Nationalsolo

Hi Well, that does seem to be work around for your particular problem and, as you say tricky to get just right. Glad it worked. I am a bit surprised however, that even though VP "resizes" the image to fit the 16:9 screen there is insufficient resolution for this particular image to not look OK when you crop to 16:9 (the pan up shouldn't affect the resolution.) The image I tested looked quite OK when cropped and panned. (Zooming in did go blocky as I mentioned although the output video was fine with the rendering quality set to 1) Bearing in mind that you can enlarge an image to any particular size (yours was 1280 x 2600) and it can look good at this level except that it might be on the verge of looking blocky if the original was not of high resolution. What made this image different from the others which you say seemed OK? Was it a smaller image made larger for a start? Another point is VP, in the interests of speed in real time rendering creates smaller images from the original and these are used in the preview video, and are what you see during editing. I am pretty sure that the final rendering is done on the original image using the data obtained during editing. The test I did with a full zoom and high quality encoding produced an excellent output film with no huge difference between the zoom shown in the film and a zoom into the image under Windows. At the end point both images looked similar. I also thought I would compare the original tiff image with a VP snapshot of the "reduced" fitted image. However as the output from this is a .png, I wasn't surprised to notice the reduced resolution in the snapshot. Nat Nat

Hi Version 3.58 I have just tested this and whilst crop/zoom worked OK on the image SCALE didn't so I think this might be a fault. I added an overlay image over a videoclip and found it disappeared in the effect preview window if both scales were reduced to 90%. In fact the program became unresponsive and had to be stopped. The autosaved project however allowed me to try again. There also seems to be a problem in entering a % scale as an integar directy into the boxes. (Swipe the existing value and enter 90 and one gets 9.00 try to change this to 100 it enters 1.00 !) It seems you has to insert values before the decimal point which doesn't always work. The stepup/down buttons work but are Slooow.. Clicking Zoom in (Far) and things come to a halt with the egg timer showing although the scale lines are drawn in on the right . Clicking the window to check the final values of the scale produces a white fade out screen and eventual crash.. I think this aspect of VP has some problems. Sent is possible bug report. Nat

Hi In some ways I can see what you mean. I have just loaded a vertical tif image 1877 x 2616 pixels (4megs) and zoomed in with a 16:9 frame as I outlined in my post above. The exported video certainly becomes very pixelated at a certain point, much more so than zooming into the original tif image under Windows. But a zoom is not a pan or scroll which is the effect that you suggested you wanted and doesn't enlarge the image. My test was done with the default "Quality" Rate factor values for the video compressor I am using.The pixelation you are seeing even with the image not enlarged is most probably due to this "Quality" setting of the Video Compressor being left at the default value of 23. This is set to give the best output definition commensurate with a reasonable rendering speed of the outputed video. Proceed as follows... Set up your crop effect screen as outlined above to pan up your image. When you export... Set the Preset to "Custom" File format ".avi" Set Resolution to 1920 x 1080 (You Tube 1080p) i.e. HD 16:9 Frame rate: 25(TV PAL) or 29.97(TV NTSC) depending on your location. Now click the Encoder options button. Set Video compressor to H264 (Native) Set Sound compressor to MP3 (Native) Set Sound format to 44100 Hz 320 kbs , Stereo Now click the "Compressin Settings" button. (Higher up) Slide the Quality slider to the left to show a value of 1 (High Quality) Click OK Click OK Click Create. With the Quality setting set to 1 the image in the resulting video will be as good as you are going to get but rendering may take longer than with the default setting of 23.. Nat

Hi I am not sure why you cannot open your project as I was under the impression that all VP3.xx project files could be opened with subsequent 3.xx versions of VP how it does show the importance of saving each project file (.vpj file) as you work, with a new name (using Save Project file as..) since you can "retro" load an earlier project with the earlier software if necessary if you encounter a problem. Sorry Nat

Hi In the later versions splitting a clip leaves the cursor line on the split as you describe, but deleting a section now leaves a gap and the cursor stays where it was. (Before it closed up any gap automatically leaving the cursor at the start of the right hand section.) It doesn't do that now, it behaves more as a marker. There are no setting that I am aware of that will make it do waht you suggest. Nat

Hi The first thing to note is that VP will fit your image to the frame, no matter what its size in pixels and aspect ratio. If it is tall then it will fill the frame top to bottom leaving blanks to each side. If it is wide it will fit it to the width if the frame and leave blanks at the top and bottom. Obviously to fit these images to the frame you will need to use the crop effect. For an upwards pan... Select your sequence line clip (your image) and the Crop effect. forcing it to a 16:9 aspect ratio by clicking the small box marked so. Reduce the crop rectangle to the area you want (in a tall image you would bring in the sides to match your image width. and click the "Zoom to cropped region" box. Drag the rectangle to the area that you want to start your pan from. e.g The bottom of your image. Now check the efffects preview red cursor line is at the start of the clip and click one of the green crosses. This will set the start frame for your pan effect. Slide the red effects cursor bar to the end of the clip and drag your crop rectangle up to the top of the frame. Click the Apply button. Once the frames have been generated close the effects window and play the clip. You should now see that it fills the screen and pans up the image. By altering your start and stop positions for the selected crop area you have movement in any direction. Nat

Hi If you still have your video clips on your PC as well as the .vpj project file you can reload VP and then your project. Si vous avez encore vos fichiers (c'est à dire tous les clips video) sur votre ordinateur et stocké dans la même lieux (avec les mêmes noms,) ainsi que le fichier du projet (le fichier .vpj), vous pouvez réinstaller Videopad sans problème et re-charger le projet encore. Si vous commencer avec une cache vide le chargement prendra un peu plus de temps que normal. Nat

Hi VP itself, doesn't have a way of adding a clock to a video. However you could quite easily download a working digital clock display from UTube or even film a digital clock or stopwatch for a time similar to your video. This clip can then be placed on the overlay track and reduced in size using the SCALE effect and moved using the POSITION effect so it appears in the frame where you want it to. If only the digits are required then, providing the the background colour of the figures is a single shade, you can use the GREEN SCREEN effect to render this transparent. Any exported clips made from this video would then contain the "time stamp" Nat

Hi Just got confirmation from UT that the "video" has loaded and indeed it has... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTxs9OypqMQ Nat

Hi ".... how to recover an overwritten file,..." EDITED. OOps! I am afraid you can't - directly. If you have overwritten it, it has been resaved (in this case with a blank project) with the same name, and the original has been removed. The project (.vpj) files are essentially text files and as such are presumably flagged as deleted and rewritten. Windows will go some way to prevent some text and image files etc with same names being overwritten by adding a suffix to subsequent files..VP doesn't do this as it expects you to Save project as.. when you want to save an interim copy of the project with a different name and so retaining the first file which you may want to revert to. The "Save project" option doesn't give the option of stopping the process either, it just does it. An "Are you sure?" warning might be a possible addition to future versions of VP. However, I tried to see if one could reverse the procedure using a third party recovery program.to restore my "lost" .vpj file having deliberately overwritten it with a new "Save project" choice. The program DID find the deleted file (but gave it a different name) so it simply loaded it back when I requested it. So...It looks like it could be restored provided the deleted file's disc space has not been overwritten by new data. I used a Piriform freeware program called Recuva. If you want to try it, the overwritten .vpj file is flagged as having been deleted from the PC Dustbin, although you don't actually see this. Nat

Hi This is a difficult one. There may be a problem with the PC speed or the project file might be corrupted. Loading a BIG project with many clips and transition/effects can take quite a time to load. Although if the cache file already contains the project data it can be quicker. What happens if you ... Start VP. Clear the unused cache files from the "Disk" option menu. Load a short clip (NOT a long clip) Place it on the sequence line and split it. Add a blank frame. Add a transition or two between the bits. Save the result as a project. (a .vpj file e.g. TEST.vpj) Close VP Restart VP and open that new project..... Does it load OK in a reasonable time ? If it does load OK then your VP version would seem to be working correctly. You could even try adding more clips to this test footage and repeating the save....If it continues to load back OK (even if it takes a little longer) then the problem is probably with your original project file. If the above test doesn't work and the project takes ages to load then the fault might lie with your PC specs or the installation. Borate has posted the specs you might need for editing HD MPEG4 H264 video. Nat

Hi You can record your commentary directly using the "Record" tab on the toolbar and choosing "Record Audio". If you know your video well enough you can write out the script and read it whilst the video plays. (Not as easy as it sounds...cos your'e bound to fluff it!.. " A better alternative to my mind is to read out and record your script in short sections, each being saved as a sound file. (e.g. .wav) You can then load these sound bites into the VP media list audio file bin and simply drag and drop them into the correct position on a second audio track. (the "Drag and drop your audio clips here to mix" line) Both tracks will play together now but the voice-over may be obscured somewhat depending on the main track volume which you would have to adjust. It is probably best to reduce the main track volume whereever the sound bites are placed. One way to do this is to split the main track (plus its sound track.......no need to unlink it) just before and just after the sound bite and then use the "Mix" tab in the sound effects window to vary the volume of the sound section you have just created in track 1. where the commentary plays. i.e. reduce it just before the voice starts and bring it back to normal just after the voice finishes). This will keep the whole commentary at the same level as (provided all the clips have all been recorded the same way) they are not altered. Note that if you Fade out and Fade in to alter the main track segment , the volume will reduce to zero which is not really what you want. In most cases you will only need two sound tracks. Good fun...best of luck! Nat

HI LF Best of luck...Just to say, if you do video a second or third performance from different angles, they won't necessarily need to be complete performance recordings. You can shoot a clip here and another clip there etc. (or simply keep the camera running and move about between the shot positions.) The sound you get will simply be for synching in with the main clip. Provided the performance speed is about the same as your main clip performance, you can overlay them and synch them in; mute them and they should look OK. Nat

Hi I have done this as a challenge a couple of times times with the orchestra I play with, but used two cameras during one performance. One camera was fixed filming the whole scene and recording the sound, the other was roving, picking out various players in close up/different angles etc. and making cutaway shots. Obviously there are limitations as sound recorded like this was is not particularly good but if you can record your session with a proper setup as a separate recording all the better. The fun part was editing. Put the main video on the sequence track (video track 1)with the total recording and then drop the cutaways onto the overlay track (video track 2) and adjust them until their sound tracks play together with no echo. Now mute the overlay track. As you can trim the overlay tracks to whatever length you like (depending on the shot length), dissolves can easily be made between the two tracks using the transparency effect. Unfortunately you can't use other transitions as they won't work between video tracks. As I made these some time ago with an earlier version of VP, there may be some enhancements that you can use with 3.58. "Splicing" your cutaways into the main sequence would be quite difficult. If you are using a single camcorder you would need to film the whole performance at least twice, once for the recording, and the other for the cutaways. This would create what you would get with two cameras. You can't do what you want easily, if at all with one camera and one performance, even with a separately recorded sound track, as you need video for the whole duration. Nat

Hi Just tried again and the export of "TEST" to UTube seemed to work OK, but I checked first I could actually log in to UTube. Haven't found it yet though on UT. It's just a black blank frame with "This is Test" as a text overlay, but VP said it had uploaded OK. Nat

Hi A test video loaded OK from 3.58 to facebook but not to UTube, when "Failed to login" etc. message appeared. In the past one could login and upload directly from the UTube page, and VP worked OK, but now you have to go through a Google page to enter your details or to create an account. Could this be a bottleneck with regards VP? i.e. Does the newer version take this into account? Nat

Hi Borate Finished the video and the remaining clips loaded OK to the end of main track. as required. so don't know why some went to track 2 earlier. Just odd. I have another three video projects to do, so I will look out for anything odd happening. I have to say that this version seems a lot better than the earlier 3.xxx versions. Not fast on my system but certainly usable now. I have just created an avi. , loaded back it into VP and created a project......... Loaded the project and added the avi to it from the media list using the menu, both to start and finish. It all worked OK with nothing missing.... Nat

Hi I have just been editing a 10 min video comprising some 30 or so 1280 x 720 MPEG4 clips. This latest version seems to be working very well and I haven't found any problems so far. Even the speed of thumbnail generation etc. is reasonable. However, can anyone explain why, when I add a clip to the end of the sequence line using the prompt menu (the options relating to the position to add clips are set to "Ask me") it has started to add the clip in question to the end of the sequence but on video track 2 when earlier it had added them to the end of the main sequence line? As I don't always use track 2 and transitions between tracks don't work correctly, I have to now drag the added clip down to track 1 each time. A minor niggle probably, but I just wondered if anybody has noticed the same thing or knew why. Nat

Hi Sounds as if your PC is just too slow to process the clips at the same speed as the sound. What format are the clips? If they are 1920 x 1080 HD MPEG4 you may get it running a bit faster if you convert to MPEG2. or you could try producing a set of proxy clips of smaller frame size and with the same name and location as the originals and use these for the edit and replace them with the originals when you export. Your problem is also that you have to load all the cips when you load the project and this can take an age if everything is on the timeline. (But note my comment regarding the cache file.) It may be more convenient with a big project, next time, to load a first group of clips to the media list and edit these, then saving the result as a sequence. Load a second set of clips...edit them and save as a second sequence etc. This is what Borate suggests. If you save the project after a sequence is created the time line is cleared and the program will load from the .vpj file faster. Also remember that if you loaded your project directly into the later version of VP, the cache file would have been empty and it would have taken quite a time to regenerate, hence your 1hr wait. (Won't help the playing speed problem though but your work will load faster next time. Nat

Hi In the earlier version of VP, using the Crop option and selecting to "Force" 16:9 resulted in the image being cropped to 16:9 AND being enlarged to fill the screen. No matter which side you pulled in the ratio remained 16:9 and the outlined area filled the screen In version 3.55 (and presumably 3.57) selecting Crop and forcing 16:9 followed by altering the display rectange simply reduced the frame in size down to the rectangle leaving a black border. (The cropped area remained 16:9 though. I initially thought this was a bug until Borate pointed out that I had to tick the "Zoom to the cropped area" box to make it behave like the earlier version. Is this what you are seeing? In 3.55 there is a slight grey border at the top that seems to be connected with the preview screen title lettering, but in practice this doesn't cause a problem. Nat

Hi You can't stabilize a part of a clip without doing the whole clip, but a step towards what you want is: Put your clip onto the sequence line, edit it in with any other clips that make up your video (you don't have to do this on just the clip) In this way you will probably have trimmed down the clip you want to stabilise with the rest of your video. Either way, delete any bits not required and close any gaps. Now place the whole time line (or bit you do want if you are working on just the clip) into the sequence bin by clicking the Plus sign in the prompt Sequence 1 X +" This will clear your timeline line and place it in the media list Sequence bin. Open the Video media list and right click the original clip and stabilize it. When complete follow the prompt to replace the original clip with the stabilized version. Return to the media list Sequence bin and add your saved sequence to the empty timeline. Your edited section will now be stabilized but the rest of the video will not be. Note that anything saved as a sequence will behave as a single clip now once back on the timeline. Nat

HI As an alternative you can drag the clip you want to slow down to a higher track (an empty one), then change the speed when it will now overlap the main track and you can see how far it extends. Now select all the clips on the main track and drag them along to the right beyond the end of the slo mo clip. Pull the slow mo clip back down again into the space you madeand close the gap.The video should all now be on the main track again. This method allows you to see where the slo-mo clip ends, you don't have to guess how far to move the main track clips. It';s academic really as both methods work just fine. Nat

Hi I'm sure NCH will either come back in, or it will be fixed in next version. I have to say that I find it odd that something that works just fine in a previous version suddenly is not functioning correctly in the next. .... FADE IN seems OK though. Nat

Hi This may be connected..... I am just trying out using v3.54. I have placed a clip of 8 seconds duration onto the timeline and selected the soundtrack for this clip. It duly turned dark blue and showed up as the audio waveform in the preview window. I selected Fade out from the drop down menu option and entered a duration of 1 second for the fade out. The preview screen as well as the soundtrack line showed the reference volume level line line starting to slope down at the start of the clip and not at one second from the end of the clip. Using a 3 second fade out time as a better check it seems clear that the fade starts at the beginning of the clip as noted above and fades out 3 seconds before the end of the clip. This is the reverse of what is required Normally it would start to fade out 3 seconds before the end of the clip not 3 seconds after the start of the clip. Setting a duration of 8 seconds and expecting the whole clip to fade out gradually over its full length (as normal) results in a silent clip right from the start. If UnkleBuck has done this and entered a fadeout duration equal to the length of his clip (not unusual in some sound edits) the current fadeout configuration would fade the clip completely right from the start. Nat

Hi Borate Must be going blind.... Simples...click! Thanks....Nat