<9.900, which would generate for example so many scriptlines like players in the race:
Scriptline1: "Mike Nike <9.900"
Scriptline2: "Ippon-sV <9.900"
...
Scriptline5: "[WCR]Matti <9.900"
In this example, there were 5 drivers in the race.
In addition or instead there can be also done scriptlines manually for every single player or by selecting 2-3 players.
It would look like this:
You have got a checklistbox with all players of the race. For example you can select/unselect all players by right click of the mouse (this right-mouseclick solution i took from eddie, which is relative good, i think).
In addition you have got a combobox with items "<", "=" and ">" (means: faster than, equal to, slower than) and an editfield to enter the laptime (limit), like "9.900".
If you select for example "Mike Nike" and "LaTuska" as players with ">" and "10.500" in a EasySlider Minileap race, then it would generate 2 scriptlines and showing you as result additional selected laptimes, where these 2 players obviously mistakes in such a race or were blocked etc.
What the tool should make too?
Soluting search problems -> you select a track in a list or not even...you just generate the scriptline with your name (maybe not even that) and just write "=" or "<" a certain laptime, too search a good laptime in a special track. In the best case, you even know the car and the date, too, but else it should work too, though the search in all logfiles would take a while, probably and the result would show then with less selections many items in a result-listbox.
If you have given concret search properties, then there are less results visible, showing all information you need for making more concret decisions in your selections, before you starting to videocut the laps you want.
A result would be then for example listed with rows: Date, (Session, Race,) Track, Player, Car, LapTime, where you would soon recognize which track it was, where you drove that laptime...
or if you selected a track, no players, a car and a selection of a laptime "< ...", then you could find out a list of players, which drove for example under 9.900 in Minileap with EasySlider at which dates - one example, where you could even create more than 1 videocuts at the same time.
Many possibilites and also a question of design and depth of features for the tool itself. But i think on this public forum i wrote enough for first now ^^