Nationalsolo

Hi If your clip has the wrong aspect ratio (i.e. is not 16:9) then VP will fit it vertically into the screen area and in the left preview pane show the side gaps as chequered areas. In the right hand preview the chequered ares are shown black. The IN/OUT markers have no connection with this, they are used simply as a method of trimming the length of the selected clip at one or each of the ends. If you want full screen images (that is full frame images) you must use clips that are of aspect ration 16:9 (e.g. 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 etc.) If your clips are showing a chequered area on each side then you will have to crop them to 16:9. setting the rectangle used for this effect to only include the image. Inevitably this will mean losing the top and bottom areas. As an alternative and if you don't mind the distortion introduced you could use the scale feature to lengthen the frame horizontally. Nat

Hi This is a copy of some guide data regarding deshaker that I collected quite some time ago. You may have already seen it but I'm posting for anybody that might be interested.. The Long Guide This section describes all the settings in detail. The default parameter settings are chosen to work pretty good under most circumstances. However, you can always get better results by adjusting some settings. For example, some complicated clips might require that you change some pass 1 settings, or you will get jerky video. Also, you'll need to change some pass 2 settings if you want to take care of the black borders. Remember that all settings have a purpose, or they wouldn't be there. Most people I hear from seem to use the default settings or change very few of them. And many clips I've seen from other users are far from as good as they could have been. I know the settings may seem a little hard to understand and maybe a little too many, but if you want perfect looking video you should at least try. To understand these settings it is necessary for you to understand how the filter works, so here comes a brief description. How the Filter Works During Pass 1 the filter tries to find the panning, rotation and zoom that, when applied to the current image, makes it look like the previous image (almost). It does this by taking blocks of pixels in the two images and finding the shift that makes them match as good as possible. First, to find the "big" motion, the images are reduced a lot in scale and the initial shift is calculated from the whole (scale-reduced) images. This shift is then fintuned in a scale twice as big and with four times as many blocks, and so on. Finally we have the block shifts (or motion vectors) in the full image. The filter then finds the best values for panning, rotation and zoom based on these motion vectors and those values are written to the log file. At the start of Pass 2 the values in the log file are read and optimal camera motion is calculated based on the smoothness settings. The filter then transforms each image of the video clip according to this motion. The Settings Parameter Description Source pixel aspect Tells the filter what pixel aspect ratio the source clip has. It's very important that you set this correctly, or the rotation (for example) won't be made correctly. You may enter any value if you can't find the preset you're looking for. Video type Selects between progressive video and interlaced video (for input and output). If the video is interlaced you must also determine if the video has the first or last field on the first line. In general, DV uses lower field first and all other formats (including HDV) use upper field first. You can easily check that your setting is correct by looking at the motion vectors for the two fields when there's motion in the clip. If the vectors point in opposite directions most of the time the setting is incorrect. Camcorder has a rolling shutter Most modern camcorders (those with a CMOS sensor instead of a CCD sensor) don't capture the whole frames at once, but instead use a "rolling shutter". Here the lines of a frame are captured one after another at slightly different (although usually overlapping) times, which can cause some ugly effects. For example, vertical lines will get slanted when doing a fast horizontal pan, and when panning up/down everything will get squeezed and stretched. For Deshaker, a rolling shutter means that the camcorder shake parameters (panning, rotation and zoom) aren't necessarily constant over the entire frame, but can change slightly from one line to the next. If you enable this setting, Deshaker will therefore allow these parameters to change linearly in the vertical direction during pass 1 (and you will see a range of values under the output video). This makes extracting these parameters more reliable and it also makes it possible for pass 2 to remove the rolling shutter distortions if you keep the setting enabled during that pass too. Although the actual camcorder shake isn't linear during the capture of a frame, it's usually a good enough approximation to make the distortions disappear almost completely. But I still strongly recommend using the internal camcorder stabilizer too. If you have one of those compact CMOS cameras with bad (or no) internal stabilization, and the clip has very fast shakes (for example if the camera is mounted on a bike or similar), you probably won't be able to get a very good result from Deshaker, since the distortions will be far from linear in this case. Get a CCD camera capable of high shutter speeds for these kind of videos. Different camcorder models may have different rolling shutter speeds (how fast the shutter rolls downwards). And a certain model could possibly even have different speeds under different conditions. To be able to handle all speeds properly, you can enter an amount from 0 to 100%. You can try which amount setting looks best, or you can measure it more precisely yourself using the following procedure: Put the camcorder on a tripod (or something flat) and point it towards some vertical line (or bar) that covers the whole height of the frame. Now, using a fast shutter speed (to make the line sharp), record some video where you pan left and right (direction doesn't matter) at a pretty fast constant speed, as well as when it's completely still. Then, pick a still frame and a panning frame (where the vertical line is slanted). If you recorded interlaced video, the panning frame will contain two fields (and the line will appear twice), which is what you need. If you recorded progressive video, you'll need two consecutive frames instead. Then, find the horizontal position (x-pos) of the vertical line at 5 places, namely at St = top of still frame, Sb = bottom of still frame, Ft = top of first panning field/frame, Fb = bottom of first panning field/frame, Nt = top of next panning field/frame. Now, the rolling shutter amount should be calculated as: 100 * (Fb - Ft + St - Sb) / (Nt - Ft). The default rolling shutter amount is 88%, which was measured from the Sony HDR-HC1(E) camcorder. (Deshaker versions before 2.4 had 88% fixed.) If you measure the amount for another camcorder, please let me know so I can publish the values for other users. Here are the ones I've got so far: Canon EOS 500D: 71% Canon EOS 550D: 66% Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Probably somewhere between 66% - 72% Canon HV20, at 1440x1080 25p: 38% Casio Exilim EX-F1 Pro, at 1280x720 30fps: 22% Casio Exilim EX-F1 Pro, at 1920x1080 60fps: 72% HD Hero, at 1280x720 60fps: 82% iPhone 4: 97% (+/- 2) (Note: Deshaker assumes that the rolling shutter rolls downwards over the frames. For this to happen, the iPhone must record video in landscape mode with the lens in the upper part of the phone. Otherwise you'll probably need to rotate the video before Deshaker, and rotate it back afterwards.) Kodak Zi8: Somewhere between 80% - 100% Oregon Scientific ATC5K: 100% Panasonic GH1, at 1080p 24fps: 66% Panasonic HDC-SD300 EG-K: 73% Pentax K7, at 1536x1024 30fps: 75% Sanyo Xacti HD1010, at 1280x720 60fps: 48% Sanyo Xacti HD1010, at 1920x1080 30fps: 28% Sony HDR-FX7: 86.4% (+/- 2.0) Sony HDR-HC1: 88% Sony HDR-HC1E: 88% Sony HDR-V1U: 86.4% (+/- 2.0) Sony HVR-A1E: 82% Note that only rolling shutter distortions that are caused by moving/shaking the camcorder can be removed. Fast moving objects within the frame will sadly still look as strange as before. You cannot use the deep analysis algorithm with rolling shutter video. Log file The name of the log file to write in pass 1 and read in pass 2. Append to file If checked, it appends to the log file instead of overwriting it. This is useful if you want to process certain frames again. Video output What kind of output to generate during pass 1. If you select Motion vectors you will see the previous image with arrows showing how to move the blocks to match the current source image. Only white arrows are used to calculate panning, rotation and zoom factor. For interlaced video both of the fields are shown, the first field above the last. Block size The width and height of the blocks used during the image matching. Scale The maximum scale to do the image matching on. Full is best but very slow. Use pixels How many pixels in the blocks to actually use when matching. All is best but very slow. Color mode The image matching can be made in color or grayscale. Grayscale is a little faster but the matching is worse. This setting has nothing to do with the color of the final output of pass 2. Initial search range In the most reduced scale this percentage gives the maximum shift while matching. Lower = slightly faster. Differential search range When going from a reduced scale to twice the size, the filter already has approximate shifts. The differential search range is how many pixels up, down, left and right from these approximate shifts to look when matching. Lower values make processing a lot faster but when objects move quickly over the frames, or if you have very fast/big rotations and/or zooms, matching can fail for some blocks. Detect rotation/zoom If Deshaker has problems finding a stable background to match on, and you know there is no notable rotation/zoom in the problematic frames, you can turn off detection of rotation and/or zoom (individually) for these frames (or the entire clip). This will make Deshaker assume there is no rotation/zoom and therefore not accept groups of motion vectors that indicate rotation/zoom. And this should make it easier for Deshaker to find the background. But as I said, there mustn't be any rotation/zoom in the analyzed frames for this to work. In fact, there might be problems even when the camera is moving forward quickly, because it looks rather similar to zooming. Discard motion of blocks that have match value less than X If the best match value found while matching a certain block is below X this block is discarded. The blocks in higher scales that depend on this block are also discarded. These discarded blocks show no motion vector in the output video of pass 1. Discard motion of blocks that have 2nd best match larger than best minus X If the second best match value found while matching a certain block is close to the best match value, this means that the best shift found isn't very reliable. It could just as well be this second shift that's the correct one. For example a blue sky has good match values for all shifts. Setting this parameter correctly discards those unreliable blocks. The blocks in higher scales that depend on these blocks are also discarded. These discarded blocks show no motion vector in the output video of pass 1. Discard motion of blocks that move more than X pixels in wrong direction. When calculating the best values for panning, rotation and zoom based on all motion vectors, the filter soon discovers that some blocks have motion that don't quite fit in with the "main motion". If a block has a motion vector that is more than X pixels off this main motion it is discarded in order to get more precise values. The motion vectors for these blocks are drawn in red in the output video of pass 1 and are not used in any way. Since the panning, rotation and zoom are all done in only 2 dimensions, it's possible to get a lot of these blocks that don't seem to fit in with the main motion when the effect of perspective gets big. This happens when the camera is set to wideangle and not just rotating (along any axis), but actually moving. Here you should use high X values (or maybe limit the matching area to the most distant parts). When zoomed in a lot or when the camera is stationary, the perspective effect is low and you should use low X values (even 1) to discard motion of objects moving even very slightly. Discard motion of blocks that move more than X pixels (absolute motion) Simply discards all blocks that have a motion vector that is longer than X pixels. Might be useful in some cases. Remember discarded areas to next frame When enabled, this feature makes Deshaker try to ignore approximately the same areas from one frame to the next. Deshaker will then become a lot more successful in ignoring moving objects. As long as they enter the scene rather slowly (by not covering too much of the background), Deshaker will usually be able to ignore those objects even if they eventually grow to cover most of the frame. Deep analysis if less than X % of vectors are ok When set to 0% (which is the default value) this does nothing. To enable it, set it to 25% or something. Then, if less than 25% of the found vectors get white using the standard algorithm, this deep analysis algorithm kicks in. It does a much better job finding an object to lock on where the standard algorithm can be confused and lock on two separate objects at the same time, usually resulting very few white vectors and weird values. Use this in combination with the discard setting above to control how much the vectors in the object you want to lock on (usually the background) may vary. For example, the blocks on a moving person usually don't move "coherently" as the background usually does (if the camcorder is stationary). So by using a low value for the discard setting above (maybe < 1) the person would probably get very few white vectors and this algorithm would therefore hopefully lock on the background instead, even if it's a rather small part of the frame. This algorithm is very good, but also VERY slow (depending on other settings and how complicated the video is). You cannot use the deep analysis algorithm with rolling shutter video. Skip frame if less than X percent of all blocks are ok. If less than X percent of all blocks are ok (i.e. the rest of the blocks either have no acceptable match or have been discarded), skip this frame (set panning and rotation to 0 and zoom scale to 1) Ignore pixels outside area Only area is used during matching. If you check Let area follow motion, the area will move along with the motion vectors between different frames. You can use it if you want to stabilize on a moving object instead of the background. Just don't expect this to work perfectly Ignore pixels inside area area is not used during matching. Ignore pixels darker than X % brightness Most camcorders seem to use some kind of temporal smoothing internally to reduce noise. This means that the noise that is left will look very similar between two successive frames, and may cause Deshaker to incorrectly match on it. This problem gets worse when the camcorder is forced to used high gain (when filming in dark places) and it's also a lot worse in dark areas of the frame. By using this option you can ignore dark pixels during matching. What threshold to use depends on your camcorder and the gain used in the clip. The default 15% seems fine for my camcorder in daylight but may not be ideal for your camcorder/clip. Same destination properties as source If checked, the destination video will get the same size and pixel aspect ratio as the source and the two settings below will be ignored. Destination pixel aspect Tells the filter to generate video with a certain pixel aspect ratio. If you plan to watch the clip on a computer monitor you'll probably want to use square pixels. You may enter any value if you can't find the preset you're looking for. Destination video size The size of the output video you want from pass 2. Generate "interlaced progressive" video Usually, Deshaker will generate video with the same video type (interlaced/progressive) as the source video. But if you enable this setting, it can turn interlaced video into progressive video with twice the framerate. Earlier versions of VirtualDub didn't allow for filters to change the frame rate, so the two progressive frames are interlaced into the same output frame. In order to get the true progressive video, you must separate the fields of this video afterwards. In later versions of VirtualDub you can do that by adding a Bob doubler filter after Deshaker, using the deinterlacing method None - alternate fields. You could also do it with AVISynth and its SeparateFields function (and a preceeding ComplementParity for "upper field first" video). You should never deinterlace this video in any other way than to simply separate the fields. The difference between true interlaced output and this interlaced progressive output is that the video becomes twice as high (in order to fit two frames into one) and more importantly that the lower field (or rather "frame" in this case) isn't calculated with a one line offset as in interlaced video. Resampling The algorithm to use when calculating pixel colors from the source image. Note that none of these are very good when the destination size is a lot lower than the source. Instead, add a separate 2:1 reduction filter (or something) after the Deshaker to reduce scale a lot. Edge compensation A side-effect from stabilizing video is black or strange looking borders caused by moving the image around to compensate the shaking. To reduce or eliminate this effect you can zoom into the image. The following options do this in different ways: None: No zoom is added. Adaptive zoom: Determines, for each frame, how much zoom is needed to avoid borders. This additional zoom is then smoothed together with the stabilizing zoom changes using the zoom smoothness parameter, so the borders still become visible sometimes. Adaptive zoom only: Same as adaptive zoom, but the zoom smoothness parameter is only applied to this adaptive zoom and not for stabilization. So, with this setting no smoothing will be made to the zooming made in the clip. Fixed zoom: Deshaker will add a constant zoom to completely eliminate any borders. This zoom may be different for each scene of the clip. Adaptive+fixed: First, adaptive zoom will be used. Then, a smaller fixed zoom will be added on top of this to completely eliminate any borders. This will usually result in less zoom than fixed zoom. Adaptive+fixed only: First, adaptive zoom only will be used. Then, a smaller fixed zoom will be added on top of this to completely eliminate any borders. If you're using any edge compensation (i.e. anything but None), your can limit the amount of zoom needed to avoid the borders by using lower values for Motion smoothness and especially Max. correction limits. Previous and future frames to fill in borders This is a kind of additional edge compensation. When the current frame doesn't contain any image data in the "real world area" we want in our output, it can search in past and future frames and use that image data instead. As long as that area is part of the object (or background) that was stabilized on in pass 1, this usually works perfectly. But when other objects move in these areas, it can look a bit strange. It's usually better than black anyway, so I strongly recommend using this feature. Just make sure you crop any borders from the source clip before Deshaker. Otherwise this won't work very well at all. If the current frame is number 50, it searches frames in the following order to find the image data it needs: 50, 49, 51, 48, 52, 47, 53, 46, 54 etc. So for each pixel the closest frame (chronologically) is always used. You can set how many frames to store internally for this feature. More is always better but keep in mind that each frame needs up to 8 MB of memory (for full HD) and it can take a long time to search through all frames for image data. Try using this feature on a clip with lots of panning, and zoom out by setting Extra zoom factor to something like 0.6. Then you'll get a panorama like effect. It's slow, but fun. Soft borders If enabled, all relevant previous and future frames that Deshaker has stored in memory will be used to calculate the border (as opposed to just using the closest frame in time). For each pixel, it takes an average of the corresponding pixels in all these frames, weighted so that the frames closest to the current frame (in time) get higher importance. This option will also allow you to make the transitions between a frame and the frame(s) beneath it smoother. The transition width value you supply is how far in from the edge of a frame the transition will start. The transition will be applied also to the current frame, so you'll actually lose some information in the edges of the main frame by using this option. But I'd say it's worth it. If you don't like it, just set the transition width to 0. Enabling 'Soft borders' improves the appearance of the border quite a lot, especially when there are objects moving there, but it is also very slow when there are lots of border pixels. Extrapolate colors into border If enabled, any black border pixel that couldn't be fixed in another way, is replaced by a color extrapolated from the edge of the known video pixels. This option is very slow when there are lots of border pixels, and I strongly recommend using 'Previous and future frames to fill in borders' in combination with this option. Extra zoom factor An additional zoom factor to apply to the video. This can for example be used together with fixed zoom edge compensation to zoom out just enough for the borders to become slightly visible but still remain hidden in the overscan area of the TV. Then you will see more of the video while still not seeing any borders on the TV. Or you can use it to zoom in slightly to get less borders. This setting won't cause another resampling, so using a little extra zoom to finetune your results is perfectly safe, quality wise. (Btw, all output pixels are always resampled directly from the original source pixels exactly once no matter what settings you use. So, no double resampling ever. This includes areas taken from previous or future frames.) Motion smoothness These values determine how smooth the motion will be. You can set a parameter to 0 to turn off the smoothing completely. This can be useful if you don't want to stabilize zoom for example. But you must use a rather high zoom smoothness if you use adaptive zoom as edge compensation, or the video will zoom in and out very fast to avoid the borders. The motion smoothness calculation is not time-based but rather based on frame count, so you'll probably want to use larger values for video with high number of frames per second. And in this case, the fps for interlaced video will count as twice as high, since each of its frames contains two "sub frames" (fields). If you enter -1 as smoothness you will get "infinite smoothness", meaning the camera will appear to be stationary at the position of the first frame that was processed in pass 1. This feature usually doesn't work perfectly, though. Max. correction limits To keep the corrections (that cause the black borders) small during fast pans (for example), you can limit the maximum corrections. Especially when using fixed zoom as edge compensation these settings keep the zoom from being too large. What these settings really do is automatically lower the motion smoothness values in certain parts of the video when it becomes necessary. Things to Think About Deshaker works best for video shot using high shutter speeds (at least 1/200 sec or so). Otherwise you might get motion blur without motion in the deshaked video. Also, the matching will work better. Always try to make sure the white vectors end up on the background in the frames for best results, i.e. try to make Deshaker completely ignore objects moving in front of the background. If the white vectors jump around between different objects from frame to frame, you need to do something to get a good result. Either use the "ignore area" settings or something else. There are many things you can do. Experiment with the settings! Don't forget to set the source video pixel aspect ratio. For example if your source video has resolution 720x480, 704x480 or 352x240, it's probably NTSC, and if it has 720x576, 704x576 or 352x288, it's probably PAL. If there is no zooming in the video clip, use Adaptive zoom only as edge compensation or if you don't want any edge compensation, set zoom smoothness to 0. This is because the zoom stabilizing can't distinguish between zooming due to the camera moving towards something or if it's actually zooming. You may think it's the same thing, but it isn't. At least not for wideangle shots. Often there's conflicting motion of large objects in the video clip. In this case the filter tries to "follow" the motion of the biggest object (usually the background). The setting that discards blocks that move more than X pixels in wrong direction can be used to some extent to control this. A low value makes it follow only the biggest object, while a larger value makes it follow the average motion of all objects (that aren't moving too much in the "wrong" direction). You can also use the image matching area to control which object to follow or try enabling the "deep analysis", which is designed specifically for this problem. Video with a high degree of barrel or pincussion distortion will not look good when deshaked. If you get a lot of distortion in your video, try avoiding the extreme zoom positions of your camcorder. Extreme wide angles will unfortunately always result in a less than perfect looking stabilized video due to some geometrical effects that Deshaker doesn't deal with. If you're a perfectionist (like me), always use the slowest settings. This makes it *really* slow! Human Guidance Sometimes it can get nearly impossible to automatically match two successive images correctly (or rather 'the way you want to'). This usually happens when the images have very little in common or when there's conflicting motion of large objects (see 'Things to Think About' above). In order to make a complete video clip look perfect, you might want to use different settings during pass 1 for different parts of the clip (or even single frames). You can do this in two ways: You can use the Append to file option to continue writing to the same log file. You can then change the settings, step a few frames, change again, step some more etc. The frame numbers are written to the log file so you can even go back and redo some frames. If a frame exists more than once in the log file, the last one is used in pass 2. You can edit the log file manually. The values on each line in the file are (from left to right) frame number, x- and y-panning (in pixels), rotation (in degrees) and zoom factor. When "rolling shutter" is enabled the four values for panning, rotation and zoom are given twice; first for the middle line and then for the first line of the frame. If a frame is the first frame of a new scene, the word 'new_scene' should be at the end of that line. You can delete lines that got completely wrong (and that you don't care to try to fix in a better way). Gaps in the file are treated as zero-panning, zero rotation and no scaling. Stabilizing Interlaced Video Deshaker can deshake interlaced video, but the resulting video will look slightly softer than for progressive video since the fields of interlaced video are resampled individually and they only have half the vertical resolution of a progressive frame. The resampled fields are then reinterlaced in the output video. There is really no sense in trying to detect non-moving pixels and keep them "un-deinterlaced" since you wouldn't be deshaking video shot on a tripod anyway, and without a tripod the pixels will almost always move slightly. (Deinterlacing with motion estimation in some way might give a better result but I'll probably not try implementing that anytime soon. And for certain reasons I don't like the idea of it.) If you want, here's another way to stabilize interlaced video that might look better when some parts of the video are completely non-moving. Use my smooth deinterlacer (or Xesdeeni's AVISynth port of it, or other advanced deinterlacers) to generate 50 or 60 fps full-sized video. Feed it into Deshaker as progressive video (in two passes). Run the resulting video through this little AVISynth script (that I got from Xesdeeni): AVISource("deshaked.avi") SeparateFields() SelectEvery(4, 1, 2) (or SelectEvery(4, 0, 3) depending on the output field polarity) Weave() If you stop after the second step you'll have smooth 50 or 60 fps full sized video that will look great when played on a computer. That video can't be played on a TV however. Nat

Hi Check the "Options" tab under "Media" and check that VP asks you where you want a clip to be added. Select "Ask me" If it is a matter of a split you have just made, keep the red cursor line at the split point. Select the clip to insert by right clicking it in the media list and then select "Place on Sequence" and then "Place on sequence at the cursor". If it is a split you made previously, grab the clip to insert from the media list and drag it along the sequence line. The yellow arrowed line will "jump" to the split when you get it close. Release the clip when it snaps to the split line. It should not leave a sliver of clip. Normally you can simply drag and drop a second clip to the timeline onto a clip already there and position the yellow arrowed line to the point of insert and then release the insert clip. However, if it is a matter of simply adding a clip cleanly at a particular point of the video and the subsequent portion is not required. Drop the second clip onto the overlay track and drag it to the point where you wish it to start. If the lower track is longer than the overlay then split it at some point further on and remove the right hand portion. The overlay clip will play smoothly from the point you have chosen. Nat Nat

Hi Borate is pointing you in the right direction. But as you say you are not to experienced with VP......... Load a blank frame of the required flag colour to Video track 1 of the timeline. Load your video clip with the red flag to the overlay track....Video track 2 Line them up. Click the yellow star at the left end of the red flag clip to add an effect and select "Green Screen" Click "Configure Effect" In the preview image that appears left click on the red flag area. This will select that colour to become transparent and the shade will appear in the small square on the left.. Now move the top slider to the right until all the red has disappeared from the video, (It's a pure colour in this case so it won't leave any.) If you adjust the slider carefully you can just leave the border grey. You can preview the effect to check that all the red has gone. Wait for VP to process the changes and close the effects window. When you play the timeline clip you should now see the flag has turned into the colour of the blank frame on Video track 1 Nat

Hi If you have added a normal .jpg image to your media list it should appear in the left hand preview pane. If you have also dragged and dropped it onto the video track it should preview in both panes. If this is not the case there is something wrong. I can only suggest that you try re-installing the software. Nat

Hi If you want a fade in from black, add a blank black frame at the start of the clip and then click the square at the right end of the blank clip. Select Crossfade. Borate forgot to mention that the effect you want for the method he suggests is "Opacity". It works well but is best if used when the clip in question is placed on the overlay track (Videotrack 2) as then it will fade in over the main track clip. Nat

Hi Can't say why it is crashing but..It's a good idea to save your project (the .vpj file.....Save project as or Save project. ) You should do this mmanually on a regular basis whilst you are editing instead of relying on the auto save which may not always work. Also, don't empty the cache file..check that options are set correctly regarding emptying the cache on shutting down. If the cache is emptied it takes much longer to reload the project. If VP does crash, you should get a NCH window come up on reload asking if the program crashed. You should send a crash report with details. Nat

Hi "I am changing something in the Video track and the other way round.. " What are you trying to change or do when this happens? The behaviour of the clips in version 3.xx can be confusing at first. With multiple tracks to work with it is less intuitive than version 2.41. Simply dragging and dropping a clip onto the timeline will insert the new clip by splitting and separating all the tracks as shown by the yellow arrowed line that appears. If you use the right click menu from the clip in the media list you can add to the Start,End or Cursor position depending on you selection under "Options" but adding at the cursor position will split all the tracks in the same way. For a start it may be better to add new clips to the first overlay track, and in general use Video track 1 and Video track 2 . This way you can "insert" a clip without actually splitting anything although some transitions between them would require both clips on the same track. If you do choose to split first and insert your clips you can select the tracks to be split with the small down arrow next to the scissor icon and then create a gap in the timeline of sufficient size for the inserted clip. You can close the gaps later or drag them closed Note that if you do split and separate the two parts of a clip in this way, the separated sections can be extended or shortened by dragging the cut ends in or out and It is quite possible to produce duplicate portions in each clip in this way. Whilst appearing to be discrete items they are actually duplicate copies of the same clip The main point I am trying to make is that if you insert, make an adequate gap first until you get used to how the program behaves. If you use the overlay track for a clip and you want to insert it later, you can easily open a large enough gap as you can see how long the overlay clip is. It's a simple matter then to just drag it down to the main track and close any excess gaps. Nat

Hi It won't hurt to try them...I suggest 2.41 if you can get it. Version number is bottom left of the main screen. Nat

Hi Getting a bit off topic...However, the more RAM the better. I think you will find that version 3.29 will be pretty dire with only 1 gig. Mine ... MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP2 Intel Core Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20Ghz, 2.0GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS only has 2 gigs and finds it difficult to cope with this version. It works but is slow....too slow really. VP 2.41 runs OK though, but cache files and projects differ from the later version. Nat

Hi Tango420 Getting a bit off topic now but If you still have your animated GIF files (you don't need the individual images) try Beneton Movie Gif to convert them to .avi files. The GIFs are extracted and converted to BMPs first which are then animated.You can also resize and change the speed of the resulting animation with the Beneton program. These.avis load and play OK in VP. I haven't had any that slanted .......but I did with another gif to avi program. It only did it if I selected a larger format output. It wasn't a screen capture program as I thought in my post above...your post jogged my memory. Nat

Hi VP works fine on 32 bit systems. (Like mine) As suggested add a couple images to the media list and drag one down and drop it on the timeline. It should preview in both left and right preview panes. If it doesn't then you have a problem with VP, and I suggest you re-install the software. If the previews work OK then load the second image to the timeline so it follows the first and add a crossfade between them. Now save (export) the timeline as an .avi video to your PC. Close VP, restart it and add the new .avi video to the media list. Drag it to the timeline and check it both previews and plays. If this is OK then VP would seem to be working OK. The fact that the .avi you initially loaded from your PC (.avi is simply a container for the video) didn't play may mean that it was corrupted or empty (you can check its size) or was wrongly encoded. Try loading another format of video...wmv; mpeg etc.and check they work OK. Nat

Hi The two films actually have different aspect ratios... (1.333 and 1.777) but this is not the reason for the different shaped vignette as VP simply displays them "as is" and adds a corresponding black border to make the output up to 1:1.77 (16:9). There is no distortion produced. I'm not sure why your vignette appears round but the background video that has the effect seems to be skewed in some way, like a page partially turned but can't see how you acheived this with VP. Using the scale effect and changing the y% value as I suggested shouldn't have done that. It would have turned your round VP vignette into an oval. However, I presume you want to have the oval vignette that is shown on the original video. This video is 480 x 360 pixels as it stands (1:1.333) but with an actual image which is 16:9. So keeping the oval vignette should be straightforward..... Load the original video. (Oval vignette) Select it, and then add the crop effect. Force the aspect ratio to 16:9 (right hand button) and position the orange rectangle over the actual image area. That is, trim off the black border at the top and bottom and the chequered area to each side that you will see in the preview screen. You will now have a 16:9 full frame video which will finish with the oval vignette. Save this (unless you don't mind waiting for ages whilst VP recrops it when you re-edit it ) and then reload it as the new background for your overlays and texts. Hope this helps. Pleasant melody. Nat .

Hi What format was the video you added and how was it produced? What happens if you load a straightforward jpeg image? Nat

Hi Videopad will export what you have placed on the timeline. If you have created two sequences and placed them on the timeline, it will export them both ... just as you would expect. Any unused clips, images, sound files and sequences left in the media list bins will not exported. Nat

Hi Haven't seen any changes yet and I agree scrolling can still appear jerky. But...by making the clip last longer (the text clip that is) it will move smaller increments between each frame and will look smoother. A bottom to top scroll taking 15 seconds is pretty smooth. Several lines of vertically scrolling text will move faster than a single line of text over the same time duration as the block of text has to leave the screen fully to complete the effect. So you may have to increase the duration of a long text block. The other thing is that the preview screens are only 288 pixels resolution in height and if the text moves bottom to top in, say, 10 seconds, ...this is about about 28 pixels a second and corresponds to the normal fps speed....about 1 pixel per frame so it looks reasonably smooth. (15 seconds looks better for this reason.) However, once this has been rendered to a 1080 pixel height image, then the text must move 100 pixels per second which is 4 pixels each frame and so can become noticably more jerky as the text makes bigger jumps....and this is for a 10 second scroll. There may also be an issue connected to the text type and font size chosen and the way VP has to reconstruct the text for each character as it moves. With regards my converting to MPEG2. I do this with my raw MPEG4 H.264 clips before I start editing. If I don't do this the sound in the MPEG4 clips quickly gets out of sink, often by a considerable amount, particularly if I film as Full HD 1080. I export as an HD 720 H.264 (native).avi or MPEG4.(Native) .avi Nat

Hi This screen capture software seems to work OK with the added advantage that you can select the screen area to copy. Cam studio doesn't do this (at least in the version I downloaded.) I tried loading some avis to VP made this software selecting the aspect ratio you had difficulty with (1531 x 988) as well as multiples of it. They all loaded into VP and played with no distortion. Nat

Hi OK. I can see what you mean. It might be a VP problem caused by the odd image size of your original, as you see in the preview editing screens is only a reduced copy of the original video. Presumably if this isn't a multiple of 512 or 288 (or close) VP can't reduce it to the same AR properly. It could be that the pixel lines for making the previews are then read "as is", like 512,512,512 etc. leaving an overlap of a few pixels each time which are added to the next line, building up and causing the slant........ Just a guess though. Although it's not a lot of use saying so, your edited output might not show the slant. However, I have seen something similar with one screen capture software I tried out but can't remember the name of it now. So.....What program are you using to record the screen action? I currently use CamStudio which seems to work OK. Worth giving it a try. Nat

Hi Not quite sure what you mean by "Out of Line Sync" Is this a sound problem? With regards your image size, provided the file format (type of file...avi; wmv, mov, mpeg etc.) can be loaded into VP, then if it is not the "standard" aspect ratio of 16:9, the program will usually adjust the height or width (whichever is greatest) so as to fit the aspect ratio of the videopad frame. Provided your video AR is 16:9 or a ratio of 1.77. (1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 etc.) it will automatically fill the whole video frame whatever the actual size in pixels. If your video frame is 1531 x 988 as you say, the aspect ratio is 1.54 This means that VP will fit it vertically into the frame but as it won't stretch your image horizontally as this would deform it, it will leave a border on the left and right. If you want this aspect ratio video to fill the frame, you will need to use the CROP effect and set it to 16:9. This will result in a loss of the top and bottom of the image. Or you can physically deform it yourself using the SCALE effect and adjusting the X% value. Assuming you are not satisfied with the raw video (1531 x 988) you have, what is the frame size in pixels after you have converted it? If it is markedly reduced then obviously you will lose definition. Nat

Hi If you are prepared to lose a fair bit of your image at the top and bottom you can "create" an oval transition. It won't be perfect but worth having a try.. Proceed as follows....You will have to experiment with this procedure. Place the APPEARING clip (that's the one showing the transition) onto the timeline. (Clip 2) Place the clip that comes before it in front of this. (Clip 1) Select Clip 2 and add the SCALE effect. Increase the Y% value to produce a heighting effect opposite to the degree of flattening you want in the round transition. You will have to experiment here. Use the same Y% value on both clips. Note that the more you heighten the clips the more of both clips will be lost at the top and bottom in the finished output. Now add your circle transition to Clip 1 in the normal way. Save (Export) the sequence to your PC. Reload the saved sequence and select it. Add the "Scale" effect once more but this time reduce the Y% value to restore the sequence (It will be one clip now) to its original proportions...or at least as close as you can get. This step will reduce the height of the clip producing the chequered areas at top and bottom. Place the timeline cursor at the centre of the transition so you can see the preview. To get back to full screen now apply the CROP effect choosing your desired aspect ratio e.g. 16:9 Reduce the sides of the orange rectangle until there is no chequered arrea showing. The sequence should now play (enlarged of course) with a horizontal oval transition. It's about the best you will be able to do with VP in the absence of a proper oval transition. You could also create a black oval vignette in a similar way using blank frames, one black and one green and then after going through the steps, adding the result to an overlay track with the chroma effect set to render the green transparent. Nat

Hi Another way is to drop your complete video onto the timeline as Borate suggests, and then split it at the start and end of each section you want to keep. As you make the splits right click the sections you don't want and select "Delete the selected clip". Now right click the gap where the deleted section was and select to "Close the gap" You will finish up with your shortened video on the same track. Nat

Hi MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP2 Intel Core Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20Ghz, 2.0GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS VP 3.29 "I have 5 movie segments (wmv) amounting to 56 mins and it's taking 4 hours to render. Does that sound aa long way out?" That doesn't sound to bad. Using the computer specs outlined above I used the mpeg2 files from a previously completed project to make a comparison. There were 248 mpeg2 clips loaded to the media list. This generated 778 files in the cache. Dragging and dropping all these clips to the sequence line with no transitions or any other additions (no blanks, effects or splits). resulted in a project of 1hr 22mins 42.7 secs duration which generated 1837 files in the cache with a volume of 2.61 Gigs. VP was set to create an HD720 avi file H.264 format. This took 5 hours 23 mins to render, with the processor working at about 96% on average. Nat

Hi Are you trying to save your project as a .vpj file (VP Project file), or are you trying to export it? You don't make this clear. Even if the message you report has come up, using the "Save Project File" option should not be blocked as it is a feature of all the VP versions, unlicenced or otherwise. The message suggests you may be trying to Export your work. Exporting your work as a completed file ( e.g. .mpeg etc) may now be disabled as the trial period appears to have ended. I would suggest that you save your work as the .vpj file and then default to the demo version of VP (I think you get the option to downgrade to this version if you cancel the option to purchase.)..or if this doeesn't work you could uninstall your current version and download the latest 3.29 version from the NCH site (keep the setup.exe file) and once opened you can reload the .vpj project file and continue to edit. However as this would be the unlicenced version your export options would be reduced. Nat

Hi Further to my post. You can use the TEXT option to position your titles as shown in the image here. Use a full stop and new lines and spaces to move the text for one of the lines. There is also an example of the subtitles I mentioned. http://imagetest.monsite-orange.fr Nat

Hi Version 3.29 If you use subtitles, each line of text will be a single colour, but you can add a second or subsequent line in a different colour. The problem arises in positioning them. You can position subtitles to appear at the same time, As with text, you can use the 9 position matrix but this is limited and there is no way you can fine tune it. Also the first subtitle will overwrite the other. The answer is to put one subtitle at a different height to the other. Unfortunately as mentioned above VP will not allow you to move the text up or down by small amounts, it's either bottom, middle or top. The nearest you can get if you want different coloured subtitles simultaneously is to do this:- Create one subtitle in red (e.g.German) . Set it to appear at the Bottom Left of the screen. Set the IN/OUT position for this text and set the font size to 10. Create your second subtitle (e,g, English) in a different colour but this time at the Top Left of the screen: Use the same font and the same IN/OUT positions. You now need to push the upper text down the screen. Do this by returning to the subtitle window and selecting the upper (English) text. At the start of this text add a full stop. Press the Enter key to add a new line between the full stop and the text proper. Repeat until the preview of the subtitled clip shows the upper (English) text appears just above the German line. You probably need to adjust each font size to get the best appearance. (7-8 seems OK with about 10-11 new lines)) Unavoidably there will be a full stop at the top left of the screen, but in this position and font size, it won't be too obvious. Obviously once you have chosen the font size you will know how many new lines to add to get the upper subtitle in the correct position. Note that if you use the Left middle matrix position, the full stop will be left of centre and if you use centre justification the full stop will end up near the middle of the screen. The option I am suggesting here is probably the best you can get. Nat