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VideoPad Wishlist


mel2000

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I'm liking VideoPad overall but find some of its features inconvenient, or counterintuitive to what I'm used to with video editors. So I'm making the following recommendations that would make VideoPad the *perfect* freeware editor.

 

1.) Do not reencode video for cuts-only editing.

2.) Allow 3GP, FLV, MOV and MP4 formats to be saved to the hard drive.

3.) New footage clips should be added to the right of the previous clip in the sequencer instead of to the left, which is counterintuitive to most video editors.

4.) Allow dragging and dropping of footage clips to the sequencer timeline.

5.) Replace the sequencer timeline with a storyboard timeline like Photostage, which would make rearranging clips and adding transitions and effects more intuitive. There is no need to have what looks like two editing timelines.

6.) Display the timecode and frame number in the preview window while scrubbing the clips when using the timeline cursor or the mark-in or mark-out cursors.

7.) Do *all* splitting and mark-in/mark-out editing on the editing timeline, replacing the display of each footage clip with the one selected.

8.) Add the Slice button to the editing clip timeline instead of the sequencer timeline.

9.) Add an inverted triangle to the bottom of the timeline cursor to make it easier to grab, just like the mark-in and mark-out cursors.

10.) Lock the original clips in the footage section, and only add new clips after the "Add file(s) to footage" button is clicked.

11.) Allow the clips in the footage section to be rearranged via dragging and dropping, or with up/down buttons.

 

Thanks for listening :-)

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12. add option to 'build' to a VOB or ISO file ready to take into a DVD Builder, or alternatively add functionality to add a DVD menu then build and burn from within VP

13. make 'build' see a DVD burner. It currently sees CD/DVD burners as CD only and only allows option of build/burn to VCD.

 

But I agree, an excellent program, 99% complete, and worth the effort to make small improvements. I found the user interface by far the easiest and most intuitive to use among the apps I am trying out for this job. Admittedly, I am working on smallish home video projects, not big commercial stuff. But for my money (and I'd certainly pay for this product if points 12 & 13 were addressed) this is the most readily accessible user interface I've yet come across for this job.

 

Are there lots of us using this? Not much traffic in the forum.

 

Add my thanks for listening too NCH, and thanks for the great free program.

 

Bruce

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Videopad looks like a wonderful video editor indeed, it think it is quite intuitive and i really like those "thumbframes". :)

 

I've always been using the freeware Super DVD video editor.

However, when i compare Videopad to Super DVD Video Editor (and many other video editors) there are 2 rather important features missing in my opinion. These are: the option to create a DVD menu ( i totally agree with BruceMoffatt on that ). The other is that there are only a few transitions available. Super DVD Video Editor has many more available, which gives you much more creative options.

 

I have red all the features that have been requested in this topic and i must say that i agree with all of them. This video editor is almost perfect.

So far it feels really fast and stable, i really hope that the developers make the effort to perfect it, in my opinion it is totally worth it.

 

Here are my additions to this wishlist:

 

14. Much more transitions. Here you can find lots of examples of transitions which could be used in VideoPad: http://www.burgers-transition-site.de/down...ions/index.html

15. More effects.

16. Output to mp3, to ogg or to Audio CD. That basically would enable one to rip the audio out of a video, which is probably used a lot.

17. Output to a youtube compatible format & upload it directly to the youtube website, prefferably all in one go.

18. Support for Adobe premiere plugins. I think this feature would open VideoPad up to a whole world of plugins that are available. It would give VideoPad endless possibilities to extend in features.

I am not sure if this would be difficult to implement. If it would be difficult, then all previous mentioned feature request are probably more important.

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13. make 'build' see a DVD burner. It currently sees CD/DVD burners as CD only and only allows option of build/burn to VCD.

VideoPad claims to burn to DVD and it recognizes my DVD burner ,but I haven't tried to burn a DVD with VideoPad. Wouldn't it be considered a bug if VideoPad can't burn to DVD? Frankly, I'd just use VideoPad to create a DVD-compliant MPEG2 file and use one of many freeware authoring and burning programs to finish the task.

 

Super DVD Video Editor is extremely buggy on my Vista system and I can barely get it to complete a single task all the way through. I no longer use it.

 

16. Output to mp3, to ogg or to Audio CD. That basically would enable one to rip the audio out of a video, which is probably used a lot.

There are plenty of XP/Vista freeware apps that can extract audio from video to MP3 or OGG. I'd rather see VideoPad save its energy for perfecting video editing tasks than see it take on new unrelated tasks.

 

Any Audio Converter

www.any-audio-converter.com/

 

AoA Audio Extractor

http://www.aoamedia.com/audioextractor.htm

 

FormatFactory

www.formatoz.com/

 

Pazera Free Audio Extractor

www.pazera-software.com/products/audio-extractor/

 

Quick Media Converter

www.majorgeeks.com/Quick_Media_Converter_d6010.html

 

XMedia Recode

www.xmedia-recode.de/

 

Are there lots of us using this? Not much traffic in the forum.

I just sent a VideoPad announcement post to alt.comp.freeware. Perhaps that will help, given time.

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Super DVD Video Editor is extremely buggy on my Vista system and I can barely get it to complete a single task all the way through. I no longer use it.

I have no experience using Super DVD Video Editor on Vista, but it works ok on Windows XP though.

 

Regarding the output to mp3, ogg and audio cd, i agree, perfecting video editing tasks is the most important.

The thing is that i'm guessing that it may not be not such a difficult feature to implement.

 

I do think that DVD menu editing is important because it closes the whole workflow, you won't have to interrupt the workflow by trying to use another application for that.

This may not be that important for advanced users, but it simplifies things a lot for beginners.

 

I noticed that VideoPad is not listed on www.freewarefiles.com yet, this is also a very popular site where people are also able to write reviews and give ratings. I'm going to send them an email to inform them about this wonderful app. :)

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  • 1 month later...

Someone on this thread suggested more 'transitions'. I've been watching videos by people who spent fortunes on 'transitions' for years, and then insisted that every last one of them should be 'seen'. That made me allergic to them and consequently I use only a 'fade to/from dark', and 'cross-fade'. Excessive use of transitions is what marks work down as amateurish in my view. If transitions draw attention to themselves, (as they invariably do), and not as integral parts of the video, they don't belong there. Provide heaps of transitions for those who wish to use them, by all means, but they have a very low priority in my book. I like the idea of being able to copy potential DVD-fodder to a hard-drive though.

 

Ian Smith

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Someone on this thread suggested more 'transitions'. I've been watching videos by people who spent fortunes on 'transitions' for years, and then insisted that every last one of them should be 'seen'. That made me allergic to them and consequently I use only a 'fade to/from dark', and 'cross-fade'. Excessive use of transitions is what marks work down as amateurish in my view. If transitions draw attention to themselves, (as they invariably do), and not as integral parts of the video, they don't belong there. Provide heaps of transitions for those who wish to use them, by all means, but they have a very low priority in my book. I like the idea of being able to copy potential DVD-fodder to a hard-drive though.

 

Ian Smith

 

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

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have always cut/trimmed on the 'Timeline', so I find a 'Storyboard' oriented layout to be useless to me. On a count-up, I have used seven different types of editors, mainly with a 'pro-sumer' and 'consumer' focus. My work is a documentary production of a trip down my Province's coastline (Otago, N.Z.) a two-year project which has blown-out to roughly five years as an estimate. In my experience, most Video-Editors are tarted-up and over-dressed versions of quite simple software, (given that no Video-Editing software is really all that 'simple'). My wish is for 'integration', with such software as 'Ableton', 'Reaper' and music composition software, as I am part-way through overcoming the ever-present 'copyright' problem, by writing/scoring/performing my own music. (And before you burst out laughing, it's by no means as bad as you might think).

 

I have always found the 'Effects', plug-ins, 'Filters' to be generally inferior to what is available, shopping-around, and I use 'Classic' series VST's from 'Kjaerhusaudio' in Denmark a lot. Most Video-editor distributors seem to think that you want to use plug-ins, only for the novelty of 'duck-talk' etc. You actually 'need' plug-ins, in most cases, to allow subtle alterations to be made, not wholesale garbling of the audio-content. As an example, once I have 'played' my 'opus of the moment' (using 'Garritan samplings, for those who might be interested), I always make some 'space' around the 'brass' and 'woodwinds'. The horns (brass) and cor-anglaise (woodwind), really need it to bring out the true 'concert-ambience' sound. Kjaerhus 'Reverb' provides 180 cu/m of that 'space' perfectly.

 

So, a VST slot would be of prime importance to me. I don't think, either, that six levels of 'Picture-in-picture' really do much for video-software. Half that number would be OK, and I cannot see the need for more. By the same token, VideoPad's great strength is putting the emphasis on the additional audio-tracks, in my opinion. Audio is always the 'bridesmaid' when it comes to video-editors, and marks the 'serious-contenders' out from the 'toys'.

 

Ian Smith

Dunedin, N.Z.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

hey! the program seems really good to me, but i have this little problem, when i drag my clips to the sequence area, they automatically go to slow motion therefore, the audio doesnt fit so i dont know what to do to fix this. can anyone help me please? thanxs.

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  • 1 year later...

hey! the program seems really good to me, but i have this little problem, when i drag my clips to the sequence area, they automatically go to slow motion therefore, the audio doesnt fit so i dont know what to do to fix this. can anyone help me please? thanxs.

I have the same problem. Did you ever figure it out?

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  • 6 months later...

Someone on this thread suggested more 'transitions'. I've been watching videos by people who spent fortunes on 'transitions' for years, and then insisted that every last one of them should be 'seen'. That made me allergic to them and consequently I use only a 'fade to/from dark', and 'cross-fade'. Excessive use of transitions is what marks work down as amateurish in my view. If transitions draw attention to themselves, (as they invariably do), and not as integral parts of the video, they don't belong there. Provide heaps of transitions for those who wish to use them, by all means, but they have a very low priority in my book. I like the idea of being able to copy potential DVD-fodder to a hard-drive though.

 

Ian Smith

 

The overuse of various transitions is a hallmark of the novice user, but that doesn't mean that there aren't instances when a particular effect or transition wouldn't be useful or needed at one time or another. I'm working on a video from this past Christmas and the intro is a short montage of the cards I received. Since not all the cards match the 16:9 format, I would like to have something like the snow effect (that is available in Microsoft MovieMaker) to fill out the screen. Alas, I'm having a hard time finding plugins for effects and transitions.

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