Today we have just released a new version of Amped FIVE.  There are a couple of really cool new filters in this release. The first one I’m going to look at is “Interleave”.

It can be found under the Edit selection of filters and appears before Deinterlace.

The Interleave Filter location: Edit > Interleave

Before we get into interleaving, let’s just refresh our knowledge a little…

An analogue video signal is constructed with horizontal scan lines. For PAL, it has 625 lines. When the camera constructs the picture, it doesn’t start at 1, and then go consecutively down to 625. It creates 1 image with just the odd numbered lines, 1,3,5 and so on and then the next image with the even numbered lines, 2,4,6 etc etc.

Each image of either odd or even lines is referred to as a field, with each field only having half the vertical resolution of the full frame. The video is interlaced.

As each field is taken at a different moment in time, if the camera or object in the frame is moving, the differences in the scan lines can be seen if the image is paused. These jagged edges are often referred to as interlacing artefacts. Continue reading →

We have just released the latest update to Amped FIVE (build 7042).

This is primarily a bug fix and user interface improvement release, but we have some new welcome additions too.

First of all, there was one small issue that a few of our users asked to improve. Whenever closing the program or the current project, the software was asking if it was needed to save or discard the current project in a way which was a bit unconventional, sometimes confusing the users and making them click on the wrong choice.

This is an example of the old style dialog, up to the previous version:

Continue reading →

We’ve just released an update to both Amped FIVE and Amped Authenticate. These are minor updates, mainly to correct graphical glitches, but there are also a couple of improvements, such as the addition of new DVR formats to the conversion tool and some additional options to the Fourier filter.

First of all there is now the possibility to smooth the areas of the spectrum to remove, as you can see in the image below.

Continue reading →

Let’s say you have a folder with some thousand files from a DVR that you need to convert to make them playable and viewable. The proprietary player is buggy as hell and needs you to convert the files one by one. Screen capture on such amount of data can just be a joke. But we’ve got you covered. We have just radically updated our proprietary DVR conversion tool adding, among a lot of other improvements, the possibility to batch convert all the files found in a folder.

Let’s take a quick tour at how the new version works. Continue reading →

We just released an update of Amped FIVE with several improvements and new filters. You can review below all the new tools.

Add Shape

With the new filter Presentation > Add Shape you can add ellipses, rectangles, lines and arrows to highlight parts of interest in the image.

For example, in the picture below we added an arrow to indicate the guy entering the door.

And then added another instance of Add Shape to draw a circle around the other guy. Continue reading →

We’ve just updated Amped FIVE today. The following are the improvements on today’s menu.

First of all the IFrame seek added in the previous version has been improved to work on all filters (with the exception of Frame Selectors).

As usual, we had a lot of our users requesting the conversion of specific DVR formats. In this update we added 3 new DVR formats (PAR, MGV, DRV). PAR and DRV, were already supported but we added a new sub-type as many times files with the same extension actually come in many different flavors. Thanks a lot to everybody who is contributing to the development with requests!

We’ve also included the DVR Screen Capture tool to make it easier to grab the selection of the area.

A lot of our users don’t do actual casework on workstations connected to the Internet. For this reason we just added a message in the menu item Help > Check for Updates On Line which will give you the link where to check if your version is up to date from the browser on another PC.

Finally, we’ve added and updated tutorials to include screenshots from the latest version. Amped FIVE has come a long way since these tutorials were first written!

We have just released a new Amped FIVE update. Among minor improvements and bug corrections, these are the major new features.

Export Video

Export video allows you to render the current video as a file without the need of adding a “Video Writer” filter to the current chain. But there’s more, it is now possible to fully customize the output settings using system codecs. We support all codec frameworks available on Windows: FFmpeg, Video for Windows, DirectShow and QuickTime. Just be aware that some of the codecs installed on your system may appear as available, but they may be not enabled to write files or may not support the current resolution or frame rate. If some of the codecs fail, that’s the reason.

To access Export Video go to the menu “File“ > “Export Video…”. Below you can find some screenshots of how it appears.

Continue reading →

We just launched a new version of Amped FIVE today, with a bunch of new filters and improvements.

The main changes are:

• Saving reports in PDF and DOC, as well as the current HTML format.
• New modes for Motion Deblurring when there is a replica effect
• New Nonlinear Deblurring to use when motion is not linear
• A new CLAHE (contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization) filter

Continue reading →

We just released a new update for Amped FIVE. Here we highlight some of the most relevant changes.

New Load Subtitles filter

Sometimes DVR systems save timestamp information in a separate subtitle file. With this new filter you can finally view the exact timestamp printed on the video, if they are encoded as smi or srt files. The timestamp appearance can be fully customized by the user: location on the picture, size, font, style and color are fully configurable. Load Subtitles is located in the group Presentation.

Continue reading →