Nationalsolo

Hi I think that they would take forever to load in version 3.xx and I think that even if created in 3.xx editing would be a slow job. Nat

Hi The second link I posted above will (should) allow you to download VP version 3.10 .non commercial free version. SAVE this to file your PC. Don't use the "Run" option. It is called vpsetup.exe which doesn't tell you which version it is so rename it something like VP3-1.exe If you are currently using version 2.41 then you should have the vpsetup.exe file for that version somewhere (provided you originally took the Save option when you downloaded it). It will probably be in the NCH folder or the Appdat folder. If you have it then rename it VP2-41.exe You now have an .exe file for both versions. You can flip between versions by double clicking the respective setup file. I think what NCH means is that any projects created with 3.1 will not open once the trial period has expired as the version no longer works, but I am pretty certain they will open OK in the non.commercial free trial version if you download it. Version 3.1 projects will NOT open however in 2.41. Version 2.41 projects are supposed to open in 3.1 but I find (see my post above) that although they convert and seem to load for simple things, a more complex project does not load correctly at all. BTW. I find 2.41 renders OK. Nat

Hi VP makes great slideshows. If possible always use the best quality images. Don't compress them to jpgs if you can help it. The preview screens are low res and are just for previewing your work. The bigger preview screen is same, just bigger. The rendered result however is OK and should be similar to your raw images if you save with the correct settings. If you want to see a typical result then save your project as you have it at the moment. (vpj file) Open a new project from the file menu which will clear the sequence and media list and then load a couple of your images. Add a transition (say, crossfade) between them and then save the result as a movie to your PC. Pick one of the HD settings. Minimise VP when it has rendered and then play the result of your test. That should give you an idea of what your images will look like as a movie. You can re-open VP and save a second test with different settings if you want. When the result is as you want, note the settings you used.You can reload your original project with no problems afterwards. Saving as a DVD via VP will give similar results. Nat

Hi Might sound a bit daft but... Perhaps its got corrupted. Sounds odd if other WMA files work OK and not that one. What happens if you convert it to a .wav file........check it loads OK Then convert it back to a WMA file and then see if that loads. Nat

Hi I don't think so. If you just clicked "Save Project" it overwrites with the same name effectively cancelling the old one. You may be able to recover deleted files (or some of them) with one of the specialized programs for that purpose as the "New" project probably won't occupy the same disc areas as the old one which will have been simply marked for overwrite, but even if it works, it's doubtful if you would pick it all up. However if you actually started a NEW project,as you say, then you would have been prompted for a name at the "Save" step irrespective of which one you picked. If you have entered (or chose) the name of an already existing project and saved it to the same location you would have got a warning that there was already a project with that name and did you want to continue. Clicking "No" would have brought you back out. Clicking "Yes" would have overwritten it. You would have had plenty of warning. I am afraid the lesson here is always to use "Save project as" if you think you may need to go back to a previous editing stage, and always to start a new project when it is a new project (not simply delete the files of an existing project as this does not cancel the name) Sorry..... Nat

HI I dont think you can do this as the file types are different. However I have loaded WMA files with no problem.(version 2.41). VP uses DirectX to treat (convert?) them. Perhaps that is not happening. The projects with WMA files load OK. You might be able to edit the project file say, with notepad, but you would need to sit down and decide how the text would need to be altered as it isn't that straightforward. Nat

Hi (Later) Further to the above posting which was a test with a single clip project...I have just tried to load another more complex 2.41 project into VP 3.1 It's a short film of 11 mins 20 seconds duration. OK.....it loaded (APPARENTLY) and so far has not crashed.......BUT.... I say "So far" as it is STILL generating things after 40 mins!!! The project consisted of 57 short video clips, 2 or 3 being stabilized avi clips. They were all 1280 x 720 MPG4. clips The project included 4 snapshot images and three audio files and the editing included numerous audio clips for narration and crossfade transitions between a proportion of clips. Starting with a completely empty cache file, the project loaded the clips to the media list in 2 mins and then took 2 mins 30 to generate the thumbnails for them in the list. However it proved impossible to preview the film (and do further editing) as the green bar was so slow to move along the sequence and all that came up was the "Building Preview" screen. (I think this has been made to regularly invert) Even when the red cursor line was moved to a "green barred" section it refused to preview. AFTER 30 MINS THE GREEN BAR WAS STILL MOVING ALONG THE SEQUENCE LINE GENERATING THE THUMBNAILS THERE, BUT HAD ONLY REACHED THE 6 MIN MARK. TRANSITIONS WERE STILL ALSO BLANK. IT TOOK 45 MINS TO COMPLETELY LOAD ( APPARENTLY), WITH SEQUENCE LINE THUMBNAILS ETC. THIS WOULD NOT PREVIEW AT ALL BUT PLAYED THE SOUND TRACKS ALL OUT OF SEQUENCE. ALL TOGETHER THIS WAS A TOTAL FAILURE! Following this test my advice is NOT to load any 2.41 projects into VP 3.10. I have not created any large projects with 3.1 (or 3.0x) versions as I still mostly prefer 2.41 so I don't know how a big project would load from scratch. NOTE: As a comparison... The same project used above loaded into V2.41 from an empty cache and was ready to edit in 2 mins 25. When loaded with the cache present it took 15 seconds! Nat

Hi Go to the link given by Connor..... http://www.nchsoftwa...opad/index.html The trial version is lower down the page. http://www.nchsoftwa...pad/vpsetup.exe I just tested a single small 2.41 project with 3.1 which did load so don't know why yours crashes. I'll try a much bigger one once I have reloaded and relocated the files for it, and then see what happens. Nat

Hi No..It seems OK. Nat

Hi What resolution are you shooting at? My maximum is 1920 x 1080. Your screenprint seems to indicate that your clip is 1920 x 1080. What advantage do you see in blowing this up larger? Nat

Hi Well! Now it's working! Once logged in it highlights the unread and new additions. (Admin must have just noticed after they removed the login page.) Nat

Hi "Perhaps I am missing something here, but how can the site know what posts are unread 'to you' unless you are logged in?" You are quite right but the main point I was making is that, prior to a week or so ago, after logging in, new and unread posts were highlighted as were replies to old posts that you hadn't read. Now they aren't... even when you are logged in....e.g. Your reply didn't highlight this posting when I logged in just now, at least I didn't notice that it had..... I just noticed there were 2 replies. I think it's an option that needs to be turned back on as it was useful. My comment re. the login button was an error on my part..In fact the "Please log in to reply" prompt is NOT an inactive button as I thought it was. The actual "Sign in" prompt is right at the top of the screen and as I had scrolled down slightly to see the top posting it had disappeared and only the "Please log in to reply" text was visible making me think it was a button. (Got so used to the full screen login page I forgot where the original sign in button was!) So..if you want to reply again I will check if it does highlight the post as it used to.... (after logging in.) Nat

Hi I noticed recently that the forum suddenly required one to log in before one could gain access to the postings. No problem actually as the logon page was tyhe first thing visible, but it presumably stopped it being a public forum. Now I note that this no longer happens and I automatically arrive at the forum page and the login step has been removed.. No problem again except that the "Log in to post" button at the top of the page is no longer active and more importantly new posts since my last visit are no longer highlighted and this was quite useful. Can this be rectified? Nat

Hi Andy Starting with a completely empty cache, version 3.10 loaded a test project (.vpj) file created with version 2.41. This project consisted of a single 20 second mpeg4 clip. On my PC this took about 1 minute to completely load. i.e to load the clip and create all the thumbnails for the sequence line and the preview screen. So, in short, the answer to your question is yes. (Although it may take quite a while for a big project) This single clip created 9 files. (and sometimes 10 for some reason). Note that None of these were named...just numbered....e.g. 1368-1108.cache etc. Note that a project created with version 3.10 will NOT open in version 2.41. Nat

Hi I am begining to come around to this version . I shall have to try something a bit larger than just a couple of clips. Nat

Hi Dixie As I mentioned .png files can be quite large As an example, using VP 3.04, taking a snapshot from an mpeg4 clip of 1280 x 720 pixels, the .png image was 1280 x 720 and 1.7 Mb Using VP 2.41 a corresponding snapshot from the same clip generated a .jpg image of 598 Kb. Visually the two images appeared pretty much the same and of good quality. The section of video clip from which the images were derived was fairly static though which can make a lot of difference to the "clarity". This may be the reason why your image was not clear. It would be interesting to know what the frame size of your video is...1920 x 1080 1280 x 720 etc. I am surprised that you say your video clip had only 10 frames! Was this, in fact the case, or were you refering to the number of thumbnails visible on the sequence track? A 10 frame clip would run for 1/2 a second or less as VP plays at 30fps. Although you say your clip plays very clearly, a still taken from it may actually be quite blurred if there is rapid action in the clip. At the normal playing speed of 30fps it may look OK as the eye and brain are fooled into not seeing the blurred images.It will appear to be clear. So you may be disappointed with your snapshot image if this is the case. Try stepping through the clip one frame at a time (you say there are only 10) and select the best. Even in the VP preview screen you will see the difference between the frames when movement is involved. The preview screen IS small though and what you see here is also a compressed image for preview purposes. Your .png snapshot however, will be a pretty faithful copy of the frame you chose , so if THAT looks blurred then the frame you chose would also have been blurred although you may not have noticed this in the small VP preview screen.(Catch 22) Converting your .png to a .jpg will not improve the quality as you will be compressing the image data to make the file size smaller. This inevitably means losing information from the image. Compressing a physically BIG jpg image down to a capacity suitable to em will in itself tend to blur it and is usually offset by reducing the image size which has the effect of making it appear clearer. Try checking the other frames and see what comes up. Nat

Hi Unless things are drastically different in Windows 8 (I use Vista) all you need to do in VP3.04 is open the program and click the button top left labelled "AddFile" This opens a search window from which you browse to the folder that contains your video. Left click the video to select it and then the "Open" button at the bottom of the window. The window will close and VP will load the video/clip selected into the media file under the "Video Files" tab.Where it will display as a thumbnail. or as a list depending on your settings. You can drag and drop the clip from here directly to the sequence track or you can right click it and select"Place on sequence" from the menu that comes up. Nat

Well...There's your answer!

Hi You can only rotate the image by entering the angle required under the Motion effect. (180 to invert it) Flip right or left is not possible unles you use a plugin. There is a plugin called "Flip horizontally" but it is an internal filter used by virtualdub. I am not sure whether it is available as a .vdf file that can be incorparated into VP. The Free Studio 2013 download that Borate mentions works OK and will flip left-right or top to bottom with no problem. Nat

Hi Saving a single frame from your video is certainly possible. Open VP and add your video to the media list. Drag and drop your video onto the video track. (Or click it on the list and add it to the sequence as prompted) Move the red cursor line along the sequence using the blue handle at the top of the line, or play the sequence in the right hand preview window. Stop when you arrive at the image you want to save. You can step along and back a frame at a time using the < > buttons at the bottom of the preview pane. When the frame you want to save is previewed, just click the button under the window that has the camera icon on it. If this is not visible you may have to widen the preview pane by grabbing the 5 dots on the left of the pane and dragging them to the left. (Also depending on the actual version of VP you are using you may have to click the >>> tab under the window and select "Take snapshot" from the list) A copy of the frame will appear in the media list (for you to add to the sequence if required) and a further copy (a .png file) will be saved in the default NCH image folder. Note: If you click the "Options" tab on the tool bar and then the "Media files" tab you can set up the folder where you would like your snapshots to be saved to.) Version 3.04 of VP will save your image in .png format (previous versions like 2.41 saved the image as a .jpg) The file for the png image will be be quite large (possibly several megabytes) and probably unsuitable to attach to an e-mail, so before you try to send it by em you will need to make it smaller by converting. it to a .jpg. You could load it into a suitable graphics program and resave it as a jpg or convert it with a dedicated file converter like Irfanview. If you don't want to download that (it's free) then right click the .png file in the folder where you saved it to and select to open it with windows Paint which you should have on you PC. (Should open it) Simply re-save it as a .jpg file. It will now be about 80 - 100 Kb and so suitable to send. Nat

Hi Converting them to a different format like MPEG2 or MPEG4 may solve the problem. You should be able to use NCH's Prism for this or one I use.. "Any video converter" (free) http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/ Nat

Hi Martin You can alter the size of the three line box in a limited way by dragging out the preview panes horizontally. You will see more letters across the window but it's still only three lines. The idea of returning to a full size text box containing the text in question is quite a good one. Nat

Hi "(2.41 just has subtitles which do work with certain limitations." Ooops! My mistake. Of course 2.41 has a full window add text or image option...Its under the overlay green cross...(Just been using it ) "Would it be better for you if that tiny text box were larger? What if it opened another dialog (as large as the "Add New Text Clip" dialog)? " Opening another dialog page (or the original) containing the text to alter would be a useful change. Thanks Nat

Hi "The .vpj project file ... and the project files that it references must all be saved and accessible on the other PC." Not only that...."accessible" means they should also be placed in the same named location and have the same file path as on the original computer. If not you may have to spend some time relocating them. Nat

Hi *The files for all of the projects will be saved in the videopad cache folder.* Sorry...What I meant to say was "All the files that are used in the different projects" I didn't mean the .vpj files. The .vpj file(s) can be saved anywhere you like if you use the "Save Project File As" option from the File tab. Enter a suitable name and then click the button at the bottom left of the "Save Project as " window. (As I use a French version of Vista this button is labelled "Parcourrir les dossiers" which, in English would be something like "Run through the files". Standard Windows fare that enables you to save the file anywhere. I just use a desktop folder called "Projects". After any editing, using just the "Save Project File" option simply overwrites the .vpj file with the changes keeping the name the same. (I'm sure you'll know all that already.......but I thought I would mention it. ) Also, if you do a search for the vpcache file you can drag drop that on the desktop where it's easy to refer to If you feel the need or make a shortcut to it. It's quite interesting to see how that buils up. Nat