Pat88

Is there any way to get one display image per frame? At 30fps there would be one frame per 33 ms on the timeline but zooming out it jumps from one display image (simulated frame) every 20 seconds to one every 40 or 80. If I haven't zoomed in enough it sometimes splits to the left of the current image displayed, sometimes to the right. And when I go to a place on the Timeline, split left and right to isolate a clip, select that clip, then click Clip Preview, it's now (wasn't previously) each time going to the start of the whole video in the image display; although the time in the clip preview seems correct an effect added seems to go to another clip.

PS I set the switch at the bottom of this form to "Notify me of replies", which is a nice facility. It might be better to have this default to On rather than Off? Also, every notification that came was in an excellent format, with both the message and a link to come here to respond, but every time Gmail put it in my spam folder! I keep clicking on "Not spam" but Gmail doesn't seem to learn. NCH might want to check why Gmail is doing that, as there might be small changes that would reduce that.

Thank you Borate, I gather then the best method to cope with an underpowered laptop is to use proxy files for editing as you gave instructions above. I'm going to keep using "File > Save project as" every quarter hour or so, naming the saves as version12, version13, etc., so that I can go back to start over with a good version and not lose too much work when I encounter problems of my own making or due to a computer problem. Thanks again

Thank you! I've been splitting clips a lot! I didn't try the animation keyframes as I expected it might be too much extra for my underpowered laptop and also I haven't learnt how to use them. Is there any advantage to storybook mode if a person is not re-arranging the order of clips? Is it possible it would put less strain on the computer, and therefore work more reliably, if I dragged clips from the timeline to the video bin (I assume both video tracks and the stereo audio track would go together) and applied effects there? Then I'd have to be careful to drag them back when I was finished all of them in the correct order, but it would save many hours if I could avoid freezeups every so often. I do need to save the project versions more often!

Thanks Borate! Wow, that's a great method for using proxy files and I bet it would solve all my problems! NCH should post that advice on the page that lists "system requirements"! I tried to delete my post (after discovering VP automatically switches to Clip Preview) and thought I had done so since it didn't appear in the latest posts then, but I'm very grateful for the advice. I did previously try lowering the frame rate from 30 to 15 fps, which did smooth out the operation (on this ASUS X205TA that was $200 five years ago and not at all suited to video editing!) Unfortunately, that wasn't suitable for me because for reasons I won't go into I needed to split into clips on a frame by frame basis, and when set at 15 fps the editor only displayed every second frame when I clicked "Next frame" and the splits were sometimes then off by a frame. I did try toggling hardware acceleration off, and that may have helped though I'm not certain. DirectX is supposedly 11.2 for Windows 8.1, which is updated, but dxdiag seems to report "11" in one place and "11.0" in another; I don't know how to update it further, but I doubt that's the problem, and this laptop doesn't have a video card. I had numerous confusing problems such as the time bar jumping around, which I strongly suspect were due to the laptop being underpowered. Perhaps the software then can't keep everything in order; just patiently waiting works sometimes and not others. Other problems were more mysterious. For example, on launching the program I started getting the error message: "Error loading files There was an error loading one or more of the effect or transition icons. Please reinstall VideoPad to fix this problem. If the problem persists, contact NCH Software support at http://www.nch.com.au/support/index.html" Using the Control Panel to uninstall/change brought up an NCH module with a "reinstall" option which I chose, but I still got the same error message on opening VP. So then I deleted VP entirely and reinstalled from scratch, and that fixed that problem. Other things were confusing for a newbie because things would work one time and not the next, presumably because I didn't go slowly enough for my laptop, and I found the instructions for applying effects were not detailed step-by-step enough for me so I was guessing. Found I could use Google to search site:nchsoftware.com since the site itself had no search box, just a table of contents. Had to use the undo button a lot, and start from a previously saved version of the project file a lot. By trial and error I think I've developed a work pattern that will suffice. For example, usually I can find the place I need to apply the Effect using the large red time position slider in the Sequence preview, note the exact time, select the clip, select Video Effects, VP then switches to Clip Preview and I can go from there...but if Clip Preview automatically opens in a different (wrong) clip, which seems quite often, then I can use the small red time position slider in the Clip Preview to get to the right clip using the time I previously noted being careful since that timeline doesn't expand (would be problematic on a long video). It seems great software though a bit short on the documentation for a beginner, and the video tutorials were mostly not helpful. I was a little surprised that effects could not be applied to random portions of the video rather than just to demarcated clips. Thanks again

In Timeline mode, is there any problem with applying Video Effects > Censor in Sequence Preview rather than Clip Preview? On my underpowered system the playback is jerky with no sound in Clip Preview (Win 8.1, 2 GB RAM, 1.33 GHz, VideoPad 6.30 installed without any choice to SSD C:\ and Options > Disk set to cache files on SD card D:\ and preview set in Tools > Options to 512x288). I'm seeing if I can use VideoPad on a 2 minute 250 MB .mov 1920 x 1080 video as it seems to be the best software for low spec computers. It only seems to use about 70% of RAM and 50% of CPU, plus 112 MB of 45 cache files, but I'm having quite a struggle and have about 4 days left of the 14 day trial period of the free version. (The video was reduced to 112 MB when I tried saving it as a lossless .mov). Things seemed okay adding Censor effects to the first clips of the 60 or so clips in total, but then seemed to start getting more and more difficult.

Thank you ?

Oh yes, my mistake. Thank you again. I presume the original files remain unchanged, changes being stored in the small project file that records the edits, this being a non-linear / non-destructive program.

Thank you. I have the whole file, except for an added text clip, on the timeline and not in the bin at all; is that a bad idea?

Took me 5 hours to figure out the obvious: that the audio maddeningly won't play a sound if the "Clips" and "Clip Preview" tabs and Video Track are selected when the video and audio are unlinked. If NCH staff happen to be reading this, they might want to know that -it was almost impossible to find how to register for the Discussion Forum -both the NCH email seeking confirmation of the registration email address, and the email confirming successful registration, were sent to Spam by Gmail