Nationalsolo

Hi This "freezing" is normal as it keeps the total length of the sequence the same. The first frame of Clip 2 is held while Clip 1 fades out and the last frame of Clip 1 is held while Clip 2 fades in. It is most obvious with two clips having a lot of movement, but is perfect with still images. If you want a perfect cross fade with video clips where this behavior is annoying it means shortening the sequence slightly. Clip2 is placed on the overlay track and dragged back a little to overlap track 1 and a Fade-in is applied to Clip 2 for the duration of the overlap. Nat

Hi Sam "There is a small downward arrow next to the Place buttons. You can click on the arrow to choose where you want to place." :-)) Obvious! Always tend to right click the clip and use the top option. DOH! Old habits die hard. With regards the frame matching, After looking at the webcam output carefully I have noted quite a few dropped frames resulting in the image appearing to jump a different amount and it's quite irregular so not correctable. Stabilizing gets around this. I completed this project OK and have already shown it at my Astro club. As mentioned, I matched the frame rates and stabilized the result (which worked very well.) Nat

Hi Udo If your project is a long one then (as well as regularly saving it as you complete sections) you could think about completing a section, doesn't have to be all of it, Save the project and then click the Sequence button and select New Sequence. This creates what in effect is a complete clip of your work so far as a Sequence which will be in the Sequence bin. This action will clear the timeline and you can continue with the project from that point without having all the clips present that you have already worked on. If you work in short sections like this you can, at some point load back the saved sequences to view the whole job. The drawback to using sequences in this way is that they are now Single Clips and if you decide to change them you will have to re-cut them. Nat

Hi udo It's a good idea to save your project on a regular basis. Click "File" and save your project using "Save Project File As" Use an incremental name each time....e.g. My Project -1 My Project -2 My Project-3 etc. This will ensure that you will have a vpj file (project file) that you can load back into VP if things go wrong. (Don't use "Save Project File" as this will overwrite the previous file unless you are happy for this to happen. Also keep all your component clips in the same place on your PC as you work otherwise VP may have some difficulty in reconstructing a saved project should you have to go back. Nat

Hi The overlay track, (Video track 2) is just above the main Video track (Video Track 1) This is not visible when you open VP for the first time. However as soon as you place a clip or image onto Video Track 1, the Overlay track area becomes visible with the words "Drag and drop your Video, text and image clips here to overlay" You can now place (drag and drop) another clip or image (even the same one as already used) onto this track. It will open up, display the thumbnails and become labelled Video Track 2. Any associated sound track will appear below Audio track 1 and be labelled Audio Track 2. You can expand the overlay track so the thumbnails are larger by clicking the + at the extreme left end of the track. Once a clip/image is on Video track 2 the prompt to add further tracks will appear and you can continue to add overlays in the same manner. Clips or images on the Overlay tracks can be moved right or left and being an overlay will obscure any clips directly below them. The Audio tracks will just mix. Clicking the ? on the top toolbar will open up the Help page for VP..... http://help.nchsoftw...agestats=fx34(2)&usechoice=txcl(95)&days=667&runs=763 Nat

HI Alternative.....Might be simpler... :-) Put full clip on the timeline. Edit it as required so as to leave the section with your audio. Close any gaps. Don't bother to unlink it. Click the Sequence tab on the top tool bar and then the "New sequence" option. This clears all the timeline. Open the Sequence bin and right click the clip. Select "Save Sequence Audio as a New File" Audio selection has now been saved to your default folder. Nat

Hi Selected clips usually turn blue between the thumbnails not dark overall. Unselected portion go dark when IN/OUT points are selected but only in the clip preview screen. Have you possibly got a video track clicked for "Hide track on output" ? It's the eye icon at the left end of the track. That makes it go a darker shade than selected. However, if you do this it will normally output as a black video, not a white video. So it's probably something else. What version VP are you using and are we referring to Sequence (as in a collection of clips saved as a sequence) or the timeline with Track1 Track 2 and an audio track? Nat

Hi Sam Thanks I'll give that a try. I thought it might be frame rate somehow. Unfortunately the webcam frame rate is not always steady as my old portable drops frames like mad but I'll play with it. Thanks again. Later.... Your advice almost works but still some judder. I find I now that I can export the clip(s) and then stabilize them. After adjusting the borders the result looks fine. :-)) BTW is there any possibility we can have the "Ask me" option back for where to place Clips and Images? Nat

Hi I suspect this problem is connected to the way VP calculates image position for these effects and I would like to know if it can be improved. I use quite a lot of webcam clips that depict an object moving at a steady, regular pace across the field of view of the camera. (Close up images of the Moon, Sunspots etc.) The camera support is also steady. In the resulting avi the object is seen moving smoothly in a straight line. For technical reasons the web camera is set to expose 5 images/sec so the apparent steady movement is actually a series of short movements. As the apparent movement is produced by the Earths rotation, it is ABSOLUTELY steady. Reviewing the avi In VP frame by frame, the movement of the object is seen every 8 frames. I want the object, in fact to remain stationary within a set rectangle. i.e. I want to use the Zoom effect to outline the object in the first frame of the clip. Set a key frame and then using the same rectangle, outline the object in the last frame of the clip and set a second key frame. The hope now being that the sequence will play from start to finish with the object now appearing stationary. This, however doesn't happen. The resulting sequence shows the object (actually the whole of the zoomed frame) moving forward and then backwards and then forward again and then backwards etc. It is in no sense a steady image which is what I would have expected. I have also tried setting keyframes for every "new" frame of the avi manually adjusting the rectangle to cover the same area of the frame for each frame showing movement (every 8 frames). The forwards/backwards motion occurs just as before. Why is this effect not working correctly and can it be corrected please? Nat

HI Just to confirm what you have done.... "..... I place video clip #1 (10") on track 1, at 0' - I place a second clip (#2) on track 1, at 10" (immediately after clip#1) - I place a text clip (#3) on track 2, at 11", with the intent that the text should appear overlayed to clip #2, a little bit after clip starts - then I shorten video clip#1 to 8" working on the storyboard... clip #2 moves it start from 10" to 8",......" So far so good. On coming back to Timeline mode Clip 1 has shortened and clip 2 has moved back to join it.( I don't get a gap.) "...but text clip#3 stays at 11"... there is now a gap that is too long between start of clip#2 and appearance of text#3 ..." Correct. Text clip 3 has not moved. consequently it now starts later than it it did. There are two solutions............ What you should have done is this.... The first is..... Having set up your two clips plus the text clip... Press the SHIFT key and left click on clip 2 to select it. Keeping the SHIFT key pressed, right click the text clip. This will open a menu. Select the top option.."Group selected clips" This will group Clip 2 and the Text clip together. Now shorten the duration of Clip 1 in Storyboard mode as you did.. On coming back to timeline view you will now see that BOTH Clip2 and the Text clip have stayed together and moved back in time so keeping their relative position This follows most of the moves you have described.. But why not do it this way... Put Clip 1 and Clip 2 on Video Track 1and the text clip on Track2 positioned after the start of Clip 2...Your starting position. Grab the right hand end of Clip 1 and drag it to the left so it now has the desired length. When you release it Clip 2 as well as the text clip will move automatically to the left to fill the gap Note you haven't linked them and no gap is produced. Nat

Hi Within VP there is no effect option for creating animated numbers per se, but it's not too difficult to produce simple counting digits.. Open VP, click on Tools-Media and enter the interval for your counting speed.....e.g. 0.5 Return to main screen. Click"Add text" Set up colour, font, position etc.These values will remain in force until you change them. Enter digit.................1 Click "Add text" Enter digit.................2 Click "Add Text" Enter digit.................3 Click "Add Text.............................etc. & etc. Grab all the text images and drag to the timeline...or place them individually in the order required. The video will now show simple counting digits at 1/2 second intervals. Being transparent frames you could put them onto the overlay track so they play over a video clip on track 1 You can of course move the text images to a different position to the text defaults or animate each individual text image so the digits move around but then it becomes more laborious. You could add a border to them so they appear within a box. If you find something that works, save it as a sequence and use it to repeat the count down....Count up?..reverse the clip or sequence. This is a pretty simple workaround and if you look around the web you can download video clips that have animated digits that you can use within your own films. Nat

Hi Note that the prompt mentioned in Toadstool's post...."Drag and drop your video,text and image clips here to overlay" will only appear when you have already placed a clip or image on Video Track 1. Until you have done this, Video track 2 remains hidden. Dragging and dropping another clip or image (it can even be the same clip or image) onto this narrow band where the prompt appears will create the labelled Video Track 2 with its thumbnails, and an Audio Track 2 below Audio track 1. Clicking the + on Video Track 2 at the extreme left of the screen will expand the track so you can see the thumbnails more clearly. Note also that anything placed onto Video track 2 will obscure what you have below it on Video Track 1....hence it's description as an "Overlay " track. The audio tracks in contrast will mix. The same action will produce Video Track 3...4... etc. Nat

Hi Sam Yes that's it....I think that is what I was saying. :-)) PS. This post seems to have arrived 3 times so I have edited the other two. Nat

Hi Can this be done? Add an overlay image and then crop it to reveal the background clip. (Not SCALE it as this would reduce it in image content size) So far so good, the cropped image, still the same size appears in the centre of the background clip. Now try to put a border around the cropped image. It seems you can't as the cropped image is to all intents and purposes still full size. It just has a transparent "border". Using the BORDER effect just makes a border around the full size image before it was cropped. Obviously I can create a border using a slighly larger cropped overlay of a coloured blank and place this behind my centre image but that is just a workaround. (Like this...) Can NCH possibly make the Border effect so it can be used directly on cropped images instead of just the borders of the whole image? Nat

Hi Some people might find this idea useful. (.. and then perhaps not :-)) Older versions of VP had a moving blue Windows-like progress bar at the bottom right of the screen which gave one a clue as to how the program was working. Later the green line was introduced that moved along the timeline above the clips. At the start this was quite wide and visible. Now it is quite narrow and not all that easily seen being a rather pastel green. Following problems of the program stopping or running very slowly or never finishing when tasks were being done in VP (and noting that there were questions on the forum about PCs doing this; running very slowly or running at 100% etc whilst editing,) I decided to look at background jobs that were set to run at computer startup as using the processor usage utility I found my PC was running at around 50% when at rest! After killing or removing some of these unwanted programs (using CCleaner) my PC now runs at around 1% when at rest and VP is now performing much better. In VIsta I can now use the processor usage window to monitor when VP has completed its work. Use Ctrl-Alt-Delete and open the task manager. Click Performances tab Double click the border of the window and then reduce size to show just the vertical bar graph. Make it as small as you can. In the icon tray check it to be always visible. (You can always bring it back to normal etc by double clicking the border of the thumbnail you now have) Open VP and position the thumbnail in the black space to the right of the preview image.As shown below. Now you can see at all times when VP has finished working on your editing tasks etc. as the usage will drop back to the bottom enabling you do another editing step. It will probably run around 90 - 100% when doing the work. Note that even when the green bar has apparently finished moving VP can still be doing something making the PC slow down. At least it will enable you to see of something else is causing those stoppages. Nat

Hi "1) If I have Video A and Video B, and I want a circle transition, do I put it on A or B" Click the X button that is BETWEEN the two clips in question. Note that the duration of the transition is not shown in the list window until it has been placed in position or the X button clicked when a transition has already been added at that point in the sequence. It will have the default value that is shown under... Tools-Options-Editing This can be a bit annoying if you have to put in a transition and then go through the process again to alter its length. I can't see why NCH are not able to add the Transition properties boxes when the X is clicked the first time, taking the default values which one could change with one move. Add multiple transitions exactly as Borate describes but note that if you select ALL the clips including the last one (which seems a natural thing to do), the last clip will transition to black but the action will be of the default length on that clip....not 1/2 as long as with the other clips. Nat.

Hi You don't say what type of images you are using and I am presuming that you are placing them as overlays on a white blank main track image. I have done this with transparent png images without any problems including some that showed a grey rectangle around them when being displayed in Windows folder view. With VP version 4.48 and adding them as overlays I couldn't see any border lines similar to yours. Cropped pngs were OK as were uncropped images which I just moved to one side with the "Position" effect in order to show any possible edge line. Perhaps the border line you are seeing is actually part of your images. If the line you are getting is inherent to the image you are using then I would simply apply the "Crop" effect to trim it off. As an alternative you could use the "Border" effect to add thin white covering line around each image corresponding to the color of the white background. Nat

Hi I may be wrong but can Panasonic DVD players handle +r discs. I am sure I saw somewhere that they can't. Nat

Hi Toadstool I can't see why you shouldn't be able to save a playable DVD This what I find works using VP PC version 4.48. Using a DVD+RW disc. (So not wasted in the event of failure) Project on the timeline ready for exporting. Disc in PC drive and cleaned of previously burned data using Windows menu option for DVD drive. In VP Click down arrow on the "Export DVD Movie" button on taskbar and select "DVD Movie Disc" VP checks for drives and then displays "Export Video" window. Enter name for your disc Select burner (if more than one). Take default otherwise. If in the UK/Europe select PAL Select format (e.g. Widescreen 16:9) Click the "Advanced" button Select "Calculate bitrate automatically" (Probably default entry) Click OK Back into previous window click "Create" Now create a menu if required. (Didn't have this on earlier versions of VP....so a nice addition ) This is pretty straightforward...Add title/text/background image etc. Click "Save menu" Add chapters option but just leave as-is ("Continue without Chapters") if it's just a test, otherwise return to VP main screen and add them if required. Click "Just Burn It" VP now encodes menu and burns disc. Here I think there may be a bug ....as the"Creating your Movie" window and the "Writing to disc" prompt did not stop and the blue moving progress bar continued to scan left to right which gave the impression that the disc was still being burned. It displayed "Waiting for drive to finish operation" However the drive had stopped spinning and the processor usage had dropped back to 3% so I simply opened the drive and removed the disc. (VP continued to display the window!) This DVD played perfectly (with its menu) both in VLC on the PC as well as with a Toshiba video player connected to a TV. Nat

Hi VB "If you're too lazy to read all these crap, here's some short words: " Perhaps if you note the date of the original post (2012) you may realize that all the "crap" you are referring to was relevant with the version of VP being used at that time. (Probably VP2.4xx or similar) and so was my reply.. Some of the prompts and capabilities you are talking about were not added until much later. Things have moved on since 2012. Nat

Hi Whilst the sound files are being processed what is your PC processor usage and what is the usage when your PC is apparently not running any applications (apart from your task manager) Nat

Hi As far as I know you can't. I don't know why this is, but its probably a complication that arises when your clip is loaded and rendered for editing. Possibly the clip loaded is rendered 40 fps. On the other hand it may just be that using the Next frame option moves to the next nearest frame to 0.025 sec. hence the occasional duplicated image NCH may clarify this. As it stands, advancing a frame at a time will move along your timeline by 0.025 seconds irrespective of the frame rate set by your camera. This means on the timeline 40 frames are viewed/sec. If the actual clip was shot at 30fps then every second VP must duplicate 10 frames. So on paper, every 1/10 of a second (4 frames) a duplicate is created to keep the VP framerate correct with the timeline markings. As this is not totally accurate every so often a duplicated frame is not made as the timings are correct at that instant ..etc. However when the edited video is exported the original framerate is used or is adjusted to the value you set in the output values window. When it comes down to it, I don't think you will see any duplicated frames at 1.40 sec..or even 1/30 sec as ones eyes have a persistence of vision of about 1/16 sec (0.062 sec) so you could easily edit to 2 frames (0.05 sec) and see no difference. The 0.025 minimum available by VP is well within this tolerance Nat

Hi Having placed your video clip onto Video Track 1 and your overlay image on Video track 2, move the red cursor line on the Timeline track so it cuts the overlay image as well as the Video clip and you should now see the overlay. You may or may not see the main video beneath as this depends on the size of the overlay image which may simply obscure it all. Now click the FX button on the Video Track 2 Image thumbnail, as NADWW suggests. Open your effects list with the green cross and select the Motion effect. This will place the preview screen in Clip Preview. and you will see the position guides on the preview image. Note: You must be in Clip Preview to see the View button. Click the down arrow on the View button and you will (should) have three choices shown in the drop down menu. The middle one is Clip + Background. This is is hown on C-Major's image. Select this option. Now when you adjust the overlay image in the Clip preview window to set up your initial image position you will see the Main track video clip revealed beneath as the image is moved to one side. Nat

Hi Sam "I'll investigate this problem and try fall back to single threaded if not many CPU cores available." Thanks for the info and indeed, that might be welcome. I have just done a ruthless cull of programs that I don't use and in particular those that were set to run at startup. (Using CCleaner) The processor usage has now dropped from 52% on average when the machine was not in use (apparently) to 1% when running Firefox browser; Videopad and this forum together! I shall run a re-edit on a recent project and see how VP 4.45 now performs. Loading files still pushes it up to 100% but it produced the TNs in the media list window in only a few seconds and then dropped back to 0-5%. (Instead of 51%) Adding clips to the timeline produced a similar result. (Up to 100% and back down again after less that 30 seconds) Processor is now running at 1-2%. A vast improvement. It may be something to suggest to those users who have experience stoppages and very slow performance. OK I know it's a logical thing to do........... Nat

Hi Sam I've used most of the earlier versions back to 2.41 but the last one was 4.40. and I can't remember seeing the message then. However I am using and older Vista PC for my editing so I suppose it is showing its age. :-) I can hear it whirr up and struggling when the timeline is being processed. Image files don't have a problem but Video clips, even mpgII are now sometimes slowing the program down to a stop. Is there any mileage in only showing 1 thumbnail per clip as with WMM and would this make processing faster? (Not advocating WMM :-)) though ) I can easily reload an older version when I edit stuff for myself and sometimes do but helping someone on the forum means I have to open 4.45. Just checked...Whilst loading a saved project having numerous mpeg2 clips; project loads and puts in the icons in the media list and the clip joins on the timeline in a matter of seconds but then it slows to a crawl as the sound profiles are generated followed by the thumbnails to replace the icons on the media list and finally the thumbnails etc. on the timeline. During this time the PC is running at 100% ....So I can't see it doing things any faster. It's a dual core PC... Nat