Dougie

Also, if you go over to You tube you'll find a bunch of Videopad tutorials.

My computer, while certainly not the newest monster, fits the requirements above nicely. I noticed that when I first installed 3.12, it rendered pretty quickly (as I mentioned in a previous post). but has gotten slower and slower with renders, even though I have changed nothing in my setups or added anything new software wise, and I keep it defragged and cleaned daily. Just don't get it!

While trying to explain a crossfade to another member here (that nationalsolo took care of nicely), I put two clips on the timeline (in this case on the same track, although that doesn't seem to matter) and waited for the clips and effect to render (the green and orange lines). The result worked fine, but,it took forever for these short clips and effect renders to complete!! Indeed it was quite a few minutes for them to even start and the green render line would often stop for a while.

This is in version 3.12 which I thought had fixed this. I guess not, This is the very reason I'm still using trials. I can't afford to buy an editor that acts this way. Any hope for future help with this?

Sure, use the cross dissolve effect. Make sure that you have chosen in and out points for your clips that leave enough footage at the tail of the first clip and head of the next to do the transition.

As well as freezing during an export, as borate and I have experienced, which happens in both 3.11 and 3.12!

So, either it doesn't render the last file in a sequence-OR-it doesn't complete a full render (as both borate and I experienced). Either way, it needs some work. Did anyone experience (as I did) that it does seem to render the timeline thumbs faster?

Good. Hope you can fix it. While testing (as i said above) the timeline render definitely was faster! Try to keep that in! Should make for a nice version.

I've tried every version since 2.41 on my computer, the last working one being 3.10 which worked okay.

Today I decided to try the new 3.11, and also the new beta 3.12. Big mistake. When exporting small projects of various different sizes, both 3.11 and 3.12 FROZE at 99% complete with 8 seconds left. Full lockup-had to restart the computer to continue. This happened exactly the same at every attempt in both programs. No, I did not have both versions on the machine at one time, but tried each separately after removing the cache and other related files from the previous version.

Eventually, I got frustrated and deleted them, reinstalling 3.10 again, which of course, worked perfectly. Hated to experience this as the promise of faster renders in 3.11 seemed true!

Anybody know what gives?

I see that there is a Beta version available of Videopad 3.12 on the Beta page. Does this include the changes available on 3.11?

This idea can be added to Nat's idea on how to get sound into the computer. Look at the sound card connections in your computer. Most of them have both a mic level input and a line level input, while some have a combined mic/line level input (which the software automatically adjusts to). If you make a cable going from the white RCA output on the VCR, to the line level input on your sound card, you can get synced mono sound recorded along with the video you are capturing. If you are good at making cables, you can get stereo sound, if that's what you have to begin with. You can record to any simple audio recorder (I use Audacity) which can run in the background while you capture with your EasyCap.

BUT!!! The biggest problem people have with not getting audio out of EasyCap, is in not setting the several audio settings to use the EasyCap USB audio capture device, instead of the PC's sound card.

See this YouTube for more about this, and pay attention to the sound settings.

Yea, that's what I was thinking. Both the file names and extensions need to be the same. Tried it again and it works pretty well. Actually, I like NCH's own Prism Converter. Seems to do everything he others do.

Well Nat, I tried it just as you mentioned above, but had problems. The camera I am presently using puts out 720p clips as .mov files. I convert them to mpeg files of the same size and bit rate, and they come out as mpeg4 files . When I convert them down to small files (proxy's) they come out as mpeg2 files (which is just the nature of the converter I'm using-probably need a better one). Apparently, on my end anyway, when the project goes to load the BIG files from the (now) SMALL folder, it see's the same names, but says the files are not compatible with the file names in the project (I didn't save the actual error messages). So, apparently it not only looks at the file names, but also the file extensions, see's they are different, and refuses them.

So any suggestions on what extensions to use for both the big and small files? Also, I use Freemake Video Converter. Is Any Video Converter a better one?

Thanks for that Nat. Yea, it's pretty simple. I suppose when you are ready for the BIG files, you could move the SMALL files to an out of the way folder as you mentioned, and then just simply rename the BIG folder as SMALL. Time to try it!

Last night I was at a friends house who uses PowerDirector 11 (Cyberlink?). This has a setting in which when you import your HD files,it will make a low rez copy that you can proxy edit with. I think it calls them shadow or ghost files. So I was wrong; there is an editor that does this...maybe! He told me that as long as he's had it, that feature has never worked. A working version of this in Videopad would be great!

Cnr-NCH wrote: "Do you think it would be useful if VideoPad automatically did this for you? For example when you import a 1080p video into VideoPad it could automatically create an SD version on disk for you, use that while editing so that rendering is quick, and then when you export back to HD it would use the original files again without you needing to do anything?"

Sort of do the whole conversion mess for me? Actually, in these days of HD footage rising above most other formats, I'm rather surprised not to see such an idea in video editors. Seems such a program addition would be fairly easy to write, and the smaller sized files would certainly help Videopad's performance. I'll put it this way; if it was there, I'd certainly use it!

Yea, that's pretty much what I meant. My concern is with maintaining accuracy with cuts, effects, and transitions when I convert back to HD footage. As you alluded to, the idea is to trick the editor into believing it's working with the same footage all along. So I guess paying strict attention to file names and moving around file folders comes into play. When you say; "...in the clip list area of Videopad..." I assume you are referring to the clip bin at the top left...right? So it's a matter of doing all your edits with the proxys, then sneaking the HD files into the clip bin (with the very same file names), then doing the export.

For those who don't know what we are talking about, editing true HD footage is very very resource intensive (particularly on the CPU), and often slows down the editing process, especially when mufti-effects are used, and particularly with mid-level or slower computers..This can be very frustrating. Proxy editing is a system that's been in use for some years, in which low resolution smaller size files (or SD clips) are substituted for the true HD footage during editing. Then, just before rendering (exporting) the final movie, the HD footage is substituted back into the editor. If all goes well, all cuts, effects, and so on will now apply to the real HD footage.

Come to think of it, this procedure may even speed up Videopad's overall rendering. I think a lot of complaints about this may be from users of HD footage who don't realize how resource intensive it is!

I shoot a lot of HD video, which as anyone knows is resource intensive when editing, so I've been thinking about doing my edits with proxy files. Does anyone here do this, and what is your method when using Videopad?

Can't agree with that at all. What programs? In the past when I was in the business, I used Edius, Adobe, Sony, Power Director, Magix, Lightworks, and many more, and never, never had a cross fade freezing problem with those editors, regardless of the length of the effect. I'm sure that is true for other members here as well, which is why the complaints about this problem in VP persist! We were told a while back that this would be remedied with version 3.04 but it was not (and it still has the slowest render I've ever seen).

Still, I like it and wish they'd do some real work on it.

Does anyone know if there is an HDV HD1 codec (often used in an mpeg2 jacket) available for Videopad? Or for that matter, can Videopad use third party codecs at all? I have this one in another editor and really like it's export quality and smoothness better then Videopad's mpeg2/mpeg2.(and Videopad's H264 looks only so-so on my exports).

Thanks!

Looking forward to it! Maybe a slight speed increase in rendering? Even if just a little? Thanks for responding.

Nat said, "DON'T click the Effects down arrow tab on the toolbar and select "Crop" from the list as you won't get any size options. (Which I think is a bug)"

I agree...some kind of a bug. You'd think that doing this would initiate the very same processes as choosing it from the effects box, but it seems to skip some part of the process...weird!

Interesting post. When I am using a 4:3 image, and want to end up with a 16:9 full screen from it, I just open up crop to the 16:9 setting and pull the image out so that the image fills the crop box on the sides. Yes, you will loose a portion of the top and bottom of the image, but when doing this to an originally 4:3 image, there is no way to avoid it and still get rid of the black bars in the export

You can use all of a still image (not video) in an image editor (stretch all of the 4:3 image to 16:9) but it distorts the image sometimes badly.

If you are forced to shoot with a 4:3 only camera that you want to stretch to 16:9 in editing, just frame the shot so that the important element in the shot will remain after cropping.

Does anybody know what plans/features/fixes are being planned for the next version? 3.04 is pretty good, but some things still need improvement.

Thanks!

I have 3.04 working pretty good now except for one thing. I have a Virtual Dub sharpener called msu-sharpen.vdf Whenever I try to use it, the editor crashes. I get a message that Videopad has stopped working and must be closed. It worked fine in 3.02, so I'm not sure what's happening. I tried reinstalling it but it still crashed the editor. I have a few other VD plugins and they all work fine.

Any ideas, or any other sharpeners folks can think of that I might try? Thanks!

Thanks guys. I'll give it another shot. Was working fine before this started.