Nationalsolo

Hi Eric There is no problem with editing several projects but not all at the same time. As far as I am away only one VP program can run at a time. As you work on a film you can save it as a project at any point. This is a .vpj file. e.g. FILM_1.vpj You can then start work (or continue to work) on a different film and save this as a project also (another .vpj file but with a different name. .eg. FILM_2.vpj You can have several (many) projects saved on your PC. in this way. The files for all of the projects will be saved in the videopad cache folder.(which can become quite large ) You can open ANY of the projects at any time and continue to work on it. (Save it when you end a work session though!) You cant open 2 projects at the same time. NOTE:- Saving your file using "Save Movie" saves your work AS A FILM.....e.g., .avi .....a completed item. It is not a project. The project files (the .vpj files) are NOT films. They are the instructions that VP uses to get you back to your last editing place. When you have finished editing then save your movie. Hope this helps Nat

Hi I use both versions (2.41 and 3.04(1)) which I can easily alternate between. Depends on what features I want to use. 3.04, for example has the Text screen option, which I have used with some projects. (2.41 just has subtitles which do work with certain limitations. In general with version 3.04, I enter and edit the text in the large "Add new text" window and when I think it looks OK I swipe it all and "Copy" it. Once it is added to the sequence then you can alter the size and justification etc and monitor the result in the right hand preview pane. If it's not exactly correct I usually just delete the clip entirely from the sequence, re-open the text window and then "Post" the text back to it and try again. OK. ... It's probably the best way to do it but the three line box under the preview pane is a bit small. and as you say, altering the text IN THIS BOX CAUSES TEXT FORMATTING PROBLEMS Perhaps NCH could take a look? Nat

"Use "Any Video Converter" (or the equivalent NCH program ) to convert them to MPEGs of 320 x 240 pixels (or smaller)." e.g. Prism.....(Forgot the name !) Nat

Hi Llama I am not sure that you are following the steps I mentioned quite correctly. Follow them exactly and the split screen will work. Note: The first time round that one selects an effect, both Opacity and Motion control boxs appear as a default. Just ignore these (or delete them with the crosses so at the start you have no effects contols showing) Your video is OK up to about 22 seconds. Once you have correctly entered the values I mention (25% and 75%) to get the correct frame size,(1/2 screen fixed over the centre), then grabbed and moved the sized rectangle to surround the part of the frame you actually require you must click the down arrow again and select the motion option from the list (even though the motion controls may already be present at the bottom of the window as mentioned above.) This action of selecting a new effect fixes the area you have cropped and this will have become your new 1/2 frame image. If you go straight to the already present Motion controls they will only move the BOX again and not the Image. This is where you are going wrong. (It's possibly an oversight in VP. One would have thought that the crop would be complete when one continued onto the already present Motion controls....seems not ) When you click the down arrow a second time to select and add a new Motion effect, the image area you have selected is fixed. Now you use the new motion box (at the top) to enter your values. You can directly enter the values I mentioned (Position y = 25%) and the cropped image will move to the bottom half of the screen. Repeat for the other clip with appropriate values and you will have your split screen. Nat

Hi For my test of this idea I used MPEG4 1280 x 720 H264 clips downloaded to my PC from my camera. I copied three of these clips into a folder that I called "BIG" They were called TOSH0001.MP4 TOSH0002.MP4 and TOSH0003.MP4 ... a total of 28 Mb I used "Any video converter" to change them into customised MP4 Movie files (*.mp4) codec H264 with the output size set to 320 x 240. I find Any video converter easy to use and reliable. http://www.any-video...for_video_free/ These were saved automatically to a folder called MP4 that I then renamed "SMALL" (a total of 2.4 Mb) They came over called TOSH0001_x264.mp4.....etc. For each file I removed the "_x264" thereby leaving the files in each folder with the same name. The fact that one set was .mp4 and the other was .MP4 seemed to make no difference. Both folders were on the desktop. I edited a short film with the files from the folder "SMALL" along with titles dissolves and cuts etc. saved the project and closed VP I then moved the contents of the "SMALL" folder and replaced them with the contents of the "BIG" folder. Opened VP and loaded the project. The big files were now reloaded in place of the small files. The film was now full size. For this to work the big and small files must be the same type. Hope this helps. Nat

Hi It does work. That's OK. It's just that the thumbnails for the overlay clip haven't rendered properly here since they are only showing as "Landscape" icons. Don't know why it is doing that, but it's probably why I am getting "Building Preview" after a few seconds of normal playing. Currently I am working on a couple of other projects and the cache contains over 1000 files (2.21 Gb! ) That might be slowing it down a bit too....Must clean it out Nat

Hi If I understand correctly you want one clip to play in the top half of the frame with the other clip playing in the lower half of the frame. The way it should work is........ Start by loading both clips. Place clip 1 on the main sequence line (Video track 1) and place clip2 on the overlay track (Video track 2). Line up clip 2 exactly over clip 1. Right click clip 2 (which overplays clip1) and select "Current effects properties" Click the down arrow in the top box and from the menu select "Crop" Click the "Add button" Set X1 = 0 Set Y1 = 25% Set x2 = 100% Set Y2 = 75% Clip 2 will now occupy the middle of the screen and be 1/2 height of the frame. Grab the red rectangle in the centre and manually position it over the portion of the image you want to show in the frame. This will change the values but this is OK. If you want to fix the aspect ration click the relevant radio button. Click the down arrow again and Select "Motion" Click "Add" Assuming you want Clip 2 at the top.... Set Position x% at 0% Set Position y% at -25.00% Clip 2 will now be at the top of the frame. Repeat for clip 1 on the main sequence line To position the frame set the y position to 25.00% The two clips should now be one over the other However although both clips seem to be positioned correctly in the right hand preview window , the thumbnails of clip2 under the left preview pane as well as on the sequence line only show as the landscape icon although the left preview itself displays the half images of both clips individually correctly. Playing the complete sequence though continually shows the "Building Preview" message. So I think there may be BUG here somewhere. I would be interested if anybody finds similar behavour Nat

Hi In 3.04(1) I don't think you are limited to the number of lines of text which can appear, but the more there are and the longer any line is will set a limit on the position and font size you can usefully use to ensure it fits the screen. As an example I have just set up 11 lines of text, the longest being 50 characters. In order to get this to fit the screen it had to be positioned left central and have a font size of 5.... Errr....You aren't using the subtitles tab by any chance?? .......... Any way...For text..... Click the "Add Text" tab on the toolbar and in the window that comes up type your text. Although you can fill the box, it is best to keep to about a dozen lines or so, as otherwise you will have to reduce the font size quite a bit to get it all in on the screen and the text may end up being too small to read. Click the "Add" button and then drag the text overlay image to the first free overlay track. Move the red cursor line until it is over the text box on the sequence line. On the right you will see your text overlaid on the main clip but probably too large. So..... Left click the overlay text to select it and in the left preview window click the big T If you have quite long lines of text then move it all left by clicking the "Align left" icon in the position matrix. Now reduce the font size by clicking the up or down arrow until your text looks as you want it in the right hand preview pane. You can adjust the starting position and duration of the text by dragging the box to where you want it to start and then pulling out the right hand end to where you want it to finish. You can set up 20 lines of text with a font size of 4 and still be just usable You can set up 30 lines of 63 characters with a font size of 3.........Thats about the usable limit ! Nat

Hi This is fairly easily done with VP.... Save the HD large MPEG clips from the camera to a folder called say.."BIG" Use "Any Video Converter" (or the equivalent NCH program ) to convert them to MPEGs of 320 x 240 pixels (or smaller). and save these in a folder called, say...."SMALL". Ensure that the clips have the same names in each folder. Open VP and load the clips from the "SMALL" folder Edit your film When finished save the project. Put your small clips into a new folder out of the way and replace them with the unused clips from the BIG folder. Now the SMALL folder contains the large MPEG4 clips that have identical names to the small ones you took out. Load your project and it will now be in the larger format. Nat

And the nice old style zoom................... Nat

Hi Animated gifs will not run in VP. The program will only display the first image. You will need to convert them to avis. Use a gif frame extractor which will save each frame as a numbered JPG Use a JPEG to AVI converter to create your avi from the jpegs. They generally allow you to enter frames / second but you normally have to duplicate (or more) your jpegs in the animation to get the speed you require. Nat

Hi "The snapshots I'm getting are actually 1920 x 1080 but I can work around it." VP must set the default png resolution to that of the clip being used then. I generally use 1280 x 720 and that's the resolution of my snapshots. I haven't tried the larger video format for this. However you can use the crop function to make all your output the same aspect ratio. Nat

Hi That option was available in 2.41 but in 3.04 it isn't available. The snapshot (.png) is saved at the resolution of the standard VP movie frame.(1280 x 720) Nat

Hi Borate has described exactly the behaviour of VP when creating crossfades. However the "overlap crossfade" IS there, you just need to create correctly. They are perfect if they start BEFORE the end of the "From" clip and end AFTER the start of the "To" clip. There must be sufficient "hidden" footage with which to create the crossfade. In effect you ARE making an overlap with the unused portion from the ends of each clip. To avoid the still images you have to shorten each clip by a MINIMUM of half the duration of the effect you are adding.I described the precise procedure in a previous post...... "For example, make a PROPER crossfade proceed as follows... Place untrimmed Clip 1 and untrimmed Clip 2 on the sequence line with a standard VP crossfade of say 2 seconds between them. This configuration produces a crossfade with still images but no loss in overall length. Now select Clip 2 and drag the red cursor line level with the right hand end of the yellow effects bar. Now pull back the end of Clip2 from the join to just past the cursor line. You have now created some "hidden" footage from Clip 2 sufficient for second half the overlap. Now select Clip 1 and drag the red cursor line level with left end of the yellow effects bar. Now pull the right end of clip 1 back to the red cursor line. You have now created some hidden footage from Clip 1 sufficient for the first half of the overlap. This procedure gives a perfect crossfade with both clips remaining in motion throughout." In other editing programs a crossfade is made by overlapping ends of the clip...which shortens the overall length by exactly this amount and some of the footage from each clip is in effect lost in the overlap. There is no alternative with these packages if you want a crossfade. At least with videopad you have a choice. You can create an crossfade without any overlap by simply butting up the clips and applying the effect to the join and thereby having to put up with the frozen images but no loss in overall length,(a sort of pseudo crossfade) or you can shorten the ends of the clips by dragging them (as detailed above)or by using the IN/OUT markers for each clip to provide the overlap footage and therby a normal crossfade without stills but with a shortened length. Nat

Hi Cnr-NCH wrote: "Do you think it would be useful if VideoPad automatically did this for you? For example when you import a 1080p video into VideoPad it could automatically create an SD version on disk for you, use that while editing so that rendering is quick, and then when you export back to HD it would use the original files again without you needing to do anything?" I think that's a great idea! Nat

HI If you go back to an old project and If the cache still contains the original files, i.e. you haven't started another project and cleared out the old unused files, then loading will usually be faster.(That's my experience.) If you have cleared the cache then loading the old project back may take some time as VP has to re-create them all again. A lot depends on the size of your film, number of clips etc., Either way it doesn't do it instantly. Compared with version 2.41 it is slower. The first version of 3.04 (beta) did have major problems in this respect which was reflected by the number of posts to this forum. Most of these have been adressed but the sheer complexity of now having multiple sequence lines (2.41 had only one) and all behaving as overlays means VP has much more data to deal with when cuts and inserts are made. It's never going to run like lightening. Nat

Hi It's not VASTLY different (actually I find it somewhat easier) but I am using Windows Vista and can swap between both versions with no problem. Borate may be right and 2.41 won't work in Windows 8 so if that's the case you will have to stick with the version you are using. Nat

Hi In version 2.41 Although there is a subtitles option I prefer to add any text using the overlay track as follows. It's easier to adjust and more intuative to use. Click the green cross at the left end of the overlay track and enter your subtitle text into the window that appears. Click OK. The text will appear in a box on the overlay track at the cursor line position and also appear in the preview pane on the right so you can see how it looks. Make sure you have the media list on the screen and then Right click the overlay text box. It will display in the left hand preview pane along with all the controls. You can change the text if required and adjust the position with the matrix of arrow. By default it will be centre bottom of the screen. You can have it fading in/out. Alter the font, letter size and colour. By dragging the text box along the sequence line you can adjust where it appears in the film and by dragging out the ends of the box you can alter the duration of the text and even scroll it. As subtitles, you can have two lines of text without intruding into the image too much. If you use the subtitle option you have to enter the start and finish times, ot the start and duration times which I find a bit fiddly. In 3.04 Click the "Subtitle" tab Enter your first subtitle text into the lower box and press Enter The colour ,size and font, position etc, can be set at the right of the window. The preview of the clip will show in the subtitles pane and the subtitle will appear in the selected position, font size and colour. Use the red and blue IN/OUT markers to set the the display positions for your text. It's pretty much the same as adding text as I have outlined for 2.41. Add further subtitles using the Green cross in the tool bar. This will clear the text box. Nat Nat

Hi With version 2.41. Drag and drop your clip to the sequence line (or add it via the media list). Right click the clip...It will turn blue meaning it is selected, and a list will appear. Select (Left click) "Adjust effects"...This will open the Effects Library. (or you can select from the "Effects" tab at the top of the media list window) In the Effects Library window Left click the "Speed" Option Now use the slider to get 30% in the speed window. Once the green status line has run along the sequence, your selected clip will play about the correct speed. Nat

Hi You can always ask questions here as well if you get stuck .

Hi You seem to be using version 3.041 which is the latest incarnation of VP (That's my number..It's actually labelled 3.04) As far as my comment re: emptying the cache. I referred to this only in the context of trying to load a project from an earlier version of VP and doing it BEFORE you try loading the .vpj file. A bit like starting with a clean slate. The cache is regenerated. If you did EMPTY the cache completely (i.e. opened it and deleted the ENTIRE contents) then it takes quite a bit longer to regenerate the files when the .vpj file is loaded. Subsequent loading of the project though will be appreciably faster. If your project has loaded already as seems to be the case from your video, then the cache will be largely up to date although it will continue to load items as they are generated like thumbnail data etc. This means that the for the section being treated the preview is not available. Note that tthe cache MAY also contain other files relating to older DIFFERENT projects whcih may slow things down. This is why in 3.04 and later, clearing the cache using the option within the program will only remove the files that are not being used in the current project. I do notice however that you seem to have a lot of clips in your video judging by the position of the scroll bar to the right of the media list window. It's normal, of course to have many clips in a project but I think this may be the crux of the problem with this version. VP has to generate all the thumbnails for these, save them to the cache, print them in the media list window instead of icons. Generate all the thumbnails required to display regularly in the sequence line instead of the landscape icon, set up all the transitions etc. and etc. As Borate mentions, this is pretty labour intensive for the PC and can take an appreciable time particularly with the larger format HD videos. I would suggest you try using the earlier version. (2.41)which is decidely faster. Unfortunately you have probably created your current project with 3.04 and saved the .vpj file. This will not now load in 2.41 as I noted in a previous post. However. If you WANT to try this, and it will mean starting from scratch..I think you will find it will work OK. Load version 2.41 Use "Any video converter" to convert all your clips to MPEG2 clips (keep them at the same size) I find these are much faster than the HD MPEG4 clips I get from my camera. Load these to VP and redo the video. Things will load and save much faster and you shouldn't get any "Waiting for preview" prompts (or hardly any) You can see the green bar moving quicker and your video will preview almost straight away and the end result looks OK. Nat

Hi If you have created a project (.vpj file) with an earlier version of VP, say 2.41 then it should load into the later version of VP (3,41) The cache files will all be renewed and numbered with the extension .cache although when saved into the cache from the earlier version they would have retained their original file names and have extensions like .fmt .raw .vtd .vti etc. Even if you emptied the cache before loading the project 3.041 will recreate the the correct cache files. However if you have created your project with the later version of VP (3.04 or 3.041) then this will NOT load into the previous version of VP (2,41) which will respond with the message that ...This version.. (presumably of the project).. is not supported and to update your version of VP. That's one point. The other is What version of VP are you using? V3.04 is slow as cache files are continually duplicated when any editing was done to the clips on the sequence which was a bug, as well as saved in a different way to include the alpha channels of the clips. Now necessary, probably as clips are used for the numerous overlay sequence tracks which have transparency settings that need to be saved. There was an issue with "Building Preview" which took forever with this version. These problems were addressed after some delay and the latest version is better. Unfortunately it was still called version 3.04. (I prefer to call it 3.041) You can tell which version you have as the latest ...3.041...has a camera icon next to the scissors under the right hand preview pane (version 3.04 had a drop down menu here) and the red sequence marker line is topped with a bright blue knob. This should load an earlier project. (It does at my end.) You can try emptying the cache file totally before trying to load the project (.vpj file) and see what happens.... a new cache should be generated. Nat

Hi In VP 2.41 and assuming your edited video is 16:9 format then save to your PC with the preset at either HD 720 or HD 1080. (It's the same AR) Click the Encoder Option button and select MPEG4 (Native) with MP3 (Native) 44100 Hz stereo sound This will save your video in widescreen that will play OK. (Does with me). Save to the PC first and use WDVD maker to create your DVD.I have found that VP DVD generation sometimes never stops and has to be aborted giving the message that the film wasn't saved. Inspection of the DVD in fact shows that it has. Seems to happen with version 3.04 though. In practice however I use DVDStyler to generate my discs. The Sothink DVD creator is also quite good but the free version pops an advert for the product at the start of each video. Nat

HI I think that what is happening now is that you have saved the 800 x 600 video (which plays in its raw state in the 16:9 VP screen with black bars) as a cropped 16:9 version that has no bars but lost top and bottom i.e it is now a normal 16:9 video. This will play OK in VP and would play correctly on a modern widescreen TV but you are (it seems) playing it on an older 4:3 TV. This would normally fill the screen (top to bottom) but crop the sides when the height is made to fit, as it is now too wide for the old type screen. Your video player however should (may) have controls that will allow you to see the whole 16:9 frame on an older TV but only by having bars at the top and bottom now since the width is made to fit but the height is now insufficient. Some can even be set to stretch the image to fit in either direction. As I understand it (and I may be wrong....probably am ) the output AR from VP is 16:9 but the image AR can be set by the user. This image is always placed in a 16:9 frame. Any AR other than 16:9 will have bars...........still.........might be wrong Nat

Hi Both links work OK Nat