Nationalsolo

Hi Not an expert in the finer points of how MPEG4 is packed or how MPEG2 is packed but it's not the size of the files as such its just that on my PC and particularly with 1920 x 1080 MPEG4 files (full HD)) it seems the amount of processing that it and the graphics card has to do to get this size of image into an editing state in VP and at the same time keep up with the playback of the sound which can be done almost straight away means that the image quickly lags behind the sound and gets progressively more out of step the longer the clip is. By using a smaller format (1280x720) packed as an MPEG2 my PC (it seems) can do the required unpacking and playing without slowing down. The image doesn't seem to suffer in the process. The Any video Converter program is excellent for converting MPEG4 to MPEG2 (+others)and I use it without any problems. So you shouldn't worry about it. Nat

Hi Sounds a very annoying disease you seem to have contracted. But I have never caught it myself. As you already seem to have tried deleting sections but still get this problem, I think it may be best if you start again,from scratch but first save what you have as a VP project. I would also try deleting the annoying sections from storyboard mode to see if that solves it, as the clips appear as single thumbnails-no matter what their length-and you can see better what is happening. Also make sure all the clips/sounds are in the media list in their specified places. I.e you havn't inadvertantly moved or deleted any. If you decide to start over again then my advice (FWIW)is, if you don't want to use the soundtrack recorded with your raw clip/s, then delete it. I find this better than simply muting it as the track is emptied and is not a distraction. If you have a number of clips (you mention 30 or so) this might take a bit of time as you can only do one clip at a time.(Havn't found a way of deleting multiple consecutive sound clips yet without removing the video clips as well) Do it in storyboard mode as its easier. Right click the clip and select to "Unlink sound clip" which will drop to the lower track. Left click this sound bite which will nudge it to the right. Now right click the sound bite and select "Remove selected audio". Do this for all the relevant video clips on the sequence. If you are now going to match your visuals to a music clip, load the clip and drop it on the first soundtrack. Now you can split the clip/s into the sequences you require using (if necessary) the music track as your guide. Move them about by dragging and dropping them in the order you want. You can trim the ends to more precise points by simply dragging them left or right but only if you have cut bits off. (ie in effect you are putting bits back in) Add transitions and effects only when you are happy with the sequence as a whole. Every now and then save your project in case things go wrong. I dont think the number of clips or sequences you have is causing your problem as I am currently working on a film with over 300 clips and 4 sound tracks and so far it seems to go OK. Hope the suggestion helps even though it means going back to square one. Nat

HI Forgot to say, you can also use the zoom effect to get the 16:9 aspect. With reference to the IN/OUT flags-what you see under the preview pane depends on the media list display option that has been set. Thanks to Schultzie in another post earlierwho noticed this effect; if you set the media list with the "Media List Styles" toggle tab (Little folder with arrow above the media list) to show two panes; clips and clips used, the green arrow and the clip displacement option will not always be seen. It depends on which item in which list is activated. You should set the media list to display JUST the media list in one pane. Both buttons should then be available. Nat

Hi "when I download a youtube video to mp4 with "vertical black bars", I can stretch without cutting into the image, simply by adjusting the "aspect ratio" with vlc. VideoPad but when I just want to stretch the image as with vlc, it is not possible.Je not find the command "aspect ratio". there is just the "cropping", which in 16 / 9 horizontally removes a portion of the image." This would seem to be correct. Apparently VP does not have an option to stretch a video that has an incorrect shape format to make it fill the 16:9 aspect ratio. The only way to change the aspect is to use the crop or zoom effect. "Also after the edited video with VideoPad when I read it with vlc, and I want to 16 / 9, it does not matter at all," If VLC will stretch the original video it should logically also stretch the VP output edited video also. Nat

Hi 1) To cut a piece from a scene without using the IN/OUT flags. Play the sequence in the right hand preview window and stop where you want the cut to start. You can step backwards/forwards with the <> buttons which are on either side of the PLAY triangle. You could also drag the cursor to the position or click the light blue bar over the sequence line. When the red line cursor is where you want it, click the Split tab at the left end of the sequence line. The sequence will divie at the cursor position. Now Play (or move) the cursor along to the end of the section to be removed and repeat the procedure. The section you have cut out will now be highlighted in blue. Right click it and select "Remove selected clip" from the menu. 2) Titles are added as an overlay. 3) You have shot a sequence with a different aspect ratio to the normal VP screen. (i.e. portrait) It will normally be fitted to the height of the display (depending on its actual size so at the very least there will be black bars on the left and right. There is not a great deal you can do about this. There is no stretch (deformation) option in VP and the best recourse is to use the crop effect and select 16:9. This will only however cut off the top (or bottom) of the video making it fit the VP screen. You can experiment to see the effect.. Click the clip on the sequence and then the effects tab. Select the crop option. The crop preview pane will show the clip with a red frame superimposed on it. Click on the black star to see a larger screen. Try the various options shown. To fill the screen with the normal aspect ratio 16:9 should be set. Now move the frame up/down until it is the best place. Thats all you can do. Nat

Hi Probably a tall order with 3000 images. However if you have them in the correct order (numbered or alphabetical) and if possible the same folder you can get them to play at 10 images/second. Before loading anything to the Media list. Click the Options tab and set the Clips duration value to 0.1 (Anything shorter than this seems to default to back 0.1) You can also set a default cross fade transition as 0.1 in the options as this might make the "movie" smoother. Click OK. Now add your images to the Media list. You can grab the whole lot if you like. Just left click the top item and then Shift left click the bottom item. All the highlighted images will add to your media list in order. Do the same from the media list and drop them all on the sequence line. They should all appear in order with a time interval of 0.1 As I mentioned, even if you select 0.04 (25/sec) under options they will still display as 0.1 Depending of the nature of your timelapse images the result may be acceptable. If you feel its too slow, there is a piece of freeware called JPGVideo. http://www.ndrw.co.uk This will produce an avi from a set of jpeg images, provided you have them in some sort of chronological order. You can set the number of images per second and the sort order. There are other programs out there that do a similar job. Just search "jpg to avi freeware" Hope you find this helpful Nat

Hi Thanks Schultzie. You live and learn! I had never noticed that before. Nat

Hi I can't see why you don't have the buttons as my version is also VP 4.21 (Unlicenced free version) with reduced output facility. It might be a good idea to try the download again, or delete the program and rerun the setup file. Pretty certain that it's not a limitation. However, using the normal split function is generally good enough for most things, and mimics what we used to do with film in the bad old days. (Perhaps the good old days? ) The main difference being you only had one bit of film and couldn't add the same bit further on unlike with video, and splicing it meant losing a couple of frames each time....No! they were the bad old days! ) Nat

Hi Getting to know how some of the image editing programs work can be difficult but they are not strictly necessary if you are thinking of creating simple movies. IMO the first thing to master is taking your video shots from your camera; loading them into your PC and then into VP followed by adding them to the sequence line. Then to learn how to rearrange them, split them and add transitions between them. Soundtrack editing also needs to be mastered but with a SIMPLE basic movie the original clip tracks could be left as-is although with VP it is quite a simple task to add a complete background music track. Finally how to add overlay titles at the start and finish and then how to save them, either to DVD, to your computer or upload them to the web. This, in a nutshell is basic movie creation and VP is a very good tool to accomplish this. None of the things that I have mentioned here is difficult and, indeed can pretty well be mastered in a few hours. (or less!) In fact you can create a simple slide show in just a few moments without the need for any other program. Once you can do these things then you can move onto more complex things like adding and blending multiple sound tracks, doing narration and adding overlay features; using still images with movement etc. Other skills such as filming techniques; how to pace a movie, creating time transitions within a sequence, telling a story; types of shot to use; cutting to music, writing a script, making documenaries, or filming drama etc. all require some practice. As an example of a short film using these techniques.. Mimicking what you see on Utube etc. may seem a good way to start off but you will have to master the basics first. Nat

Hi "Is that have something to do with the overlay picture size in pixel? Or not. I mean that I have to calculate 1/3 or 1/4 of the screen, in order to fit? " I wouldn't have thought that would need to be done as you have to pull them out anyway to put them at the size you want against the sequence image.(Using the corner control) However it might make things easier if the aspect ratio is correct for the place you are going to put it. Otherwise they would distort if pulled out vertically. In the test I did, I used 4 videos as the overlays which had obviously the same shape as the blank frame used as the background. Hence they fitted into each corner. The output saved in the original size (1280 x 720) seemed to work OK. I didn't try anything else as it was simply in response to a query. You could always try resizing or cropping the images in an external editor before placing them on the overlay track and then see what happens. Nat

Hi Tim Thanks for the fuller info. I can see where you are coming from. OK.... Scenario 1 is just as I use it for my videos. The resulting DVD is the full width image with no loss. And although my old TV is not wide screen, I can switch the TV screen display to 16:9 format and the image is full width.The top and bottom of the screen, of course are black as the two shapes are different, but the image on my DVDs is NOT cropped. This is not so with TV transmissions on this 4:3 TV. With TV films the height is fitted to my TV screen and there is subsequent loss of the image to each side even if I change the screen aspect to 16:9.....the image is simply the same but squashed; each side is still missing. But tht's TV for you. "Scenario 2: However, when I take exactly the same input footage as before but save it using 'Computer / Data' saving feature instead, first of all it's missing the 'Video Aspect Ratio' dialogue, so I cannot clearly define 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio based on my TV standard (PAL or NTSC)." OK...If you save to Compter/Data and then click the downbutton at the end of the Resoltion box, the bottom prompt will allow you to set custom sizes. That's the first thing... However, It appears from what you are saying, that you are setting the custom resolution to 720 x 576 ..... fine, but this IS 4:3 or 1.3333 aspect (actually it's 1.25) but it will still save as a normal TV shape with borders top and bottom to make it up to the VP widescreen. However, If you save the output to Computer data and you want it to play like your DVD from scenario1, you should choose the "Preset" as Widescreen TV in which case the resolution will default to 1024 x 576. Now, this is aspect 1.77 or 16:9. The resulting PC video (avi) will be full frame with no borders at all just like the DVD. I think this is what you are after. Nat

Hi Yes, I can see what you mean. I have a feeling from some previous tests that there might be some problem linked to the rendering of the video track and the overlay track as separate tracks (might totally wrong though) as I have found something similar happenning with overlay text not being exactly where it was originally placed. This seems dependant on the chosen output. With your "split screen" (which works actually rather well) I think you have to make certain that the overlays are in the correct order top to bottom and they are scaled exactly to the display video. This is especially phaffy as their size does jump in quite large increments if you are not careful. I also think its a good idea to do a very short test sequence using the expected settings just be certain it's going to work. Nat

Hi Tim " Amorphous 16:9 PAL video support on 'Computer / Data' export: When using the default DVD PAL resolution of 720x576 pixels on 16:9 video footage, the exported result is always letterboxed, means cropped into a 4:3 video frame. This unfortunately ends up in losing precious pixels at your final DVD footage." . The normal HD clips of 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 are 16:9 format and this is the default VP screen aspect ratio. In VP all clips that are of the ratio (16:9 or 1 to 1.77 ht/wdth) will fit the screen without borders on the right and left. All other formats will be narrower. Note that 720 x 576 has an aspect ratio of 1.25 and not 4:3 (Which is a ratio of 1.33) Nevertheless these are still narrower than the actual VP screen ratio. As VP scales the height to fit the 16:9 screen (or whichever value gets there first as the image is scaled) there will be necessarily black borders right and left. In fact there will be slightly less black border visible with 1.33 than 1.25. There is no cropping of the image however. It is all displayed. What VP won't do is to stretch the video in width to compensate which I think, is what you mean by amorphous 16:9 This would mean distorting the image. If I save a 16:9 clip as a 720 x 576 output clip. It is the width that is fitted (As the aspect is wider than the output aspect) and in consequence there are borders top and bottom. This is the letterbox effect. There has been no cropping. VP won't stretch it vertically. Nat

Hi It's not too clear what you are actually doing from your post. Sorry. If the whole screen has gone grey then obviously something is wrong What you should be doing is ..Open VP and then click the "Add Media" tab at the top left. Now navigate to your downloaded movie. This should be in a format that VP can use. Click the video and then the "Open" button. This will place the movie (the video clip) into the Media list. From here you can drag it to the sequence line for editing.(Or click it and select the Add option) If you do this it will be placed on the sequence line and appear in both preview windows. You normally preview your project on the righthand pane and preview the individual clips in the lefthand pane. Your editing is mostly done on the sequence line. Again I am not sure why you are printing the screen. If you could outline what you have done step by step (or trying to do) it might be more helpful. Nat

Hi There is no printable manual as such but if you navigate to your Videopad Folder...(HDD/Program Files/NCH Software/Videopad/Help).......or similar Double click the "Help" folder and then scroll down to "Index" Double click "Index" to open the HTML file in IE. Now you can go through the help pages using the "Next" link at the bottom of each page, printing as you go. If you don't want to print it then you can simply open it by pressing F1 during your editing session. This will open the Contents page with all the subjects listed as links. When you have read what you want, simply minimise the page to take you back to VP. The page you were on will then be easily re-obtained by clicking the tab on the open programs bar at the bottom of the screen. Hope this is helpful Nat

Hi Peterm Check the version you are using (bottom left of display). In VP 4.21 you can put a clip onto the sequence line and then left click it to preview it in the left hand pane. As I mentioned earlier - Below the preview is a green bar and below this is a row of thumbnails depicting the clip. Below these is a space containing the play and <> buttons, the In/Out positions,the In/Out flags, the "Save as New Clip" button and the Green down arrow. The latter is to add the selected portion of the clip to the sequence. Note that this will NOT normally be active until you slice the clip or set the IN/OUT points, but it MAY be active if the In/Out flags have previously been set. Set the IN flag by right clicking the clip in the preview (or playing it to the point you want) and then pressing the red flag. Repeat for the OUT clip. The flags will set at the cursor position. The section selected will show a shorter green bar above it whilst the unselected lengths will be dark (but visible.) Click the green arrow to add the selected section of clip to the sequence. If you want another and different selection from the same clip, readjust the IN/OUT points in the left hand preview pane and use the Green arrow button again. You can do this any number of times. Note however that the data appended to the clip in the Media lsit window will reflect the latest IN/OUT points and (see below)** if you re-add the clip from there, then it's length will be the shown trimmed length and portion. However you can still pull the ends out to adjust the playing duration of this once it is on the sequence. If you find you still can't do this then as described above, then simply cut the clip on the sequence line using the Split feature.You can do this multiple times to separate out the bits you want and then you can remove the unwanted bits after. If you find you need another clip that incorporates a bit you have removed as well as a bit of what you keep, there is nothing to prevent you adding the full clip again ** and making another selection. Nat

Hi I am pretty certain you can't do this in VP. I think the nearest you could get would be to copy a frame from your Video as an image and then add the effect you require to this image in an external editor Then put the frame (image)back into the sequence with a duration of 2-3 seconds. Your video would then pause for this amount of time at that particular frame when you played it. Obviously you could do this for many frames but you would have to experiment to see if the final effect is what you want which would be a lot of work for something which might not be too effective Have a look at the filters for virtual dub, you may find something there. Nat

Hi First of all I have no idea why you have that happening. However it might be useful if you could say what format of clip you are using and it's size in pixels. Also, when you say "replaying" do you mean previewing the clip in the right hand screen? Is there anything odd with your sequence if you switch into storyboard mode. Assuming you have inserted two clips, you should just have two thumbnails of your clips with a square between them with 0.0 in it and each clip should have its duration shown in a box beneath each thumbnail. Do you still get the effect if...(This time in timeline mode...) You drag clip 1 to the sequence and then drag clip 2 to the sequence so it follows clip 1. Now move the red cursor line to the middle of clip 1 and split the clip. Now drag clip 2 back to the split (You will see a pink arrow appear to let you know where to release it) Drop it in between the two halves of clip 1. Now, when you play it in preview, do you still get the stutter as the new joint is played over? Nat

No problem. Glad it helped. Nat

Hi (V 2.41) First open VP and add some media (preferably a video clip) to the media list using the "Add Media" button on the toolbar. Until this is done both preview windows will remain blank. Now right click the name of the item added on the list. This will select it and a copy will immediately display in the left hand preview pane with a row of thumbnails below it. Below these thumbnails will appear a panel containing a "Play" button; two boxes with "In Point" and "Out Point" position; Red and Blue In and Out point buttons; "Save as New Clip" button and the "GREEN DOWN ARROW" which will add the clip shown to the sequence line. Depending on your screen display you may need to scroll the preview pane to the right to reveal the + and - zoom buttons. This might also be the reason you cannot see the green arrow. You can, of course directly add your clips by simply dragging them from the media list to the sequence line. Nat

Hi The first thing to note is that if your image or video does not have the aspect ration of 16:9 then it will have borders. Under normal circumstances HD video (1920 x 1080 pixels or 1280 x 720 pixels) has a ratio of 1.77 (16:9) and in VP willnot show black borders on the left or right of the image. However,in the right hand preview window there will will be a grey bar at the top and bottom of the image. These however are NOT part of the image and will have no effect on the output. In fact with images or video of this aspect ratio (16:9) the frame is filled. If your film or image is a different aspect say 4:3 (800x600 pixels or 320x240 pixels or multiple of) is has a ratio of 1.33 ( or 4:3...there are other ratios also in use.) If this is the case then your image or film will be displayed correctly in the full VP preview frame of ratio 1.77. In fact, the height of your 4:3 clip or image is automatically adjusted to fill the frame vertically but as the aspect is reduced it is not as wide as "normal" video and there will be black borders on the right and left. Note that VP will not EXPAND your clip to remove these borders as that would deform your image. Using the crop function you can alter the aspect ratio of your image or clip. Cropping however inevitably means losing some of your image. If you want to fill the VP preview screen you must therefore crop your clip to an aspect ratio of 16:9. Do not use the "none" option or "original" option. Click the 16:9 radio button when you do your crop effect. As mentioned, this inevitably means losing the top and bottom (or top OR bottom)of your image or clip. (You can move the red frame up or down with some small degree of selection.) Now with a ratio of 16:9 your image height will be expanded to fit the preview screen and the width will reach from side to side. There will be no black borders. Further still, your image will display the full width uncropped. It is up to you what proportion of the sky or foreground you wish to lose. However, if you output this 16:9 film as 320 x 240 (1.33)format then the result is a 16:9 movie with borders top and bottom. (The overall frame having the 1.33 aspect.) The rule therefore would be: input 16:9 output 16:9 No borders-full frame. input 4:3 output 4:3. No borders input 16:9 output 4:3 Borders top and bottom input 4:3 output 16:9 Borders right and left If you have to mix formats then you must decide which takes preference in the output. Hope this helps Nat

Hi Presumably you are going through the "Save Movie" option and entering the required values. Following this there is a "Converting Video" window. At this point little appears to be happening particularly if your video is a long one. It may take minutes (sometimes many minutes) before the blue task progress line starts to arrive or the video position starts to register. If this is the case then you may well think your PC has frozen. If the program has crashed then you might try reloading it again from scratch. You could also check the video creation process with a test video of a very short clip, say of just a few seconds length. Nat

Hi Patty Are you adding the still shots as part of the movie or simply to overlay them over a video clip? If your stills are meant to be viewed IN the movie (as in a slideshow) then you should add them to the sequence line and not the overlay track. Don't know what your thin blue line is, except that on occasions if you move a sound bite about it sometimes leaves a line behind but it's only an artifact that disappears as the play bar moves over it or if you drag a sound clip over it. With regards starting over..did you start again from scratch or reload the project? If it was a complete restart (i.e. you cleared the cache and started a new project by adding new media from your PC to an empty media list) then any text previously overlaid will not appear. However,if you are adding a previously saved clip that already has a ghost text then that is another matter and unless you can find the original or do some cutting to that clip (you could use the zoom effect or crop effect to remove the text if possible) you will be stuck with it. If you have reloaded your project you may still be loading the fault. If your thin line is on the overlay track and you think this might be the source of your ghost text then you may have inadvertantly dragged one end of an overlay so reducing its length to virtually nothing. You can see if anything is there if you switch to timeline mode, right click the overlay track and then zoom in to maximum using the mouse scroll wheel, or you want, use the zoom slider. Move the sequence line scroll bar to the left or right and check if there is an tiny overlay present. If there is, it will now be visible you can easily delete it. Even when reduced to its smallest length,an overlay text can be made visible this way. Nat

Hi I have put my pennyworth in regarding something similar. Don't know the answer actually but my blurb may be of assistance. See "Problem with movie" Hope you get it sorted before your deadline. Nat

Hi...(Long ramble now... ) I have no idea what might be causing this effect as I can't get it to happen. (Sorry! ) However, when you say that you recorded the video and later added the sound, what exactly do you mean by "recorded the video" as normally you would simply save the project and then resume work on it later....Is this what you mean? I can outline what I do when I use images and video together with separate sound files as this may be of some help to you. I use jpeg images either from my video camera or a separate still camera. These have a different aspect ratio to video, so if I am mixing the images with film I generally crop them to the same aspect ratio as the video (1:1.77) so as to avoid borders when they play. (Note that you can do this to the images once added to the sequence line by using the zoom function as you can set 4:3 or 16:9 . You simply set 16:9 but no zoom- i.e. start and end frames set to the same size.) However a lot depends on the image content as to whether cropping is possible. In some cases I use VP generated stills directly from the sequence clips in which case the ratio is the same as the video which is H .264 1280 x 720 AVC HD format , normally converted from MPEG4 to MPEG2. I usually create .wav sound files in a separate program for commentary etc. and use MP3 files for sound effects. For a project similar to what you are describing,I would proceed as follows: Open VP and "Add Media" to the media list. These will be my images; sound files and video clips. In order to see what images etc. I am adding to the sequence line I switch into storyboard mode. The contents take up less horizontal room on the screen as they appear as thumbnails and relevant info like clip/image duration is shown. Check the "Options" tab however to verify that the default duration values etc. are near to what you want. In my case it is set to 6 seconds. Following your scheme and assuming I have created a static welcome jpg image, I would click on its file name on the media list and add it to the sequence.(I usually drag it and drop it where I want it to go). This image will (or should) appear with a duration value of 6 seconds displayed in the box beneath the thumbnail. I then repeat the procedure with the remaining clips/images building up the sequence across the screen and adding any transitions etc.. For each video clip there is usually an accompanying soundtrack but these are shown the same length as the parent clip as they are, of course, linked. At this point I might play the sequence in the right hand preview pane to check all seems well and the images etc. are playing for the durations indicated.If it seems OK I save a copy of the project and do this at regular intervals. Now, again, following your scheme for the separate sound clip. I would drag the sound file (your audio welcome) down to the first soundtrack and drop it under the image thumbnail against which I want it to play. Note that In storyboard mode the sound clips are visually compressed or expanded depending on their length as the sequence scale is linear and not time scaled,so this sound clip will not necessarily be on the same longitudinal scale as the video linked soundtrack. So now switch back to timeline mode and adjust the length of the static welcome image in the left hand preview pane at the bottom until it matches your audio track. If there is any extraneous noise in the audio, I would either drag the ends of the clip in or out to eliminate it or possibly click the clip and then use the volume controls in the left hand preview to null the start and fade in to the actual voice. (You click the yellow audio level line and then drag it up or down to change the level at a particular point. As you can create numerous points it's easy to mute sections of the audio clip or create fades in/out etc.. If I am satisfied with the final sequence I usually save it to a DVD-RW disc to check how its works. Click "save Movie"......Disc....Make DVD Movie... Make my other selections-(PAL-16:9 )...OK....Continue without chapters etc. I then simply replay the DVD to check it is as I expect. The drawback with this is that for a long movie the rendering can take hours and it would need to be repeated on a standard DVD once I was happy with the test. For me this procedure works OK. The images play for their correct length with the commentary exactly where I put it. Nothing is missed or truncated and the images dissolve properly between clips/images.If you follow this as a test and your jpegs still don't play although the preview in VP is OK then....don't know BTW. You could create your static text welcome screen using a blank frame and a text overlay. Nat