Nationalsolo

Hi Borate Well, the first clip loaded to the bin might not be the first clip the user wants on the timeline. I still saw problems with an MP4 clip going blank/Black/Transparent??? and weird on the timeline ..... This is a normal clip that behaves correctly in earlier VP versions. In VP version 7.12 Beta. Cleared cach then clip loaded. First: Clip Preview.. There is a mixture of image and chequerboard.... Here is the same clip in . Sequence Preview. Note Aspect Ratio is 16:9 (Like the clip).. Now....Selecting Aspect Ratio Match Content the Sequence display goes black (even though timeline cursor is on an image.... From this position NONE of the Aspect Ratio options now gets the image back in Sequence Preview.even 16:9. They all show a black frame.. Going into Clip Preview shows a chequered frame...... ...and moving the cursor line turns this black...... VP is apparently "seeing" this clip as transparent This is all a bit odd....... Nat

Hi When you say "picture" do you mean image or video clip? In either case what is the AR (or resolution) of the image/clip? Are the black borders.... On every side? Just at the top and bottom? To each side? Nat

Hi There is not a lot you can do if the vhs copy has bad tracking, the frame judders or there are wavy playback effects rippling up the screen. You can remove the scanning defect often seen at the bottom of the frame or wavy edges to the frame by cropping these defects out. A shaky film may show some improvement if it is stabilized but you can only do this once. If you want to repeat this process you will need to export the project and then reload the export and run the stabilization a second time. However you may not see a great improvement. Nat

Hi "...Usually that's represented by a green line above most of the timeline. ..." Note that images without any effects added remain without a green bar. I also noted some bugs (apparently) in VP 7.12. e.g. Opened VP and cleared the cache Added an image to the bin......IT APPEARED ON THE TIMELINE WITHOUT BEING ADDED. It should have stayed in the bin. e.g. Opened VP and cleared the cache. Added a 16:9 MP4 clip to the bin. THIS ALSO AUTO LOADED TO THE TIMELINE. Selected Match content for preview.....PREVIEW WENT BLACK..NONE OF THE SEQUENCE PREVIEW OPTIONS SHOWED THE CLIP THAT WAS VISIBLE ON THE TIMELINE. following on..... Deleted the clip from the timeline and then re-selected it from the bin. CLIP PREVIEW SHOWED CHEQUERBOARD. Dragged and dropped clip to timeline. SEQUENCE PREVIEW REMAINED BLACK. (??Transparent clip??) Nat

Hi Cropping to 4:3 in effect, trims your image down. by cutting off the sides. This leaves those particular clips with blank areas to either side that will appear as black bars in a 16:9 preview screen. You can change the preview screen to 4:3 when they will not appear, however, 16:9 clips will be made to fit and will then show bars at the top and bottom If you export at a 16:9 AR, a 4:3 clip will naturally not fill the frame hence the black bars to each side. Mixing AR in a project will produce bars somewhere...so it's best to keep them all the same. If you crop all the clips to 4:3 or zoom 16:9 clips to 4:3 or set all the clips to show 4:3 areas (if you want 4:3) then you should have no bars in the preview if you set THAT to 4:3. If you export to a 4:3 output then you won't have black bars....but most viewers are 16:9 AR therefore you will have apparent black areas to either side of your project. It's a bit like projecting a 2 x 2 slide on a rectangular screen. The latest VP version (7.11) has an export option which will letterbox or crop and zoom the project if there are mixed AR. The latest Beta version(7.12) still being tested, allows you to set the AR of the preview to different options but it still requires some work. Nat

Hi With version 7.11 fading in the Video track by clicking the f and setting a duration time does not affect the audio track. During such a fade-in the audio will play normally. Setting a fade-in of the Audio track by right clicking it and selecting Fade-in from the menu options will offer number of choices. Whichever one is selected the Audio track will now show a blue line that reflects the audio changes. Export (here) of this effect is normal NOTE: If you click the FX button on the Audio Track you can manually set the fade/volume profile by dragging the blue line up or down at different points.......rather similar to creating keyframes for Video effects.. e.g. Nat

Hi ByronM Well, it did export OK here eventually with V 7.12. Check your title screen though as it didn't present correctly........ (ignore the lower script.....It's from VLC.) There are a few new controls in V 7.12 like the preview display settings etc.that will need a bit of checking out, and WILL cause confusion, but if all your images are correctly cropped to 16:9 then titles and text should come out exactly as seen in the preview. e.g...... HERE i HAVE ZOOMED AT 16:9 SO THE IMAGE PANS TO THE RIGHT AND THEN CHANGED THE TEXT COLOUR AND OUTLINE TO MAKE IT MORE VISIBLE (My choice) AND THEN USED POSITION TO BRING IT DOWN AND TO THE RIGHT A LITTLE so it appears on the image. EXPORT WAS SET TO USE Crop and Zoom (Letterbox is crap in this case as it produces your result with the text misplaced off the image. THIS IS GOING TO CAUSE SOME CONFUSION WITH USERS IMHO. Anyway try it out like this. Nat

Hi ByronM Loaded your project into VP 7.12 Beta. AS noted previously (above) it was pretty well useless as far as previewing. The images all loaded OK from the cache (as I had opened the .vpj file before) but I noticed something at the end of the loading process which I have never noticed in the past and that was the indication that VP was LoadingTrack Clips. Never seen this..Is it something specific to 7.12 ? Is it related to the cache having been previously filled?? Once all was loaded it was evident that the green bar was mostly absent even after a long delay and it didn't fill (actually never fills) in a logical way. Clips are green barred all over the place seemingly at random, probably due to the way the work is threaded. I would have thought they would complete from start to finish but this jumpy progress has always been the case and makes it difficult to see if the loading has stuck particularly where there are lots of clips. On playing, the preview was broken repeatedly and jerky as noted in my other post making watching it a painful experience and moving the red cursor line to check areas of the timeline was so slow and delayed as to be unusable. Whereas some of this may have been due to my old, slow Vista machine chugging along at 100% usage, I am not so sure. Nevertheless I decided to export your project as mp4 H264 1920 x 1080 (despite the actual state of play in VP.) Quite a delay between clicking Export video and the appearance of the Export screen but it eventually arrived The exported mp4 was fine and played in VLC with no problems at all. At this point going back and reviewing your project in the un-closed VP GUI , All the clips now had green bars and it played from the preview screen OK . However I noted that here (at least) moving the red cursor line manually to a different point in the timeline did not change the preview image to reflect the new cursor position and clicking the screen played the project from the previous stopping point whilst the cursor line carried on from the new position! (i.e. the project played from a point not related to the cursor line. Ah well! Nat

Hi byronM Just loaded VP 6.10 and tried to open your downloaded project which you say was created with version 6.10 The .vpj file would not open and VP displayied the following message .......... Are you sure it was 6.1 that you were using? I then loaded VP 7.12 Beta The project loaded. (possibly) although there was no green bar to be seen for at least 20 minutes and it then arrived in dribs and drabs on different clips in no apparent order. (Is there any order in this at all?..Sequentially would seem logical but this never seems to happen.) I am not sure how the new feature "Aspect Ratio" is meant to work but some settings gave a blank preview screen.. (e.g. 16:9) no matter where the cursor line was set on the timeline. I noticed that there were 79 image files in the bin but 49 of these were not green ticked..(i.e. Not actually used??) In this Beta VP version the stops/starts during preview were worse than ever (perhaps it was my old slow pc) and "building preview" appeared regularly in preview screen. IMHO This couldn't be previewed on my PC. But at least VP didn't crash...(It tried when I went on to export this project but the export screen did come up)...Opening and previewing THIS project was not particularly good. I have run an export mp4 so I'll see how this comes out. So far V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W Nat

Hi Loaded the project and found quite a few clips were not used although in the bin. Here, in 7.11 with the preview set at the lowest resolution playback was very choppy and jerky with several drop outs(blank /black) sections of short duration. Despite leaving the project to load for a considerable time I couldn't see the usual green bar over the thumbnails in video Track 1, (only here and there) suggesting it wasn't actually rendered correctly. (In later version of VP this green loading bar has been very intermittent, often not showing up or stopping after a short time. Sometimes moving the cursor line to a "blank" section got it going again. Preview here stopped playing the visuals after a short time, but sound continued. This was followed by a crash. I sent a crash report to NCH. I think I might reload VP 6.1 and see what the difference is. (I think Borate has already done this but it might be interesting as an exercise.) Certainly this is unplayable in VP 7.11. Nat

Hi Looked fine here also. (S'cuse the pun) Didn't notice any bleeding in the text and scroll was smooth. The only thing of note was possibly the lack of resolution in the image of the Disc cover which was only 220 x 220. That needs to be much larger so it's clearer. Nat

Hi Some things to try...Assuming you are reloading your project from the .vpj file which may be corrupt....... Have you tried playing the audio files directly from their PC folder with a separate player? (i.e.Nothing produced by VP) This checks that they actually play OK and are not faulty. Open VP and load one of these original audio files from its folder. Does it play correctly? (i.e. Nothing involving a .vpj file) If it doesn't play you can assume VP is corrupt. Open VP and load a completely different audio file that ho connection to your project. Does it play? If it does then save it as a VP project (.vpj file) and then reload it to a freshly opened VP. If this plays ok then one can assume that your actual project .vpj file is corrupt in some way. If VP cannot open a bog standard audio file that has no connection to your project as above or a video file with attached audio, one can assume the program has got corrupted in some way. The answer would then be to completely uninstall it and reload from your vpsetup.exe file. If you do find that the test vpj file of an audio clip won't play then the bets are on that your actual project vpj file is corrupt along with VP and you may then have to start over again after re-installing VP. It's always a good idea to " Save Project As.." regularly using an incremental name. Nat

Hi Not a dumb question. (Might be a dumb answer though.!) OK I assume you are creating all these images to use in a Stop/Motion scenario and you want them to be played back at 15fps. The first thing to do then is to set your still image duration to 15 fps or 1/15 seconds = 0.066 seconds This is done in Options/Media/Default still image duration Load all your images to the image bin and use use Ctrl A to to place them onto the timeline. For a start you may not see Images on the timeline, only a series of very close vertical line but by zooming in they will become visible. It may take a little while to cache/render all the thumbnails. It depends on how many images you have and their resolution. Assuming they have been added in order the time line will play back at 15 fps. At export set the fps as Custom 15fps and tick Constant frame rate. This should give you something near to what I think you want. Nat

Hi Rob Repeated your test here with VP 7.11 ... I used a jpg 2560 x 1920 pixels. In all export windows the Letterbox option is set and dotted. My findings are as expected in each of your setups. Values exactly as you state. 1) No Crop Scale or Zoom Correct. Export has black bars to each side as expected. 2) Scale preset to 4:3 to 16:9 Correct. There are NO black bars in either preview and VP shows a full centred 16:9 image with top/bottom cropped . HOWEVER..Here,. The Export seen in VLC is 16:9 and has NO black bars. ...Something wrong here It looks for some reason that something in Export is incorrect. My settings are as follows.. Preset: 270p mp4........H264 Default Quality......Lossless ..Auto detect Resolution .....1280 x 720 -720p Letterbox active and dotted Frame Rate 29.97 3) Zoom to 16:9 restraints. Correct: Here there are.NO black bars in either preview screens and VP shows a full 16:9 image with top/bottom cropped. HOWEVER. Here The Export seen in VLC is 16:9 with NO black bars. This seems to be the same problem as you are getting with Scale to 16:9 4) Crop to 16:9 restraints Correct: Preview shows a black surround as expected. This is a 16:9 crop within a 16:9 frame, Export showed exactly the same..a Centred 16:9 image with a black surround in the 16:9 screen. This is correct. The conclusion seems to be that for your Zoom and Scale the 16:9 restraint has a problem (although both are working OK here with version 7.11) Either that or you have a spurious setting in the export screen somewhere (see my settings) , or your player is seeing something different to VLC in your export. Can't think of anything else. BTW. My machine is rather slow and old.. specs are... Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E4500@ 2.2GHz, 2.0 GB RAM NVIDEA GeForce GT 730. But it works OK Nat

Hi B "... A bit more testing revealed that a clip placed on the sequence after being stabilized displays the "stabilized" label on its sequence clip." That would be logical as THAT is the clip being added. It's just an oversight I think that if one does it in the reverse order the name is not updated with the timeline .The clip info from the hover must come from from a different source. But at least we know now.  Nat

Hi Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E4500@ 2.2GHz, 2.0 GB RAM NVIDEA GeForce GT 730. Yup.....Only 2 Gb of RAM but it still runs VP...albeit from the back of the pack...but it gets there...eventually! The top of the Utility Proc box is bady bruised due to the number of times it gets hit by 100%! Image stabilization is time consuming. The app has to do two passes of the video, the first to calculate and store the amount of displacement required and its direction to match each frame in the clip and the second pass to actually make the matches and then to calculate the degree of zoom and crop required to remove the borders created where frames have been displaced. VP has bypassed the user having to enter values in the settings screens for each pass by including High/Medium/Low etc. quality boxes. But by clicking the Advanced button you can also set your own values.This can be a bit mind boggling. Logically the initial pass of the clip takes the longest time as the displacement of blocks of pixels and their direction of displacement is calculated and the values stored. The user can set how big those blocks can be and set how far a displacement can be before the app registers it. If these values are carefully set it may reduce the time the passes take. The more blocks the more data. The lower the resolution of each frame the less data. Bigger pixel blocks less data etc. The displacements can vary between different blocks. Normal zooms/Pans etc. can fool the App as it may see the image movement as a shake displacement and try to correct it but if it continues in the same direction for long enough it can be set to be ignored etc. This is why you may see black borders when these normal filming devices are employed even when the second pass is set to remove these. All these calculations take time. It was interesting that in the original VirtualDub program on the VD site...(sorry VirtualDub site) ,) the first pass allowed you to see in real time the corrections to the pixel blocks and the direction of movement of the blocks between frames in the form of small arrows. However, the settings are not that easy to understand.. Here is a link to the info page... http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm In short its going to take time Nat

Hi Being a really steady clip that I originally tried out () , I have done a check on the files that come back to the timeline after stabilization of a really shaky clip.(I had to get my wife to do one ) Although the name does not have "stabilized" added to them if hovered over, like the clip bin files, they are in fact, stabilized. Nat

Hi Russ "... Okay I pretty much understand what you guys are saying now. I get all the video clips the way I want and then as a separate procedure I can right-click and stabilized all of them at one time ...." Stabilize all the clips in the bin first. Then put them on the timeline to edit. Remember you can only stabilize the clips in the bin. You can't stabilize the clips on the timeline. It might seem that you can do this in the order you mention .... editing first and then stabilizing the clips in the bin..... since the bin clips are renamed with "Stabilized" added to their name and the timeline is cleared. However when the timeline clips return it appears that they retain their original name...so I am not sure if, in fact they are actually updated.. I shall have to test this with a shaky clip. Stabilizing the clips in the bin first and then building the timeline ensures that the correct clips are used. Nat

Hi Provided the audio remains linked to the video it will stay in synchronization after a transition whether or not you choose to overlap the clips or use freeze frames. Using the overlapping feature the sound track is also overlapped between the clips and overall it will become shorter with the transition causing "losing out" of the sound (and video), nevertheless synchronization before and after the transition will remain correct. If the two clips to be transitioned are parts of the same clip..i.e. a clip has been split and a section removed and the two remaining parts are brought together for transitioning, VP will always use a freeze frame transition. AFAIK in this case you will not get the choice. Synchrinization before and after the transition will remain correct. If you have unlinked the audio (or the video) then a transition using overlapping will be out of synchronization after the transition. On the other hand a freeze frame transition will remain synchronized as in effect no overlapping is performed. Clips that that have been synchronized to a separate soundtrack will obviously get out of sync if they are subsequently split and an overlapping transition is inserted. If this is the case then use a freeze frame transition. I suggest that you check what sort of transition you have used. If it's overlapping then replace it with a freeze frame transition and see if that restores order. Nat

Hi Switch into Storyboard mode. You will see the blank situated at 8,782. Right click and close the gap. Back in timeline mode zoom right in to 8.782 and remove the short clip 0f 0.001at this point and then close the gap. It should now switch from root to winch OK. I am assuming the unwanted bit is the CU of the winch before the stump. If so set cursor to 1.295 and split the track. right click the segment to the left of this split and delete it. This will remove the section between 1.129 and 1.295 (if that was the unwanted bit..close up of winch just before root coming out shot. Close the gap. Nat

Hi Point (1) You can stabilize all the videos in the clip bin in one go if required. This is an action separate to adding effects to the clips which can only be done on clips placed on the timeline. Place cursor over the bin and press Ctrl +A. This selects all the clips in the bin Right click one of the selected clips in the bin and select Stabilize Videos from the menu. The clips will be stabilized one at a time and the bin clips will be replaced by a Stabilized version of the same file type. Copies will also be saved to the designated folder set up under Options/Disk. The original unstabilized clips will not be affected. Point (2) You can create a Template of multiple effects that can be used on timeline clips or a group of selected timeline clips. Use one of the clips or a dummy clip to set up your template Place the clip on the timeline and add all the effects you require. Once you are satisfied with the result of these multiple effects on this single clip,..... Click the blue Cassette icon tab (4th one along above the effect parameter window) Save as Effect Chain template Give your template a same and save it. Remove the dummy clip from the timeline and add all the stabilized clips for your project from the clip bin Edit as required then select all the clips by placing the mouse on the video track and using Ctrl + A Click the Video Effects tab on the top toolbar (not an FX on the video track) Scroll the effects pane down to Templates. Select your created template. The effects you setup should then be applied to all the selected clips. You may also be prompted for this. Point (3) Delaying the video is more difficult...(and I am still thing of a way this can be done. Difficult as grouped clips cant be unlinked from their audio as far I know....) I'll have to think about that. You may have to export all the edited work and then re-import it in order to unlink the sound track and make the required displacement. Nat

Hi Check that your clips have been fully indexed and cached etc. as evidenced by the green bar progressing along the top of the timeline thumbnails. Sometimes this stops or appears in a different order to that expected. Trying to edit before this fully completes can cause irritating delays or a jerky preview. The speed of this procedure can depend on the PC quite a bit. If you keep getting "Building Preview" warnings when the timeline plays you may be using multiple tracks or many effects or transitions. It could also it be due to the preview window being set too large and the processing speed of the PC a bit slow so reduce the values of the preview display (keeping the same AR) in the Options/Display parameters to something smaller and see if this makes any difference. Exporting is always drawn out especially for large HD projects, big files and slower PCs. Provided it's not a HUGE project upload it as Borate suggests (Save project As) and someone will no doubt take a look. Nat

Hi The stabilization of a clip is done from the Clip bin with essentially a plug-in third party app from Virtual Dub. It can't be linked to the VP normal effects. The latter can be linked as Borate describes to form a template which can then be saved and applied to multiple clips as though it were a single effect. One possible scenario would be to apply all your effects (e.g. the template) to the desired clips and then create a sequence. After this stabilize the whole sequence. It's not a good workaround however and would take for ever. (Stabilizing can be time consuming.) Nat

Hi Downloaded your short project of one clip.Loaded it from the vpj file. This showed the timeline with two segments (clips) from the downloaded main clip. These make a very short sequence. The playback passes smoothly from one clip to the next. Frame by frame exam shows no extra frames at the join and switching to Storyboard mode shows no extra frames/clips. The timing on the sequence is as follows..... 000. The timeline starts with shot of the winch At .100 this changes to a shot of the tree stump. These shots comprise the first clip and are speed up to 333%.There is no join between the two shots. At exactly .700 is the joint between the clips. At this point the image changes from the tree stump to the winch. Image remains of the winch up to the end of the clip at .983 Is this what you expect? The last clip is not an image as the image bin is empty. There does not seem to be fault in this project when viewed here. (VP 7.11) Changed the clip back to 100% speed and saw no problems. My findings replicate those of Borate. Nat

Hi Rob If things don't come out as Borate and myself are suggesting it's a bit odd. "... What I end up with LOOKS like a 4:3 picture with black bars on each side, however, the exported file properties indicate 16:9 resolution (either 720p or 1080p) ." What you see in the export must reflect what you have on the timeline. From this description and assuming your project is presumably as a whole AR 16:9, it looks like that you have a clip or image on the timeline that is AR 4:3 or something different (either raw or a cropped/zoomed/scaled original) and are exporting everything at 16:9. In this scenario any 4:3 or other AR clip (cropped/original or zoomed with no restraint , will show bars to each side, but the exported project will still be 16:9. Whether you export it as an mpg or an avi should make no difference. If you can upload your project to dropbox etc. (use Save Portable Project as..) This ensures all the files as well as a .vpj file is posted. Make it public and someone will take a look and advise. In the meanwhile.. What Clip/Sequence preview AR have you set? What is the AR of the clips/images used in the project i.e. 16:9 4:3 etc If they don't conform what are the resolutions? Are you cropping/Zooming/Scaling any of these and what settings are you then using? What export settings are you using? Nat