kmharlan

Link to review.. http://video-editing-software.no1reviews.com/nch-video-pad.html but in summary it says that the free version is good enough. and not worth paying for the Pro version. If you want more than the free version can provide, then look elsewhere. If i had seen this review, i would have done as they suggested.

I would like to revise and edit my remarks. Tried a different wmv file. this one was smaller. Only about 30 minutes long and 327 MB. It loaded very quickly. I would say about as quickly as an avi file. It would seek and set start and end points very quickly as well. However, still had to play around with the settings to get the picture quality of the editted clip to come out the same as the original. Since i was only fooling around to test a different clip i never get to a complete match on quality. but i was starting to have to save the bit rate at a very high level. this of course will make the size of the clip very large relative to the original. Fortunately, i do not have to deal with wmv files very often.

Well, when all was said and done... It took somewhere between 12 and 20 hours to load the file. 1:22 length of file of 720 Mb. It was still balky when it came to setting start and end points. The final clip was not of the same quality as the original. Scaled to the same visible size the clip was more pixilated than the original. The settings for the clip were the same or better than the original. Odd size 424 x 240. 29 fps. Original data rate about 500 kbps, clip set at 1024 kbps. Granted, the original was not that great to begin with. I was kinda hoping for more from this product. Conclusion: Don't bother to try to edit wmv files.

I have a free converter called Super from eRightSoft. Have run into a couple of problems with converting to avi or mpeg. Mainly that the picture quality goes down. I may give the one you suggest a try. Started converting about 5 hours ago. and it is still cranking away. I am not sure how far along it is. But there are only five images just below that Selected Clip Preview screen. At this rate it won't be done for another 6 plus hours. and i am not sure what i will have even then when its done. I don't know why it should take this long. I am not going to bother contacting NCH. I found another free clipper which worked pretty well with the wmv file. Chick Video Cutter 2.0. Two problems with that though. You have to know the times you want to start and stop. and the quality of the cut clip is not the same as the original even though it is going from wmv to wmv. There are numerous settings that can/have to be played around with.

Haven't tried it yet. but forgot to add that it's a new PC with an Intel Core i3 chip 3.06 Ghz and 4Gb Ram. so it will probably be much slower than your performance. I guess in retrospect i should have gotten a more powerful chip. but this is certainly faster than what i had before. It may also be the RAM. Ken

Thanks for the reply. the clip i am trying to load is also about 720Mb. The run time is 1h 23m, altough that shouldn't matter. I'll start to load it and go away for a while to see what happens. Ken

When i try to load a Windows Media clip, wmv extension, Video Pad seems to take a long time to load the file. the bar at the bottom right keeps progressing. but it seems to take forever to load a file. This does not happen with avi and mpg files. Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it just me? New PC with Windows7 and a ton of RAM.