Nationalsolo

Hi I have suggested a workaround for this problem in my post above but I think you may have to wait until the next release comes out. NCH are pretty good at ironing out bugs that turn up so it wull most probably be rectified then. Nat.

Hi The green screen effect is good but will render everything in the clip image transparent only if the shade chosen is an exact match. Other shades in the clip will remain visible. You can colour pick the shade needed with the pipette cursor. When the Green Screen effects pane is selected left click the required shade in the clip preview image. The threshold and fading controls will allow some variation to the effect. However, and depending on the image the following is probably easier. The part of the image required to remain visible can be obtained with the Polygon Mask and the Transparency effect. For the polygon mask, click the FX box on the clip and then the second button along at the top of the effects pane. This has a small green cross and a black dot. (Add effect mask). Initially the mask is a red dotted rectangle. You can now grab the dotted line at any point (including the original corners) and deform the mask by dragging the point chosen to another position. You can do this at multiple points to create any chosen shape. If you undock the preview window the enlarged image will make this procedure easier to see. Once you have outlined the area required you can feather the edge if needed The next step is to render the clip transparent. But first you need to set the control "Mask inside". Ticking this makes the area inside the mask the focus and the masked area would become transparent. Unticking it makes the area outside the mask masked area the focus and this would subsequently become transparent. In your case as you would have masked out your lady on the mat so untick the box. Now add your Transparency effect (Tick the green cross and select Transparency). and set the value to 0.00. (0% Opacity = 100% transparent) Your lady on the mat will now be the only part of the clip visible. Obviously both effects can be controlled with keyframes if animation is needed. Also the clip should be placed on an overlay track. The above is a rough example. The cartoon image on Track 2. The polygon mask is on the left drawn on the cartoon, box unticked and with 100% Transparency the background now transparent is against a black blank frame on track 1 but you can use any image/clip you wish for the background. (Note: No green screen required) I am using VP v 5.20. Hope this helps Nat

Hi NCH has a library of images or clipart that can be added to a vdeo. Click the "Clip" tab on the top toolbar, and select "Add images from the NCH Clipart Library" Using these "callouts" , you can annotate your video with arrows, speech bubbles, icons etc. You can also add your own avatar to the file created when you download any of the NCH ones. You may need to convert your own to a png file with a transparent background. Nat

Hi What version VP are you using. You should be able to export at any of the frame rates shown in the list... and although 16 is not shown actually in the list it can be enterered under the Custom setting.... However any of the frame rates selected from the drop down list (or entered as a custom setting) in the export options is the one implemented...........e.g. 24 fps.....Selected and shown in the Frame Rate box below...... The example .mov above exported to the PC OK at the selected 24 fps.... If you are not already using it try the latest version of VP. http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html?ref=nls191WA Nat

Hi Certainly version 3.89 is quite an old version and there were some problems I think with the text formatting using foreign fonts. I have however just looked at Hebrew texts and fonts and it does seem that a probable bug is placing full stops at the right hand end of the text line as the parser possibly considers Hebrew as a left to right read text. Even if you Copy/Paste a line of Hebrew text from Google Translate where the full stop is correctly placed at the left end of the line, VP copies the text correctly put places the full stop at the right hand end. e.g. Google... Full stop correctly at the left (end) of the line. Here is the same text cut and pasted into the VP editor.... The full stop has been moved to the right hand end (In this case the Start of the text. What about editing the line of text then in order to correct this?............Testing with the VP editor it seems that you cannot manually set the editing cursor to a position before the left hand character of the text line in order to manually add a full stop there (or for that matter any character!) This is an fault apparently confined to the type of font being employed..Hebrew/Cyrillic/Arabic/Urdu. (Although VP would need to be tested for that statement to be correct. I just noticed it not working for Hebrew) Later Edit: The other right to left scripts mentioned also behave in the same way. Another anomaly noticed was that Right arrow move cursor left and vice versa (instead of the other way round) I think this is a bug (Version 5.20 and earlier versions) Using western/ European text and characters, whether typed in directly or copied /pasted from a translator, the editor in VP will allow the cursor to move to a position before the first character of the line and permit editing. Perhaps NCH could take a look at this? Nat

Hi If Express burn is not to your liking then give DVD Styler a try. You can download it here https://www.dvdstyler.org/en/ This is a free Open source DVD authoring program that gives you full control over the result (Menus/images for menus/chapters etc. The result seem OK. Another program I have used is the Windows DVD Creator program that came with WMM This is a bit simpler but OK. Another program that you could try is Sothink Movie DVD maker..... http://download.cnet.com/s/sothink-movie-dvd-maker/ Ditto...Ashampoo Free burning studio suite....... https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin/7110/burning-software/burning-studio-free These are all worth a try. Nat

HI To change the font, colour and size of the text (or part of the text) you need to highlight it first. Once you have done this, (swipe it with the left mouse button pressed) the changes that you make will be implemented. The text clip will go on the overlay track by default but you can move it if you want. To fade in the text against a clip on the main track you click the f on the text clip and enter a value for the fade-in in seconds. You can also use the TRANSPARENCY effect to obtain a fade-in and a fade-out. Nat

Hi Clive OOPS! You are right! I replied to the wrong post! Sorry! Please ignore as it won't make complete sense.........Now where was the right one.........? Nat

Hi I don't think you are doing anything particularly wrong. Unfortunately VP wont expand multiple tracks much. The best you can do is to click the + at the left end of the track where this is present when it will change to a - and the track will enlarge. (Audio Track 1 and Video track 1 are full height by default) You can further increase the height slightly by grabbing the five dots between the Video and Audio tracks and dragging them up. You can do the same with the dots under the preview window. If you particularly want to use just the audio tracks then you can click the - icon for the Video tracksto reduce the heights and continue to pull the audio up. You can probably work with about 5 tracks then but the video thumbnails are then miniscule as will be the preview window which might need to be undocked. You will need to play around with the controls a bit to get the best effect. If you want to match peaks you can of course zoom it to the audio. Nat

Hi It's difficult without seeing an example e.g. A screenshot of the timeline with the gap showing in relation to the other tracks, to give advice. Is there for example a lower track with a clip on that prevents the gap closing? . Have you tried just adding a clip to an empty timeline, creating a gap and then tried closing this? i.e. doing a simple test. It's a rather old version of VP. that you look to be using though. Things have moved on a lot since that version came out. You might be better off with the latest version 5.20. Give it a try...... Keep your current version setup files (the vppsetup.exe file) and download the latest from the list of NCH products here... http://www.nchsoftware.com/download/index.html Nat

Hi Yes........Cambria Math font does give a very large line gap when Enter is pressed as the letters have a large actual surrounding. The font was designed to accommodate tall and complex mathematical equations and formulae that extend above and below a normal line of text. If you check out the font characters you will see that alphabetical numeriques appear in the centre of the blocks but other glyphs like brackets etc. extend to both top or bottom of the blocks. Might be better to stick to another font that looks similar like Cambria itself or Times New Roman (which Cambria Math was designed to replace) Both these give a normal line space. TNR might need a slightly smaller size setting. Nat

Hi When you enter your text Just press the Enter key to start a new line. The spacing should be the normal spacing for the font size selected. Did you press Enter twice?? This is the sequence preview of a blue blank clip with two lines of right justified Copperplate Gothic Light in yellow with a font size of 20 separated by a single press of the Enter key Line spacing is normal..... The text entry screen for this looked like this...... Line spacing for this font size seems normal. How did you set yours up? Nat

Hi .......then you can displace the audio or the video independantly or right click on and delete either. Nat

Hi Sam Even simpler! I didn't think of using Narration for producing a separate sound file. (What else?) In fact I never tried it that way when I was making some videos of live Violin + MIDI Piano as I didn't think that the mike input would work at the same time as the earphone output on my PC.(I needed to hear the MIDI while I played without it re-recording) ...Just tried both jack plugs together and it does! Great..Thanks for the info! Nat

Hi Exports are time consuming and a lot depends on the basic computer speed but you can speed up the process to some extent in the export settings windows by trying a different quality setting or changing the format or the fps value. Example: For a basic 1 minute mpeg 4 video exported to the PC (Old Vista model) as a 1920 x 1080 H264 60fps video.. With the quality setting to 51 (low quality... Export time was 9 minutes (Quality not worth watching) With quality setting at 25 (about middle)....Export time was 16 minutes (Quality OK) (Default value is 18) With quality setting at 10 (High quality)......Export time was 35 minutes (Good output image) Changing the fps to 30 export times were shortened by about 1/3 Exporting as an MPEG4 (Native) .avi at 30fps further reduced the export times by about 1/2 using the low quality setting (i.e. The 1 minute video exported in 4 minutes instead of 9 minutes. However in practice you would use a higher quality setting so export times would be longer. Nevertheless it should give you some idea of the time exporting takes. I think it is fairly linear. Nat

Hi This ought to be a new thread but as mentioned above All versions of VP are multi track. For your project the most intuative way is as follows but other ways are also possible... Film yourself singing and playing the melody notes Put this on Video track 1 Now film yourself playing the chords but listening through earphones to your first recording on VP to keep in time. (You could make an mp3 using NCH recordpad or similar) It doesn't matter what the film is like as you will only need to use the audio. Place the new video on the overlay track.(Video Track 2) Audio track 2 will be your chord recording. Click the "eye" icon at the left end of Video Track 2 to prevent the track outputting. Line up the sound with Audio Track1 by sliding Audio Track 2 so the peaks match with the melody. This might mean cutting the Video track 2 clip to get the required movement. (But see below) You should now have a film of you singing and playing the melody with the chords and you can add other soundtracks in a similar way. An alternative (possibly a bit easier) is to film the chords playing with the camera whilst listening to the timelime on VP via earphones to keep it at the correct speed. Load the clip you get to VP and then unlink the audio. Now save the audio as a separate file. With your main film on the sequence line this audio file can then be loaded like any other clip and dropped direct to Audio track 2 beneath Audio track 1. This way you will not be distracted by a second Video track. Nat

Hi Whiterose (and NCH) There IS a bug with this effect: If you place two censor blocks on a clip both moving differently (say first one moving to the right and the second one moving to the left using keyframes for their start and end positions) and then play the clip, the second block will not move . It will remain at its last keyframe position. i.e. If, for the second censor rectangle you set the first keyframe at the start of the clip with the block on the right and the second keyframe at the end of the clip with the block on the left, when you play the sequence the first block moves OK but the second block stays on the left, meaning its first keyframe position was not recorded. This is a bug. To get around this you will have to remove (un-highlight) the effect lines of the first block from the keyframe pane before dealing with the second censor block keyframes. If you want to use a second censor rectange you must first click the each of the highlighted tabs with the graph icon on it for the first censor block. Now you can use the keyframes to set the movement of the second effect. You shouldn't have to do this. PS. The blur difficulty arose as I mistakenly thought this was was an all or nothing effect (either on or off like OVAL) but then I noticed it also had its own keyframe line. Doh! Nat

Hi It might be my PC but I couldn't get your zipped file to fully download...It kept stopping at 19.20. However I have added two censor effects to a clip with no problems. Set each one as a black resized rectangle, one moving right to left and the other left/up/down/right. Both behaved as expected when viewed in clip preview and Sequence preview. Exported as 720 .avi the clip played OK in WMP. This was with version 5.2. However I did then try to change the rectangles to blurred rectangles which didn't seem to work. Nat

Hi Sam No problem. Thanks for replying. Nat

Hi NCH The light green load bar showing the clips loading to the timeline now seems so narrow that it is almost invisible. Is there any way that it can it be made wider or more contrasty? Currently it shares its width with the blue area that darkens when the clip is selected.Both then appear very narrow My suggestion is that it could be positioned along the bottom edge of the timeline thumbnails where it would be thicker. The top of the thumbnail line would then be a wider blue bar that darkens to indicate selected clips. I would also suggest that a more contrasting colour be used ...say GREEN instead of the current LIME shade. Currently it looks like this...Even with the timeline made wider it is not easy to see.....and the "selected"clip (swans) blue line is also narrow. My suggestion would look more like this.... Nat

Hi Try Borate's suggestion and see if ALL the files (plus a .vpj file) will save to a designated folder. Your problem seems to be the inability to save a .vpj file. Without this you can't recreate your project as it contains the instructions. The fact you have a project "live" in VP doesn't alter the fact that you can open the cache and physically delete ALL the cache files as those in use won't delete. If you can successfully save a .vpj file you can try a complete reinstall. Out of interest how large is and how many files are in the cache? Do they all belong to your current project and what is the capacity set for the cache under Tools/Options/Disk? Nat

Hi The latest version of VP (5.20) is no different in this respect to previous versions in that it will handle multiple video and audio tracks. Placing clips on the extra tracks is now however a little different. In version 5.20, on adding a new clip to the bin you will be presented with a choice of positions for clip placement. If this is ignored the clip will simply remain in the bin as before. As before any clip can be selected in the bin and added to any part of the timeline by drag and drop just as before. However, in this version of VP if the opening placement choices on adding a clip to the bin are not made then clips can be added later as before using the Place button. NOTE however that the Place button (next to the dustbin icon) now looks like two - - signs ; one black and one green. (And..Yes they are a bit small) You will notice top right of the screen that 5.20 is a Beta version and presumably there may be some alteration with this.) If you select the clip in the bin and then click the left hand minus the clip is added to the end of the timeline on Video Track 1. if you select a clip in the bin and then click the right hand minus you will open up a choice of positions for the clip placement and you can then move the cursor down and select one. As before the subsequent tracks , Video Track2 Video Track 3 etc....(the overlay tracks) are not visible or labelled until a clip has been placed into the area above the main timeline track labelled "Drag and drop your video, text and image clips here to overlay" Nat

Hi You seem as though you are monitoring the cache file anyway but it wouldn't do any harm to use Tools/Options/Disk to check its location (usually something like... C:\Users\(name)\AppData\Local\Temp\VideoPadCache) and place a shortcut to it on the desktop. It's a bit easier to monitor the contents from there without needing to navigate to it each time. You can, if you wish physically delete the files from from the shortcut access. (If VP is running at the time with a project in place Those files currently in use will be left behind if you delete all the contents in this way). Nat

Hi In the latest version of VP (5.20). five files are added to the cache every time a clip is loaded to the clip bin. These remain in the cache folder after VP is shut down and even if the project is finished and a new project is started. Even if you delete clips from the bin, the cache does not change. Every file added to the new project will add another 5 new clips to the cache. If you have finished numerous projects without once emptying the cache the folder can be huge. It will not automatically empty itself until it reaches the capacity set in the Options page mentioned below. If you are not going to edit a project any further then save it off (as a .vpj file) and then clear unused cache files using the prompt in Tools/Options/Disk. This should ensure that the cache doesn't become cluttered with unused files which could slow the program. I have never seen the "almost full" message but it suggests it may appear when the cache size nears the limit set on the above options page. Check the value you have..(Mine is set to 3000 MB.) If you are still using a version that was running OK and you have not uninstalled etc then it should still work now. With all the problems you seem to be experiencing you might first try uninstalling the software. Deleting any remaining references to NCH videopad (even the registry entries if you feel competant in doing so) and then doing a clean reinstall from your original vppsetup.exe file. You could also try the latest version... http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html?ref=nls191WA Nat

Hi Obviously if you overlay a picture/clip on Track 2, it will only cover all the underlying frame if it has the same aspect ratio AND/OR it has been enlarged (using SCALE) to do just that. (Usually 16:9) If the aspect ratio is 16:9 it will cover the underlying Video Track 1 clip as it will automatically fill the VP frame. If it has a different aspect ratio, e.g. 4:3 you will need to CROP or ZOOM the overlay, restraining the AR to 16:9. This, with the obvious drawback of losing some of the frame will cover the main track clip. A lot depends of the clips. Instead of trying to cover the clip on Video Track 1 you could for example reduce the overlay clip to play in one corner or the right or left hand half of the screen using SCALE and POSITION. If cropping or scaling the overlay is not possible then the excess visible border of Video Track 1(which might only be bars at either side) could be covered with a colour..e.g. Black. To do this simply add a blank black image to Video Track 2 and drag it out to completely cover the duration of the clip on VideoTrack 1. The clip on Video Track 1 will now appear black as it is covered by the blank frame. (In the latest version of VP -5.20 use the "Add Objects" tab to do this. Now add your overlay clip/image to Video Track 3. This will be centred over the black image frame which will only be seen as a black border (or bars depending on the AR of the clip/image). Obviously you main track clip will play beneath this with its sound but will not be seen. Nat