Nationalsolo

Hi I finally managed to add two clips together (MPEG4) and play them. By dint of much experimentation due to the total lack of instructions. A single simple scene with two objects. Unwatchable... The sound ran in blocks and so did the visuals. Might be my system... Haven't tried MPEG2 yet...can't remember how I found the Load scenes option! Stick with VP. Nat

Hi Version 2.41 If you have some audio on a track and then drag a second audio clip to the same track but to a point after (to the right of) the first clip then irrespective of where you drop it, you should be able to drag it to any point to the right of the end of the first clip. Obviously you can't overlap it on the same track as it will just place itself immediately following the first clip. But if VP is working correctly for you, you should be able to drag it along to the right and drop it anywhere so leaving a space between the two clips. That's how it works for me. Any audio clips that I have placed remain independant and I can adjust them all separately. If this isn't happening then it would seem something is wrong. The only thing that might cause an audio file to jump back when you attempt to drag it to the right is if there IS another sound file off the screen to the right and you are trying to drag your active clip over this. It will overlap until you release it then it will jump back to its original position. It won't move or push the next clip up. Nat

Hi "....it seems rather inefficiant to have a dozen audio tracks with a single sound on each...." In the case of multiple synched sounds they can all go on the same track if there is sufficient space between them At the most you would only need to use two tracks. "Why would a first sound control where other sounds are set at? Or moved to? " You can set the Options control "Other" to prevent sound clips you may add to a track from pushing later ones up the track, if the clip you are adding is bigger than the space you have on that track. Just set the option to "Cut the active clip" instead of "Push clips to right" Later sound clips would remain in their allotted places. Nat

Hi Version 2.41..... You should be able easily to cut sound clips as follows... Go into timeline mode. Put your video onto the sequence line. Its audio will appear immediately underneath on the Audio track.(as you know ) but it will have no effect on how other Sound tracks behave.(It will play of course but you can mute it if required) Now Drag/drop your music/sounds/dialogue onto Soundtrack 1. If this is a single sound clip you are adding and the track was empty beforehand, you can drag it left or right along the track and place it where you want. To cut it....Move the cursor (or play the sequence) to the point where you want the sound track split. You can now cut it at the cursor position using the split button (looks like a railway signal) in the soundtrack1 box on the extreme left. (I seldom use the IN/OUT option) If the clip was activated (blue) then the right hand part of the sound clip will now go white. You should now be able to move (drag) the right hand section of the clip to the right, leaving a space, or if required, you can split it further along in the same way by moving the cursor along and repeating the steps above. You can remove any part of the sound clip by activating it (right clicking it--it goes blue) and selecting to "Remove selected audio" You won't be able to move the middle section along however until you move the right hand section along but you can drag it up or down to another empty Soundtrack from where you can move it along over the bits you have left Now, if you try to drop a sound clip into a space too small for it, it will push anything to the right along the sequence but will butt up against the portions to the left.(There is an option under "Other" to alter this behaviour however) The problem here is that it simply pushes along all the clips to the right and in doing so obliterates any gaps between clips you have already there (possiblr carefully placed in synch .) Its better to add any new sound to an empty Soundtrack where you can better position it and cut it If a sound clip is too long then you don't need to cut it. Just grab the end of the clip and drag this back into the clip (or along into the clip if you are working from the left) . The clip will shorten but will remain in position, while a gap will be created between it and the next clip. Note: You can't cut your main audio track without unlinking it from the video first and then left clicking it once so it moves fractionally to the right. If you don't do this you will split the video track as well. (The unlinked sound has to be moved a bit, the left click does this. Nat

Hi You can load this software without any extras, just Save it to a pre-prepared folder and then open it to the same folder. Read every step and don't load any other things offered. At one point there seems to only be an accept button. "Skip" is top right..sneaky. However, I have to say, having just given it a cursory look, that this program is not as intuative as Videopad which you can pretty well use almost without reading anything, and I have spent some time trying to create even a short clip! No success and I'm still stumped. If in doubt I shall read the instructions.but haven't found them yet either In VP you can see everything on the same screen just about, with this program there seems to be numerous screens... Nat

Hi With regards versions. If you previously were using 2.41 and then loaded version3.02 but decided to remove it, you were presented with a window asking if you wanted to revert to the previous version. I don't know if this works though if your original download was opened from the download site instead of Saved... IMHO it's better to save the vpset.exe file that you download at the start using the "Save" option rather than the "Open" option as you can then easily swap between versions if you are not happy with the later one by deleting all the relevant NCH folders and re-running the .exe file. of the version you want. Unfortunately all the download sites seem to have updated to VP3.02. This does have enhanced features though and in some ways I like it better. However if you are editing/creating a longish video and not just making short tests, you will find it rapidy stutters to a stop as the hundreds of cache files that have been created are updated and new ones made. The earlier version didn't suffer from this problem particularly. Nat

Hi VP (previous version 2.41 at least) IS very good.But leaving this aside... With DVDStyler you can add a soundfile to the menu screen if you right click the menu screen and then select "Properties" . Under Video object there is a box marked audio. Browse to your sound file/music clip and select it. This will play whilst the particular menu screen is being displayed.You can loop if also if you wish. As you have probably noticed, all the "objects" (frames, outlines etc.) have their individual properties which you can alter. You can add your own background images to the menu background file as well.. I can't say why your movie doesn't burn however. It is 16:9 AR. which is standard. I can only suggest that you could try to convert it to another format type using Any Video Converter http://www.any-video...for_video_free/ Your original file remains intact as this program makes a copy in the requested format. Try MPEG2 for a start. (I convert all my raw MPEG4 this way files before I edit them.) On clicking the orange Burn button, Styler lets you create a preview so you can see if it all plays OK before prompting you to actually use (or waste ) a disc. Nat

Hi Sorry my comments weren't a lot help re: the jerky titles. It's just that slowing them down does make them smoother. The panning jerkyness I get (which may be similar to your problem), I am sure, is caused by VP, and is recorded in the output file so is an inherited (fault) in any VP edited film. It might be due to the files being compressed when they are loaded to VP since inputting an MPEG4 clip and then outputting it again as another MPEG4 clip using the settings I mentioned above results in a file about half the size of the original. You might find that interesting to try. Thanks for the comments on the "slideshow". As I use the free unlicenced version 2.41 of VP the .mpg option is not available. The MPEG4 (Native) setting under encoder options saves the video as an MPEG4 XVID coded file. I mentioned that I convert my original MPEG4 H264 HD clips to MPEG2. clips (Using Any video converter) These original files when played in WMP and VLC show a reduced speed and gradual desynching of the sound and image. This becomes serious if the clips are full 1080 HD clips. Furthermore the image seems to have a reduced contrast. When converted to MPEG2 the contrast is increased, the speed is correct and the synch is OK. I think you may have to keep experimenting. Nat

Hi "My original video file is not jerky but it became jerky when I loaded it into VP by clicking "add file". If I use MPEG4 files (H264) 1280 x 720 saved from my camera to PC, they play perfectly smoothly both with WMP and VLC, but once added to VP they play in small regular jerks which is particularly noticeable with any object moving across the screen (like traffic). Unfortunately the effect is present in all the edited output and it seems to be inherent with the way VP saves and stores the files. As I need to edit I am stuck with it. If your jerkyness is much worse with frames jumping/freezing or breaking in half then it may be a performance problem linked to your PC. "In regards to "neutral" do you mean a "blank clip" that is used for an overlay text clip?" Not exactly, I was refering to a Blank Frame (or still image, or relevant video clip of sufficient length,)added to the sequence line and over which your text scrolls. The duration of a blank frame or image can easily be lengthened or an intro video clip more than long enough can easily be shortened. The Overlay on this would be your scrolling text. "Are you saying that it may be better to "break-up" my credits into separate text overlay clips (each with at most 4 lines of text)? Rather than one big long text clip?" No. What I was saying is that if you have several lines of text in the overlay and the duration is short, the scroll is faster (to fit it in) and so may become jerky as less frames are generated.So more lines of text should have a longer overlay box to decrease the scroll speed. In which event it should become clearer. In version 2.41 After selecting "Save Movie" I click the down arrow at the right of the Preset box (which has Custom as the default) and select HD 720. (My original format from camera is usually HD720 MPEG 4 H264 clips but I convert these to MPEG2 clips for reasons related to image/sound lag. On my setup 1920 x 1080 Full HD gets rapidly out of synch ) If you now click Encoder Options you can select MPG4 (Native) and output your sequence with these options. They look oK on the PC via WMP and VLC player. In the past I tried all the various format options to upload a short test slideshow to UT. These settings seemed to work as the others were too pixellated to watch. This is a link to a slideshow made up of Lunar webcam photos, all 640 x 480, cropped to 16:9 AR, assembled with VP 2.41 and saved with the above settings. (Later)....Just noticed that my link actually puts that slideshow here. However I note that now,all the dissolves and zooms/pans are very jerky... A thing NOT seen in the original which is pretty smooth apart from the pan at 2.52 which resembles the "traffic" effect I mentioned above. So I have to assume that it has been further altered by it being visualised from the link I entered. The images, being stills don't show any jerkyness so I am wondering how an actual movie will look here?? In many ways I rather like Version 3.02 as there are many useful features however, the program seems to produce hundreds of cache files even with a short edited film the generation of which slows things up considerably and if you read the comments on this forum ... http://nch.invisionz...-sloooooowwwww/ .... you will note that it rapidly becomes very slow indeed whenever an edit it made or the software is building the preview or generating thumbnails etc.. Unfortunately this prevents further editing of the sequence until the updating of the cache files has completed. I understand the problem is being addressed by NCH. In the meanwhile I have gone back to using v2.41 Nat

Hi To make your scrolling credits smoother they must run slower as VP generates the frames required to complete the scroll within the timescale set by the user. Obviously to do this you must drag out the text box on the overlay track to increase the time the text is displayed. If you are doing this over a neutral frame then you may want to increase the duration of this as well. With a lot of text lines the overlay duration should be corresponding longer so the text does not scroll too fast as this can also make it appear jerky. Two or three lines of text will scroll smoothly if the duration is extended to about 10 seconds (or more) For rendering I use HD 720 preset with Encoder options MPEG4 (Native) This gives smooth scrolling of text for me. Nat

Hi If you have playable video files on your PC (.avi .wmv etc.) my advide is to use DVDStyler (Freeware) to create your DVD. You have full control of how the finished product appears. Caters for menus, background music, background images, etc. and etc. and gives you the option of actually trying out what you create direct from your PC before writing it to disc. On my system VP (3.02) won't stop the "Writing to disc" operation and aborting is the only way to stop it. Even though a subsequent message says it was unable to write to the DVD it does in fact complete a workable disc. However for me the big drawback is the lack of menus. DVDStyler is the complete package and works well. If you are not sure how things might come out, use a RW disc first. http://www.dvdstyler.org/fr/ Nat

Hi What version of VP are you using? Nat

Hi Borate is correct when he says to save your completed work as a .vpj file......i.e. Save it as a project file. When you continue to work on it, this file reconstructs your project from the original film clips***. Reconstructing it from any saved MPEGs or avis you have made may not be the same. I have already noted that saved mpg4 files are considerably smaller than the original camera mpeg4 files which may have some effect if they are used again. (But only guessing) The point I am making is that the ORIGINAL MP4 H246 test clip I made of traffic downloaded from the camera plays perfectly OK and smoothly on both the WMP and the VCL player whereas once loaded to VP it plays with a regular jerky motion most evident when the image pans or the objects move across the frame from one side to the other. More annoyingly, irrespective of the output file type, this jerkyness remains visible in any saved files created by VP. (Even DVDs.) When playing the original clip it's interesting to note the movement of the progress pointer with these players. With VLC (which plays smoothly) it moves in regular spurts which makes me think it is perhaps buffering the video stream as it plays it in some way, hence the smooth output. With WMP the movement is less jerky but the video is still quite smooth. This jerkyness created by VP is an annoying effect particularly as it remains in the finished video. Furthermore, is it something that can be addressed by NCH? Nat *** Or does it? The .vpj file certainly uses the cache file created by VP and the cache does seem to contain copies of the video clips used. Perhaps these are are already jerky having been created by VP. Its difficult to say with certainty as the only clips that definitely play without jerks are those downloaded from the camera.

Hi This jerkyness may be a problem of the mpeg4 format and how VP deals with it. In the videos output by VP, objects moving across the frame (like traffic) seem to move in short spurts 2-3 times per second but here's what I found.... I usually shoot MPEG4 1280 x 720 H246 format and I so shot some traffic moving at right angles to the camera as a test with these settings. The resulting video clip played OK with WMP, and VLC. The traffic moved from left to right quite smoothly with no jerks. I then opened VP and loaded the clip to the sequence line and previewed it. The traffic now jerked across the frame, both in the sequence preview, the clip preview and the main preview. So the first question is why? What is VP doing to the MPEG4 to cause this? I then saved the clip as another MPEG4 (Native) with VP and then viewed the copy with WMP and VLC the traffic jerked across the frame just like it did in VP in both of these players. Why should a straight copy behave like this? I noticed it had been compressed. 19.6 megs down to 8.6 megs Choosing H246 made no difference even with the quality slider set reasonanbly high (at 1.0 it was useless!) Any comments regarding how to keep the original raw video quality and Is 3.02 different to 2.41 in this respect? Nat

Hi Bit more info here from an earlier post..... http://nch.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/19535-zoom-effect-not-working-in-version-220/ Nat

HI Dougie You can store the virtualdub filters .vdf files in their own folder within the NCH folder. (Anywhere actually) As they are additional filters they won't appear under the "Effects" tab as such but at the same time you only need to load them once when you want to use them. Starting from scratch.... Go to the virtual dub filter page and download a filter you require. Save it to your prepared folder. Put your clip on the sequence line and activate it. Left click the "Effects" button (Film frame with yellow star) This opens the video effects window. To the right of the top "Auto levels" box click the little down arrow.At the bottom of the list that appears is "Load/Unload Virtual dub plugins" Select this option. This opens the active Virtual dub filter list (which may be empty if you have never loaded any) Click "Load",; navigate to your prepared filter folder and load the .vdf filter you want.. It will now appear in the window (or be added to list.) When you now want to load that filter in the future, Activate the clip then click the "Effects" button and then the down arrow (as outlined above) At the bottom of the list will now appear any filters you have added. Just select it...... Until you remove them from the list (or change their location) they are always available. Nat

Hi OK. The photo now shows a clip on the sequence line with an audio track below. It seems to show an .flv file. I think this might be a codec problem. If you only have the flv4 codec it may not play the video and only have sound. Try converting the file to a different container (.avi, MPEG2) and see if anything changes. Nat

Hi I am pretty certain you can only output one project at a time so you will have to render each one. If you want several separate films, then probably the best way to proceed is to make one big project from your clips and save the .vpj file (the project file) Now cut the sequence line at the end of the first "film" and delete the rest. Save the film as an .avi Reload the .vpj file and trim the sequence again to leave the second film. Save as an .avi Reload the .vpj file..........etc. & etc.. This will give you your 3 (or more) separate films. You could also render the whole sequence at once and then and use something like Virtual dub to split it up. VP won't let you save more than one project to DVD so use a third party creator such as DVDStyler which will provide proper interactive menus for your films.(It's free) Don't know whether VP will upload to UTube. (or whether this choice actually works in the free version) ..In the past I have uploaded directly using UT Nat

Hi If you can separate the two channels outside of VP and save the missing one as an audio file then you can certainly import this. There are multiple audio tracks available in VP. Nat

Hi Try converting it to an MPEG2 with "Any Video converter" It might cure it. http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/whatnew.php Nat

Hi From the image you have supplied you DO have a preview .....but only of the clip........ You have loaded your clip correctly to the media list where it is showing a thumbnail image. (I can't comment on the contents of the thumbnail as only you know what it is meant to represent.) You have also clicked this and it is shown as activated (blue). At this point a preview appears (correctly) in the left hand clip preview pane. This what your photo shows. If you click the triangular "Play" button your selected clip will preview in the left hand pane. However, your sequence line is empty! You must have something there to preview. So until you place your clip on the sequence line, the right hand sequence preview pane will remain empty. Hope this helps Nat

Hi Version 3.02 has numerous transitions. Before you can access these however you must have something on the sequence line. (Image or clip). So, click "Add File" and select an image or video clip from your PC to add to the media list. Drag it from there and drop it onto the sequence line (or right click it and "Place on sequence") Now the transitions should be active. Either from the button on the toolbar or by clicking the blue square with lines across it at the right hand end of the clip in question. Select the transition you want and enter the duration required. Once OKed wait for the yellow load bar to complete along the top of the clip. Nat

Hi Later.... As the disc I used was an RW disc it wasn't thrown away. VP had put up the message that it had failed to create the DVD and crashed when the "Writing to the disc" process was stopped (after 30 mins), Consequentaly I was under the impression that nothing had, in fact been recorded. However, the test video HAD ACTUALLY BEEN REGISTERD as I found out later when I explored the files on the disc. Moreover, the video itself played fully with no problems. So is there a bug here?....Why had VP failed to stop the "Writing to disc" step once the data had been burned? And why did it put up the "Failed to make a DVD" message before crashing due to an abnormal exception when the "Abort" button was clicked. Nat

Hi Borate Your method is simpler and just as effective.:-) I just hadn't noticed that "Opacity" was available for the main sequence clip as in 3.02 when trying it out I'd only used the "Fade" transition. With the multiple video tracks now available, using an overlapping black frame with the opacity setting just seemed intuative, particularly after the discussions regarding the faulty crossfade. Just goes to show there is often another way around a problem! In this particular case though, using the black frame on the second track does allow the user to extend the black duration without having to use up the main clip by fading earlier. At the same time, having tried your suggestion out with a longer main track clip, it's more difficult to accurately get the first keyframe positioned as the scale on the blue line is so compressed. By adding a black frame of say 10 seconds duration, (easily set up under options), the time scale along the opacity line box for this is much easier to read and you can start the fade out (or fade in of the black frame as it really is) with more precision. Nat

Hi If you want a perfect fade out to black (using VP3.02) then remove any fade-out effects from your final clip that you may have already tried.. Add your black frame to the overlay track (video track 2). Adjust it to a suitable length. Now drag it along so that it extends beyond the end of your last clip on video track 1 but overlaps it by 3-4 seconds. If you want a longer fadeout overlap it more. Click the yellow star on the black frame. In the video effects window which appears, drag the Opacity slider to the left (0% opacity) The blue line on the right will drop to the bottom of its' box. At this point the whole of the black frame will be transparent. Now click the blue line exactly at the start point. This will fix the line at 0% and leave a red marker. (You are setting a keyframe) Click the blue line once again a little distance along to the right and drag the line up to the top of the box so producing 100% opacity after say, 3 seconds. (judge by the time scale along the top.) You can drag the attachment point left or right for adjustment. (If when you've played the sequence you don't get it just right first time you can easily re-adjust it) When you release the cursor you will be left with a green marker (keyframe 2) The opacity of your black frame will change from 0% (transparent) to 100% opacity between keyframe 1 and keyframe 2) When you play the end of your sequence now you will see a fade out to black. If your last clip fades and disappears suddenly before the fade out is complete either increase the overlap or shorten the diagonal in the opacity effects line. Hope this helps Nat