Nationalsolo

Hi Borate You can see in my screenshot that the second (and IMO unwanted) "Split" button (just to the right of the top of the scrubber bar) is half over the "Play" button. That I find annoying as it remains in place when you move to play the sequence and it's quite easy to split instead of play. My argument is that we don't need it as there is a fixed button under the preview screen. This phantom button is always just to the right of the red line handle. I use the cursor line as a marker. If you grab the top of the line it appears. Release the line and it stays there until you move the line to different position when it disappears and re-appears when the handle is released. OK, it may not always be over the play button but it's still annoying. :-) Nat

Hi Just found something similar but not connected with export.... The short sound clip highlighted (56 seconds) has a 1 second fade-in and a 1second fade-out. It has not been speed changed..(There is a known bug regarding sound fades on clips where the speed has been altered...but this may be connected to that.) When the timeline is played from before this clip (e.g. the displayed cursor line position) it starts and fades-in OK but then fades out after 16 seconds! If played from a point WITHIN the fade -in, the clip fadeout starts at the same place. One the clip has faded-out stopping starting from the same place restores the sound and then it plays OK to the end. This actual clip is a section of a longer track that has been split in several places to produce several shorter clips which also have fade-ins and fades-outs. As outlined in a later post inadvertent splits were made to both tracks due to the second split button covering the Play button. So its a bit of a mess at the moment. Still, this shouldn't happen. If I just have Fade-in it plays OK If I just have a Fade-out it plays OK If there is Fade-in AND a Fade-out it fails to play to the end. So it seems to be connected with the Fade effect. Nat

Hi NCH There is an annoying feature when one tries to adjust a clip (in this case a small sound clip) to a particular place so that it registers correctly with a second sound clip. I usually use the Red cursor line to pinpoint the spot on the track using the peaks in the audio track, and then adjust the clip. In some instances the "Split" tab that appears when the red cursor line is adjusted comes up over the "Next Frame" box or, more annoyingly, the PLAY button, and on several occasions, whilst concentrating on getting line position exactly where it is wanted, and playing over the section it is all too easy to click the "Split" tab. Its only later when the timeline is checked for synchronisation that one finds a split across it with some wanted bits left behind that were never conciously split. Does this "Split" tab HAVE to appear as it is already present under the preview screen? Nat

Hi Borate Ooops! No . It's me! and you are right. The way I described deleting clips above is what I have got used to doing. Out of habit I usually keep the SHIFT key pressed even when I right click to get the delete menu option up and, of course it's not necessary to do that. Trying your method of using Del didn't work at my end simply because I DID keep the SHIFT key down (out of habit) and in VP Del becomes inoperable if SHIFT is pressed at the same time...(With text it works OK though.) Nat

Hi Left click the the first picture in the chain to select it Press and hold down the SHIFT key Scroll the timeline to the last picture in the chain and left click that. As Borate says, this will select ALL the clips Now, still keeping the SHIFT key pressed, right click somewhere in the chain of selected pictures. In the menu that comes up select "Delete" Left click this option and all the selected images will be gone leaving a gap in the timeline. Right click the space where the pictures were and select "Close Gap in Track" The timeline will now be complete but without your pictures. If you make a mistake click the "Undo" arrow on the toolbar as many times as required to return to your original timeline. PS Only coming in here as on my keyboard the Del key doesn't action this. :-( Nat

Hi When you add a clip to clip bin and subsequently add it to the timeline, VP has to incorporate the clip plus any associated audio into the cache file ,then generate and save all the thumbnails required that display under the preview screen as well as those that display along the timeline. If the clip has been edited details regarding transitions and effects also have to be generated and the audio has also to be converted to the wave display. All this goes into the cache as well as an autosaved project file. This can take some time to do. During this procedure a green line "Progress" bar gradually moves along the top of the timeline giving you some idea of how this is proceeding. Although you may be able to playback some lengths of the timeline which lie under the green bar whilst it is still processing, VP will usually stop with the message that the preview is being generated or that the audio has not finished converting and there may not be any audio. Depending on the length of your video that procedure can take quite some time. Even after it has finished and ready to go, adding an edit like titles/text/subtitles means that the cache has to be altered to reflect the changes. So it is best to be patient and wait. Use a reduced window of your taskmanager % use processor bar graph as you can then see when activity has finished. Note that once in the cache, subsequent re-loading the saved project is much quicker as the data is already present. Clearing the cache completely means that all the saving etc will have to be redone when the project is reloaded from the .vpj file (which just records the data). Clearing UNUSED files from the cache may speed up the process a little. You may find it better and quicker to work a very long project in sequences. Nat

Hi I downloaded a part of the second avi you posted. (Only a part as it seemed a big file) Yes the sound did not synch correctly. Seeking a point where I could match the visuals to the sound as per my post above; there is a section where a woman appears and starts with the word "MAC" On the the video (or least the part I downloaded) it is at about 0:17:31;127 Her lips are together as she pronounces the "M". Step through a frame at a time to pinpoint the exact position, Note the video position You coud add a bookmark at the cursor if required as this makes a reference line. Zoom into the tracks to about 3/4 of the slider movement and you will see the sound peaks. Play the video through this position and note the peak where you hear "MAC" The start of this peak is about 0:17:37:528 This, (at least in my download makes the sound about about 5-6 seconds LATE not early. This image shows the cursor at the "M" peak Anyway, in order to get the two points to match I unlinked the audio and video and added a blank clip to the start of the video track. In storyboard mode I altered the duration to 5 seconds. (This appeared to about the amount of time the sound was late in my download) This had the effect of pushing the visuals along by 5 seconds. Returning to the timeline mode and the synch position I found the audio and the visuals now matched OK. Check and see if this works for you. Nat

Hi What version of VP are you using? The Tools/Options window should look like this in most of the recent releases... This is the Options Media screen from VP 4.48. There isn't a conversions tab. Nat

Hi "When adding text to a video clip is there a way to lock it to the video so that if the video moves, the text stays with it?" Follow Borate's instructions if you just want to move both together and retain their relative positions. If you want to fix them so further editing doesn't move them, that is they behave like a single clip...... LEFT Click the text track to select it. Hold down the SHIFT key Keep it pressed and LEFTclick the video track. Both clips are now selected and turn blue. Keep the SHIFT key down and now RIGHT click the video track again From the menu that comes up select to GROUP the selected clips. The text will now be fixed to the video. Both will now stay together if one or other is moved or if any clips are added in front of them. Note however, that if you split the grouped clips at a point that passes through both tracks or insert another into them, the grouping will be lost. Nat

Hi c-major is correct.....Using the Horizontal setting the clip rotates around a HORIZONTAL AXIS. The confusing point is that visually the IMAGE, correctly, rotates from top>bottom (or bottom>top) Same thing for the Vertical setting...the image rotates horizontally as the axis of rotation is vertical. Nat

Hi You could try this... You need to move the audio track to the right as you say it is about 5 seconds early. If you have a clear visual clue somewhere in the video and a clear corresponding sound peak in the audio start by unlinking the video and audio as Borate suggests. Now move the cursor to precisley this point using frame by frame movement if necessary and then split just Video TracK 1 at precisely this point (NOT THE AUDIO) Use the down arrow next to the split button to select the track in question. Locate the matching audio peak and split Audio Track 1. The splits should be about 5 seconds apart. Now grab the right hand portion of the audio track and drag it to the right where it will jump and lock at the split you made on Video Track 1. You should now have the tracks in synch from this point on Now grab the left hand portion of the audio track and drag it to right where it should jump to and join up with the remainder of the audio. Play through the join to check it plays OK. Use the Redo button if it's not right and try again. If it's OK "Save Project As" using a new name for the .vpj file so you can come back to it. Click the "Sequence" tab followed by "New" The timeline will clear as the sequence is saved. You can now open the sequence bin and add the work back to the timeline as a complete clip and carry on working. Nat

Hi The actual shade "green screen" uses is important. You have set basically 100% green with 255. (The default.) This means that in your example the only shade that will be removed from the overlay clip is pure GREEN. Any other shade, even slightly different will remain. So if the clip shows a colour change from pure green for any area, this will not be removed. Did you use the colour picker to choose the best shade? With the Green screen window up, move the mouse cursor over to the preview screen (undocked and enlarged if necessary) and you will see it is now a sampling pipette. Click to choose the exact colour you want to remove and check the effect. Try using a little fading and increasing the threshold as well. Nat

Hi You may have some clips/slides locked leaving too small a space???? As you probably already know.. The duration of slides (still images) can be controlled in three ways... 1) Setting the default duration under the Tools/Options/Media window before adding any clips to VP 2) Going into Storyboard mode and changing the duration shown for that slide under the thumbnail 3) Grabbing the leading or trailing edge of the image clip on the timeline and dragging it right or left. - and normally you should have no problem in changing the value to something larger than the current value, so I don't know why it should be fixed at 3.97. If you haven't already, try the last two options and see what happens Nat

Hi I am afraid not. Videopad doesn't have such an effect but you may be able to mock up something. Would you be using cartoons? You would need the individual images that make up the animation, e.g. cartoon buildings in various stages of demolition and then possibly use shake or blurr or fades along with a speed change plus a transparent overlay of dust clouds etc. Can't think of a plug-in but an interesting experiment all the same. Nat

Hi "*Sorry, screenshot seems not to have worked!" OK. To post an image or screenshot to your post..... Copy the screen and save the image as a jpg. Give it a recognisable name and resize it if needs be. Place it in a folder where you can easily find it again. Go to: https://pictr.com/ and upload your image. When upload is complete click on the down arrow for the Viewer links option and then Direct links from the list. Copy the code in the lower box...this is the URL of your image e.g.........https://pictr.com/images/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx etc. Back in the NCH forum and your post, click the green icon ("image") under the yellow Smiley and paste the URL you copied from the Pictr website into the box marked URL. Your image will now appear in your post. Try your screenshot again and we can easily see whether you are in the correct mode or not. Nat

Hi "Thanks, but I meant without deleting anything." Well, you could try this.. With the timeline holding the complete set of clips you want to edit click the "Sequence tab on the top toolbar and then "New Sequence" This clears theTracks and creates a sequence of the timeline (It will now be one whole clip). Go to the "Sequence" bin and click the sequence you just made (Don't put on the timeline Just select it) You will now be in Clip Preview mode so using the IN and OUT markers under the preview screen isolate the section you require and then use the "Place" button to put that section onto the empty timeline. Now EXPORT it. When this has finished click the blue UNDO arrow 2-3 times to return to the original unedited timeline........Nothing deleted and your section is exported. Nat

Hi For start "Save project File" or Save Project File As" That way you can always come back to it. This a question about basic editing it seems.... Simply run the cursor to the start of the section you want to retain and splt the tracks. Run cursor to the end of the segment and split the tracks again. Delete the unwanted sections leaving the bit you want. Close any gaps (like at the start) Now export. 1) 2) 3) Nat

Hi "Is there a trick to downloading an animated .gif?" Not normally. It should download just like any file. Just right click it and select "Save image as" That generally works. However, is it an ANIMATED gif that you have or just the first image? The fact that you say you loaded it into Paint and changed the colour of the hummingbird suggests that you have only a single .gif image. (Paint doesn't deal with multiple images.) Animated .gif s usuually have many images. Loading it into Paint will only load the first frame. So ...Does the .gif you downloaded play...say, directly in your browser or when loaded into VP in its raw state? If it does you have indeed loaded an animated file OK and you can proceed from there. If you are going to change particular colours in this then you must extract all the component images using a gif frame extracting program. (Do a Google search) If you haven't already got it download and use Irfanview http://www.irfanview...wnload_engl.htm and use that. (Free and very effective with a host of other features) With all the images extracted you can deal with each one. Once finished you recreate the animation using something like Microsoft .gif animator. Quite a bit of work as you can see. One thing to note is that using many colours in your animation (or even a single image or video) means that the "Green Screen" effect may not work correctly. Its best to have a single background colour that you can match to (i.e. a green screen - although it doesn't have to be green) and which is not actually in the part of the image you wish to retain. If the identical shade is present then that, too will become transparent along with the background. Did you try the hummingbird in my link? Nat

Hi There should be no problem with that as it's a single image. It just needs to be displayed long enough for the 3d effect to be percieved by the viewers. Perhaps something like 15 - 30 seconds. The trick, of course is the time taken to accomodate the eyes and this can vary from person to person and be from no time at all to "Cant do it" :-) For your hummingbird (although you have got one) try an animatred gif from here... http://images.google...ctHAloQ9QEILDAC Load the Magic Eye image to the timeline and then drag the animation into VP and place it onto the overlay track. Now you need to remove the background colour using the Green Screen effect. Click the FX button at the start of the clip and select Green Screen With this particular animation the hues are generally blue so click the blue slider and move over to the preview. You will now a dropper cursor. Click this on the background colour (which is a single shade) and that colour will disappear from the preview leaving the hummingbird but minus the beak as this is not exactly the shade. So lower the value of the blue slider to 200 and lo and behold...just the hummingbird on your auto stereogram. The values for this particular animation are: Red 211 Green 223 Blue 200 Threshold 9 Fading 0 Based on Auto Presuming you want the overlay to show for a brief second between clips, all you now need to do is to split it into segments of a suitable duration and move each one along the overlay track so it sits over a join. Add Fade in and fade out if required. You need to remember that this is an animation and if you make each one too short there may not be much animation visible. Here is an example of what VP might look like.... The autostereogram in this case is the "Tower of Babel" although this example image shows it somewhat covered up. Hope this helps answer your query though. By pure coincidence I am giving a talk tomorrow night on 3d and anaglyph creation...... Weird or what! Nat

Hi The window is slightly different in Version 4.48...... ......and doesn't show any times at all. However, all files in Windows show the data you require. Right click the file in question and then take the "Properties" option (at the bottom with Vista) 1 is the exact time you started the export. 2 is the exact time that the export was completed. Nat

Hi "1. I would like to have one slide (or sequence) appear in 3D. Is there any way to do this in VP?" Are you refering here to an autosterogram image..(Magic Eye image)? Nat

Hi As telephony says, this screen comes up when the files comprising your project are not in the location they were when the project was created. However, even if you have deleted the files the window should show something and not be just blank. Your reinstallation may have caused a problem. What comes up if you right click the .vpj file and open it with Notepad? As well as data related to the VP version used and formatting info, it should also show details of the files that are (or were) in your project. If the file was just simply corrupted VP would say that this appears to have happened and would ask if you want to continue. Did that happen? Also if the vpj file is seen as corrupted in some way VP would prompt you to load the Autosaved project..but this might not exist on your reinstalled PC. And even if you actually had NOTHING in your saved project, VP would still load it (i.e. an empty VP) Anyway,...If nothing comes up and Notpad also shows blank, then it would seem that this particualar .vpj file is faulty and has no data. (You suggest other project files are OK). Normally, in this situation VP would report an invalid file.....So you may have some data there but not enough to create a list. Unless you made another .vpj file during your editing, i.e. saved your project under another name using "Save Project As" or you created a Backup then you may have little chance of getting it back. :-( Nat

Hi Borate It's the "Welcome" window that comes up when you open VP. You probably have ticked the box at the bottom to prevent it appearing. :-) You can switch it back on in Options/Display Nat

HI When you save your work as a .vpj file then clicking the File tab and selecting "Save Project File" or "Save Project File As" from the list, VideoPad will show the default destination folder at the top of the save window as being the folder where you last loaded a clip from. (Rather logical if they are all to be kept together). But you can use the button at the bottom of the save window to choose a different destination folder. You could for example create a folder on the desktop beforehand called "VP Projects" and always use that. Also when VP loads the opening "Splash" screen shows recent projects no matter where they are and you can choose one from this. If VP is already open, clicking the File tab on the top toolbar will show a "Recent Project" option which will also open a list. Nat

Hi Unfortunately you can't do this when more than one audio track is present. A single track will enlarge vertically if it is expanded and the upper portion of the screen is dragged up using the dots and the video track is also moved up in the same way. If there is more than one audio track present (as in your image) then you can only expand it. Moving the dots up or collapsing the video track in this scenario has no effect on the size of the expanded tracks which remain as shown in your image. You can of course zoom in on the tracks but they will only enlarge sideways. Selecting the audio track in question and then using Clip Preview is about a close as you are going to get Nat