bmoffatt

Hi blob, I hope you don't literally wander off and leave. The only reason I've been quiet on the forum the last couple of months is because you have been supplying such good and fast help for those who post their questions. I'm redundant, yay. The forum has always been a self-help rather than a NCH help area in my experience, and there are positives to that, as much as we'd welcome more frequent input from them. If we are forced to push the software to (and beyond) its limits, then share what we learn on here, we gain and spread capability. This then feeds back into the next release whenever that might happen, just like it did for V2, which I find is a lot better than V1. Anyway, enough from me. Please don't wander off. Bruce in Adelaide

Hi Hugh, I'd suggest you might look first at the parameters of the saved video and compare them against the original to see if there is something obvious. I'd use something like VLC to play the videos, pause playing, then look at the info pages (Tools->Media Information and Tools-> Codec Information, or CTRL I and CTRL J). Hopefully this will shed some light. Sorry this is a bit vague, I haven't experienced this problem. I edit MPG videos and I deliberately decrease the quality of the audio (save as mono) because the videos are for sports coaching and don't need high quality sound. I get a big file size reduction just going from stereo to mono sound. Hopefully someone else on the forum will have had and solved exactly your scenario, in the meantime I hope I have pointed you in the direction of something worth investigating further. Bruce

Cool. No, I didn't know that and will certainly use it. Thanks for letting us know, well spotted Nik and thanks blob. Bruce

I am not sure if VideoPad will work on VOB files direct. I think you may have to convert them to another format first, then edit them in VideoPad. There are video file converters out there including Prism by NCH. I have to admit I haven't used any of them though, so I'm not going to be really helpful. Let us know how you go doing that. Bruce

Excellent sleuthing Andreas, thank you for sharing. This will be most useful to me. Bruce

Hi, this question was answered by NCHRE, just scroll down through the revious questions and you'll see one asking about rotating videos from a phone input. The short version of the answer given: ... click the little green star to on the video open the effects dialog. Under the 'Crop' options, there should appear two green arrows to the right of the preview, these are the rotate buttons.

Fraid so. Check the help files plus the previous posts here for more detail. In short, you add your video files to a project, chop them up and glue them back together in the sequence, then build a new video from them. Look for the Build menu.

For what it's worth, and from this distance, there's no obvious deficiency in your system. I run XP SP3 like you, and as you can play the videos, there is no other obvious thing lacking. When you Import, then Add to footage, all that you should see is the name of the imported file added to the list in the far left side of the screen, underneath the project name (Untitled unless you've saved the Project as something else) If you're not seeing that imported file name added I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. Sorry Bruce

Howdy, It's not 100% clear what you are trying to get as output from VideoPad so I'll make some assumptions. If I am wrong, please be patient with me and pose the question differently. If you are trying to get 4 separate video files from the original video, you will need to drop each clip by itself onto the sequence, and build just that clip into a new video file. So do what you did before to define the start and end point of one of the sections of the clip, drop the smaller section down onto the sequence by itself, build it to a new file, then delete it from the sequence and cut, drop and build the next bit, etc etc. Hope that helps a little. Please let us know. Bruce

Sorry Allenapc, it's not that nobody cares. I suspect that nobody else is seeing the same problem that you are having, or if they are they don't have any idea how to fix it either. It may be that you are not doing anything wrong, but without being able to see more information about your system and set up nobody can do much more than make wild guesses. Is there anything unusual about your system that you could tell us about? Is it an XP or Vista system? If XP, do you have Service Pack 2 or later installed? (this will tell us if you have the expected stable base platform to work from) Are you able to run other simple video editing programs, like VideoSpin? (this will tell us if the problem is likely to be specific to VP). Can you view the videos you are trying to edit using media players like VLC and Windows Media Player? (this will help determine whether the codecs you require are installed on your system). Bruce

Hi Mel2000 I've tried and found that I get the same results as you. Editing effects in either clip mode or sequence mode seems ony to show the effect in the preview pane as it applies to the first frame of the clip or sequence. That would be a good enhancement to add to the wish list, but it won't help you in the short term. Bruce

I heartily agree with Ian on this one. If it was up to me I'd prefer to see the development effort spent on other things in the wish list. I'd belatedly add these new items to the wish list too, having been prompted by recent posts to the forum. Slow Motion Stop Motion Reverse Motion Of course, I understand that VP is free software, and the developers will do what they judge is best use of their time. And it may well be that Ian and I are in a minority here, so maybe debate in the forum would be a healthy way for NCH to monitor market requirements. Time will tell I guess. I'm keen to see a new release some time. Bruce

Quick Answer: No. And you really don't have to die if you can't reverse your video playback. Sorry, this is highly desirable functionality, along with slow motion and freeze frame, but is not available in any of the low-end editors I use. If you find one, please post here so we all know. I use VideoPad, DivX Author, VideoSpin. I believe Ulead Video Studio can help you at about $80 US, and other $$ editors would also, like Adobe Premier, but I don't use them. You might want to google them, and see if maybe they have a free trial download so you can avoid having to die. Actually if you google 'video edit reverse video' you'll get lots of hits. Sorry I can't help, but at least you don't have to kill yourself trying to do the impossible with VP. Bruce

Hi Mark, If you are working with clips, you use the in/out marks to mark the start and end of the bits you want to keep, not the bits you want to discard. You can mark several smaller portions of a clip that way, one at a time. When you've marked the in and out points of a section you want to keep, you click the 'add new clip' icon between the in/out icons, and a new clip is listed on the clip list. That new clip is the smaller bit you just marked out. Do the same for any other segments you want from the original clip. Then select each smaller segment clip in turn and click on the downward pointing arrow next to the word 'clips' above the clips list to add the clip to the sequence. When you've built up a sequence of new clips (or just one if that's all you are after) click the 'build' icon in the top menu to build a new video from the clip(s) on the sequence. If you are working in the sequence and you want to snip out a section, move the green cursor aolng the timeline where you want to make a cut, then select the scalpel icon to snip at that point. Do the same at the next cut point. Then click on the sequence in the area you want to delete. It should highlight. Then press the delete button on the keyboard. FOOM, just like that, it's gone. It may pay to copy a video file somewhere and use it as a test video, and cut it up and make all sorts of chopped up video out of it to test the functionality. Hope that helps a little. Bruce

Not sure what you are actually asking, 'trim' and 'crop' don't seem to fit with the text of your question. If your question means 'How do I define a new start and end point within an existing video clip, and select just that section of the video' then the there are already quite good step by step instructions - the VideoPad help files. If I misunderstand your question, or reading the help files doesn't do it for you, please rephrase to clarify the question. Bruce

Don't believe there is. Not documented anywhere I can see, and playing with VP dousn't uncover an 'undocumented feature' of that nature. If the functionality was there, I'd expect NCH to be advertising it, as it would not be a trivial set of functionality to deliver. I'd be happy to be shown to be wrong though, it would be useful to me. Bruce

Hey Dink, I haven't used .vob files so this is a little bit speculative, however VideoPad info page lists .vob as a supported file type so it's worth a try. Import the two files as clips into VideoPad. Add the clips to the sequence. Build a new file from the combined sequence. Sounds easy, let us know how it goes.

Hi Rob, In VideoPad, you don't Save or Save As your video, that saves the project file, which is not the same thing. To save the video you've been editing, you need to 'Build' a new video from the edited video. When you click the 'Build' menu, you'll get options as described above, and you should select avi type from the menus if that's the file type you want. If you've been using Save or Save As you'll find a .vpj file has been created. That's the file that holds the information about your video editing project, not the video file itself. Hope that helps, Bruce

Sounds like a bug, but I Haven't seen that behaviour yet. If I get time I'll have a look. Quick answer, I wouldn't expect that you'd have to insert a sound file in parallel with a still image. Does that behaviour get translated into the end product if you 'build' the video? Bruce

Hi Rob, I'm not subscribed to Vimeo so I can only go by what is published on their help pages. They say that you can upload any kind of video, so you should test that by making one and giving it a go. To create a new video file from the sequence you have created in VideoPad, you 'build' the video. Click the Build icon in the top menu bar and you will be given options for the type of output to 'build'. Select the 'windows PC' option, and select the parameters that you want the new video to have from the build window. The format, resolution and sound specs should be pre-selected with something sane, and you can play with them to select different output types. When the build has completed, look for the built file in the location selected in the build window, and give it a run with a media player on your PC to check it seems OK. Also check the size of the built video file to make sure it is not too outrageously large to load up on Vimeo. I don't subscribe to Vimeo so you will have to check their help pages for instructions to upload the video file. Try http://www.vimeo.com/help as a starting point. Hope that helps a little. Bruce

Hi, Zoom the view of the sequence timeline so that you can see the clip you want to move as well as the point to insert it into. Click the clip and hold the mouse button down, and drag the mouse cursor to the insertion point. You should see the clip drag along. When the cursor approaches the insertion point, you should see a red insertion line appear there. Release the mouse button. Ta daa! [play fanfare music sound clip here] Bruce

Probably can't help, but can try if you like... So as the process is apparently running based on what you see in the process table, we can deduce that the install has succeeded at some level and the program is executing at some level. That's a start, but no help to you yet. Can you check whether you are running Win XP with either SP2 or SP3 (or neither??). Is there anything unusual about the system, e.g. are you running an unusual graphics system, or are you running XP in a 'virtual machine' environment like VMWare (if this question doesn't mean anything you, the answer is no.) Actually any and all system info would potentially help. Bruce [i used to work on a help desk once. When I get to the stage of asking you to check if it's plugged in, feel free to swear at me :-) ]

The easiest way to get a bigger preview pane is to close off any of the working areas you aren't using at the time. For example if you are working on a clip, you can close down the audio working area by clicking on the word Audio (or the triangle near it) at the top of the Audio working area. Similarly if you click on the word Sequence you can choose to close down the Clip edit area and only work with the Sequence working area open. Bring back the clip working area by clicking anywhere in the Clips area to the left of the preview area. Bruce

I'll assume you know how to import a file as a clip and add it to the video sequence. If not, let me know and I'll add another reply. If you want to 'slice' a section of video, you do that in the assembled 'sequence', not as a clip. When you have a clip in the sequence, click on the sequence, or on the word 'sequence' above it, and preview screen will change to show the whole of the project that is currently being assembled in the sequence view. There may be only the one clip, or as many as you are currently assembling together. Move the cursor to the position in the sequence you want to make the cut or 'slice'. You can do that by clicking with the mouse cursor on the sequence time line. Once you have the cursor at the position you want to slice the film, look for the 'slice' icon, just below the word 'Project' below the preview pane. There are two icons there, one is a microphone symbol, the other is a scalpel blade. Click the scalpel blade. Hey presto the sequence is 'sliced' at the cursor position into two sections. On the other hand if you want to cut up a clip into segments say perhaps if you want to import different sections of a clip into the sequence, you don't use the 'slice' button. Use the 'in point' and 'out point' to define the start and end points of a section of the clip you are working on, then click the 'add new clip' button and a new clip will be created as a smaller section of the original clip, and will be listed in the clips list for that clip. Then you can import the new smaller sections into the sequence. Hope that is some help. Bruce

I'd recommend trying very hard to maintain the simplicity that you have achieved in the user interface. Other video editors I am using have strengths, but generally there is at least one bit of functionality missing, and as well the user interface is often far from intuitive. This is in some instances partly because of the richness of the functionality provided, for example KDENLIVE is quite useful, but I tend to lose untold hours working my way through all of the available functionality to do a simple job. With VideoPad I am delighted that the interface is presented simply and intuitively, for what is a quite rich set of functionality. The stuff I have done with VideoPad so far has been simple and quick to produce. That's very important for me. If you add DVD Authoring (or provide that through a separate program) that would bring it up to 99% of what I'd ever want out of it. The last 1% for me would be in enhancing the video clips with for eample automatic colour compensation or the like. I'd be happy to volunteer to bench test a release candidate of future release versions if that would help Bruce