[Bf-committers] Confusing Render, File Format and Encoding presets

[Damir Prebeg]

I find organization and interaction of render, file format and
encoding presets under render options quite inconsistent and
illogical. So here are my proposals:

A) First smaller annoyances:
Default render preset that we get when Blender is first started is not
even listed under Render presets dropdown. Also, there's no option for
aspect ratio locking while changing image dimensions.
Is there any special reason why actual frame rate is calculated from
framerate and framerate base and not simply one float value for
framerate (eg. FPS: 23.976 instead of FPS:24 and Base:1.001)?
And there's a bug: Select any Render preset, and then reload startup
file (Ctrl+N). All values except selected Render preset name in that
dropdown box will be reloaded.

I propose that there should be "Default" entry by default,
implementation of aspect ratio lock and one simple floating point
framerate.

B) It gets interesting with Output movie presets:
I'm not an expert but I don't recall that I have seen or heard for
true h.264, Xvid, Aci codec and Avi jpeg file types. Don't jump on me,
I know that there are files with .264 or .xvid extensions but they are
just "aliases" for .avi or .mp4 containers.

I propose that Output dropdown list (regarding video file types)
should contain only real file format extensions like mpg, avi, mkv,
ogg, flv etc. and, of course, frame server option.

C) And under the Encoding panel we have real fun:
Here we have Presets dropdown that always says Presets and you never
now witch preset is active. Not only that, here we have presets that
are changing not only Encoding settings but they are also changing
dimensions of movie. And there is File format dropdown although we
(should) have already selected file format under Output panel.

I propose that dropdown box Preset actually shows witch preset is
active and if user changes some option active preset should
automatically change to "Custom" (that should apply to all preset
dropdowns in Blender).
One Encoding preset shouldn't change any other setting than those
under Encoding panel, and file format should be already selected in
Output panel so there's no sense to have that dropdown duplicated.

I wanted to try to reorganize that by my self in python, but Output
items are hard-coded in Blender source so I can only hope that someone
of devs understands what I'm talking about.

Cheers,

Damir