Feedback From New User

Feature Suggestions Patch Feedback
#1

Windows 10, i7, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080.

I needed some simple keyframe animation software to quickly demo user interface design for a software project at school, where I’m on a student team developing a UI for a local company.

For the past ~5 hours I made an 1812 key frame animation in Wick Editor. During this time, it crashed a dozen times, entered an unusable state two dozen times, and I lost work several times. A half dozen times, I ended up with un-removable artifacts (seems to be related to performing many quick undos with the text tool selected) that forced me to reload the software.

When I finally got to export my project as an .mp4, it’s in 240p or something, despite selecting 1080p. Wick Editor froze while exporting twice, so it took three attempts to even get that.

I’m not sure how you’re possibly on version 1.19, but I think it’s time to focus on the stability of the software, and generating a high quality .mp4 should be a top priority.

I’m not sure what the goal here is, but I’m not using Wick Editor again, and I regret trying it.

That said, if it was stable, I would like this software because it’s nice and simple for quick work.

P.S. Was very confused that I can’t seem to prevent layers from overlapping each other. What kind of design is that? I’m tweening a mouse cursor and it’s overlapping with the entire UI, instead of covering it.

#2

Hi there @okovko, welcome to the community.

I have zero knowledge about Windows because I use a Mac (heck, i barely know much Apple technology). But the problem at first glance looks to be that almost 2000 frame project itself.

If you used any images, making the quality higher doesn’t improve the quality of the image themselves, so if the image is low quality, so is your final animation.

The un-removable things have happened before, and they’ve been reported already. No idea what causes them.

The mp4 export is in beta still, and your giant project is probably part of the problem it gives you back a worse quality video. If your computer is laggy or lagging, it can even send back a corrupted mp4 file. Trust me, I did this during a Google Meet meeting for school and it came back corrupted. But this is probably only because of the lag.

Now that I see you talk about 1.19 being bad and we can’t possibly be this far with all the bugs, I’m starting to think you’re using that instead of 1.18? If you use the desktop version, I think that’s the case. 1.19 is the test version of the editor (its equivalent is test.wickeditor.com), so editor.wickeditor.com is the more stable one. (Emphasis on “more.”)

And yes, Wick, to my knowledge, is not really for ultra-long animations.

Layers are supposed to overlap… Layers simply decide which elements go on top of others. If you want a mouse cursor in an interactive project, that should be the top layer.

#3

Wick editor is a website with magic, and I do agree, it can get unstable due to the growing complexity of a project through time (1812 frames is more frames than I ever used).

However, I do have a quick solution for your project. What you can do is break the animation into separate files! Thus you can focus on a part of your animation individually without worrying of having your project slow down or crash. You’ll also have to use another software to put together the scenes (after you export em’ as mp4 files), but it won’t be trouble.

If you already have a huge project in one file, you can select multiple frames (shift+click on multiple frames), then copy paste them into an empty project in order to work on them individually.

You can stop using Wick if you want to, the choice is yours

#4

Didn’t use any images, everything is drawn using Wick Editor. Exported a fourth time after restarting and check marking 1080p again, but it still doesn’t look crisp, although it’s not horribly compressed like it was by default. I mean if it’s in beta it’s in beta, but Wick Editor’s website gave me the impression that this is a usable software. I don’t think that’s accurate. Exporting to .mp4 is "core and essential, not something that should be “in beta” when you’re on “version 1.18.”

1:12 duration animation is not giant. What is Wick meant to be used for if it can’t even handle a few minutes worth of frames? It feels like someone’s toy project that isn’t meant for any real use. In the current state.

I am using 1.19 Desktop client, was unaware it is the test version. Maybe I’ll try 1.18 later.

I tried putting the cursor as top and bottom layer, didn’t make any difference, it would not appear over or under any other layers. I searched the forums and it seems to be something about how tweening works.

#5

Hi @okovko,

I appreciate you taking some time to send feedback in and am sorry to see that you ran into so many problems.

If you wouldn’t mind sending the .wick file to me so I can test it (either on this thread, or by email to luca@wickeditor.com) you can help me find the bugs that caused these issues. Wick Editor is free software and we currently only have 1 full time developer on the tool (me) so this helps quite a bit.

Additionally if you could answer a few questions for me it would help quite a bit.

  1. Are you using the desktop or web editor? (Noted Desktop Editor!).
  2. When exporting your video, did it crash on a specific stage?
  3. For the layer overlapping problem, could you attach an image or some reproduction steps for this? I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to here.

Thanks for taking some time to provide feedback!

#6

Sure, I can share the file, but I’m not sure how helpful it will be. I didn’t save when problems occurred, instead I would exit the project and load my previous save. Wick Editor froze while exporting at the final step twice (I waited 2 min each time before restarting and trying again, worked on 3rd and 4th attempts), so technically it did not crash, but the application was unresponsive. There were leftover “tmp” files afterwards.

I understand this is a free software, and it makes sense that you are the sole developer. For solo work, it’s great stuff, and I really enjoy the design. Your website makes it seem like there’s more of you :slight_smile:

The forum just told me I cannot upload files as a new user. I guess I’ll send you an email.

Email sent.

#7

you should try to export as images sequence and then build your video file from there

#8

Thanks! File Received. From the looks of it I think this is once again primarily an issue with audio processing. @blurredPixels suggestion of rendering an image sequence and assembling in a video editor (my favorite is DaVinci Resolve [FREE!]) is a great option in the mean time.