Almost every UI change made in the newer versions is bad

Topaz Video AI Ideas
1

Hello,

I’ve been using Video AI for about two years now. When I first downloaded the program, I found the UI to be extremely intuitive and easy-to-use. It was genuinely one of the best UIs of any program I have ever used.

I have since also purchased Gigapixel and had a similar experience.

Then, as updates to Video AI brought with them various UI changes, I got increasingly frustrated and reverted back to an earlier version and did not care about newer releases anymore. It took me some time to find the goldilock’s version, as the earlier updates did introduce some changes that were sorely needed and which I forgot about.

Now, with the release of Starlight, I decided to renew my subscription and update to 7.0, hoping that the UI had improved since then.

But it has gotten even worse. While with the 4.X versions, everything was intuitive and convenient, now the UI looks like it is designed to make you do as many mouse clicks as possible and move the mouse over the longest distances possible to do simple things.

Issue 1 - The Sources Tab:
The new timeline is great. Having a preview image for different parts of the video on the timeline makes finding the right spot on the video much easier. However, there is no reason why there couldn’t be a small corner on the bottomleft side of the screen allocated for the video sources, like there was in earlier versions.

Therefore, please remove the Sources tab altogether and revert back to the original design.

If that’s not an option, please consider these improvements:
I may have two different export videos and forgot what the difference is or I want to compare their quality. In earlier versions, I could import both, stay at the first frame or skip forward to the same frame, and compare them by rapidly switching between them.

This is no longer possible. Now, the video darkens when you click on the Sources tab, which makes a direct comparison impossible. Please revert this and make the Sources tab less invasive.

Finally, if I want to just take a quick look at my imported sources, I can’t click on the Sources tab, then click on it again to go back. No, I have to find the X-button and click that. Another small, unnecessary annoyance.

Issue 2 - Export queue:
The new preview player is a game-changer, but the Export queue has that exact same issue as the Source tab. Why does the entire bottom UI disappear when I click on it? Why do I have to move my mouse over the entire screen to close the viewer every time I want to take a gander at my exports and how long they will take?

Issue 3 - Timeline zoom:
Everytime I zoom in or out, it resets the cursor position. Zooming in does not take into account the mouse position, but it always zooms in on the beginning of the selection. It is just a very frustrating user experience right now.

There are more things, but I think these three issues are the main ones that need to be addressed. The structuring of the right-side tab is not great, but at this point I’ll be on the side of “Just don’t change it every version.”

I apologize for all the negativity, but I am getting increasingly exasperated with almost every software I am using getting worse over time. It starts with things like Paint removing the primary colors from the default palette or making the image resizer no longer snap to the grid. It’s changes like these, which make a program worse (even if only slightly) for no apparent reason, that really grind my gears. If this continues, every program I’ll be using will be a Vegas Pro.

Anyway, I will be trying out Starlight now and will have a lot of fun with it, although I’ll probably be yelling at my monitor from time to time.

2

Which version do you consider to be the “goldilock’s version”?
Great comments.

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3

One of the 4.X versions. I don’t remember which one exactly and I no longer have the installation files, sorry. 5.X was when I was getting irritated by the constant UI changes, but it was still fine. Somewhere along those versions, the irresponsiveness of the video timeline was fixed, so that’s important. 6.0 was I think when the Sources tab was added, which was the breaking point for me.

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4

The worst part is: most everyone in the community has been very vocal about what is bad about the UI changes in every release. Most of the feedback is not conflicting. Topaz has been given direction on what to do to make it better and they have blunderingly ignored the feedback and made it worse every time.

2 Likes
5

Well, I see that the goofy upscaler model preview UI with the photos has been removed again, so I assume that’s something people complained about and at least here they listened.

6

They do listen to a lot of what people say on here. Sometimes the delay between when the request is made and when it gets into TVAI, is about a year. There have been complaints from them adding a feature that was heavily requested months before, but in the meantime people had moved on and decided they wanted something else. Sadly, they seem to be stuck on bad UI changes—in hopes of fixing the complaints.

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7

I agree, they lost me on 6.1. Thankfully, I never overwrote my 2.6 folder. I really have tried to adapt to the newer UI ,but it’s completely unintuitive. I hope they’ll see their folly and correct this.

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I had longer time the idea we comunity could re-design a new space saving eficient UI. Sure not real, but purely visual on paper, down to the last detail and as realistic as possible take over all existing usable functions but at new positions, space saving and droping gimmicks + add new important things that today are missing. Then we make a vote for it Topaz can’t ignore :slightly_smiling_face:

I already have some ideas, but every start is difficult and I don’t want to go it alone. The first step would be to specify what information a UI needs to display and have, rougly divided into source preparation & view, model settings, previews and output rendering.