Alan R

That only resets the duration to the selected one.  So I guess that provides a way to override the preset value.

Thanks

Set the above in Options/media to 2.0s but images dragged to timeline still come in at 3s.  Saved value of 2s seems permanent.

Even saved project and reloaded, setting shows as 2s but images still come in at 3.0s.

Running v8.95

Any ideas?

I have focus follows mouse pointer set and I think the default is focus not to follow mouse pointer.

Its setting is buried deep in the Control Panel and is one of many "ease of access tweaks".

Thus when the drop down is closed just after I click it, my pointer finds itself over the main VP editing window and the Effects window disappears.

When the Effects window is open - I only have to wander outside for it  to close 0.5s later.

This may seem irritating at times - but I find focus following the pointer so natural, I've even forgotten the reason why I originally set it.

Apologies if this made what I was saying strange to understand.

Thanks gents for all your help.

Alan.

Hi Nat

Yes I basically agree but I know now where the perceived problem is.

When I was talking of selecting the current/selected/all and saying the whole window closed when I clicked my choice, it does unless you quickly move the pointer back into the main window, or use my hover over technique.  This is clearly related to the time before another window automatically assumes focus, which in my case looks around 0.5 second, meaning that provided I move out of the way of the drop down list (which automatically closes when you have clicked the choice) within 0.5s the main window then assumes focus and I can proceed with selecting other parameters.  Any slower and the disappearance of the drop down list means I am out of the main window when focus switches.

But all in all I think I now got the gist of the issue and can achieve what I wanted.

Thanks Nat - your help is appreciated.

1 hour ago, Nationalsolo said:

• Choose the transition and alter the duration if required. All the selected clips will  (should) now have the chosen transition between them.

Nat

Well almost - when I click select the chosen scope of the change ie Selected or All, the effects window applies whatever is selected above, ie fade or whatever, and closes.

If I select the type of transition, the effects window closes.

BUT if I hover over the scope down arrow and roll my mouse wheel I get to choose the option I want (current/selected/all) - then click select the effect I want, then the window closes and the transitions are set as desired.   I can set the duration also by rolling mouse wheel or I can set the cursor there and type the value.

Rule seems to be - selected the group or individual transitions - set how many to change (current/selected/all) - adjust the duration - click the chosen effect.

Thanks Nat - appreciate your help.

Well how about that - I ever knew text was regarded as an object that had effects - just what I wanted.

Thank you for your prompt answer.

A quick question - is there a way to make a whole group of images have the same transition of the same size?  I know you can select a set of images and set them all to the same duration, but not sure how to do this for transitions.

Thanks In anticipation.

Just placed a piece of text, sort of positioned manually.

When you hover over the central dot a little tool tip opens   base point X: 3.1% and Y: 30.6%

Other than dragging that centre spot around which is a bit approximate - is there any way I can type in a more precise position?

The same would apply to Rotation and Scale of the item.

Thanks in anticipation .....

Thank you - I sort of knew you would have a simple and correct solution  - I would probably still be playing ineffectively 😨

I assume the icon next door with the plus sign would be used to add the present effects to the selected items?

Thanks again

Alan.

Having created saved effects templates under a unique name (very useful feature) I have found a way of applying them in bulk to a number of clips or in this case jpegs on the timeline. Very useful.

In the course of development I wanted to remove all the effects from all the jpgs they were applied to, so I could delete the saved collection and remake it,  but have only found it possible to clear each jpeg one by one.

Is there a way of clearing a collection of jpgs of all their effects?

Oh what a shame Borate - little gets by you usually, but no matter.

Just playing, I went through one part resolving each issue (finding where the image actually was and opening it using the VP Resolve process) until all were working as expected.  VP now knew where each image was as I had corrected the incorrect path names.  Good.

Thought - now I have corrected all the path names I should be able to exit - be prompted to save as changes had been made - but NO, VP did not note all the path name corrections had been changes, and promptly exited saving nothing.  Disappointed.

To solve this whole mess I have copied all the images from their own folder (where they were originally used from) to the folder in which all the clips were (where VP thought all the images should have been) and all 6 parts now load with no issue.

I am slightly frustrated as to how this could have happened as I have completed many projects using VP.  For this project it has 6 parts done in chronological order and finally a credits part.  Parts 1-5 were corrupt, and part6 and credits were good.  So whatever happened to parts 1 to 5 did not happen to the final episodes, part 6 and credits.  So my frustration is that if it was me, I don't appear to be doing it any more (good) but neither have any clue as to how the corruption occurred (bad).

For now however, life is too short to worry about how something that is no longer happening, happened, until or if it happens again.

Hopefully, unlike Arnold, I won't be back 

Somehow I managed to achieve the impossible I have not achieved.  Puzzled?  Read on.

I have a large project broken into smaller pieces to make it manageable.

Each small piece will be a collection of images and related clips.

Open a project, work on it, close the project.

This morning I open part1.vpj and it complains it can't find any images where it expected them to be.  It thinks they are in the folder that contains the clips.  But they are in a folder that contains only images, I know that, they are still there.  So how (why) does VP think they have moved when they haven't?

Yes VP offers a way to resolve the issue, but it only resolves one by one, and in some parts I may have up to 70 or so images.

and 5 parts in total.

Its one thing to be able to do the resolve, but I would also like to understand how this mess arose so I can make sure it does not happen again.

I have 6 parts to this project.  5 think their images are somewhere they are not.

I have just thought that I could put a copy of all 134 images in the clips folder so that VP can find the images where it already thinks they are, but I would still like to know how I have managed to confuse VP into thinking the images are where they are, but have never been. 😢

Thank you both - nice to see VP is so feature rich there are easy alternative ways to achieve.

Where there's a will there's a way.

Thank you both, brilliant

Ah right, thats ok. 

Works as expected when you choose Mobilize as your animation.  Seems like there are some other instances it does not quite work as expected, but as I said earlier this is not a significant issue mainly a passing point.  Its not going to inconvenience me seriously as I was just playing with some cool credit sequences, but noting serious.

There are more useful issues for the developers to be working on rather than this.

Thanks however  for your usual and prompt assistance, most appreciated.

Alan.

Yes I can set an effect to the end of the animated scrolling text item, however its taking the snapshot that does not appear to work.

I can scroll smoothly backwards and forwards within the text and all behaves as expected.  However wherever I stop then right-click over the sequence preview window and choose Take snapshot and then choose the resolution, a blank snapshot is produce.  If I edit the text to do "no scroll" the snapshot works ok.  It's just when you are "snapping" an animated sequence that the snapshot turns out blank, wherever you try and take one.

Its not that this is a major issue, but I have used snapshot on many occasions and this use with animated text fails to work as expected.

I wanted the text animation to work in full and then to fade the final frame, this I thought is best achieved by snapping the final frame, setting it at the end of the animated object, and then setting a fade out.  I have done this successfully with video, so I freeze the final frame of a clip and then position the snapshot at the end of the clip, then set it to fade.

I thought a piece of animated text should behave in the same manner and permit its final frame to be frozen using snapshot and then chewed up in whatever way you fancy, but animated text appears special in some unexpected way.  In fact - should it work?  or am I trying something that was never going to work?

Should it??

Got some animated text on the timeline, works just as I expect it to.  However at the end of the animation (bottom right to centre) I wanted to introduce a fade, so that final position of the title just fades away to nothing, using a snapshot and fading it.  So I set the timeline cursor to the end of the animation and took a snapshot of the frame.  It was blank, despite the text showing in the sequence preview window.  I had used frame step to ensure I had the last displayed from of the animation sequence.

Any thoughts?

Thank you - just knew it had to be simple as it clearly is, just a different way of getting there,

Thank you Borate.

Have a text object.  Copy.  Select a different video track, position cursor, Paste.

I now got 2 text items identical in all respects.

Edit the newer one to change the text.

 Original changes as well 

Had wanted to duplicate the originals font/size/color and just edit the text to say something different.

Is this a bug or a feature?  And if the latter what makes it useful?

Is there a way of doing what I want, its just  so much faster, than starting a new text object and then changing all the setting to match the other one.

Thanks

I do indeed and thank you.

31 minutes ago, borate said:

To illustrate what my take is on #1...

A single :15 file that qualified to be exported losslessly was repeatedly placed on the timeline until the sequence length was :45.  Export re-encoded.

I understand - but am surprised that's what VP does.  Tried my old editor loaded one clip (:15), dragged it to the timeline 4 times (total length 1:02), performed render necessity test, all four instances passed requiring no further rendering, exported taking 19s and interesting slowing as it passed the three joins so obviously a little bit of work required.  I would say 1 sec per piece plus around 5s per join so 3 joins and 4 pieces approx 19s.

47 minutes ago, borate said:

As to #2, not a programmer, so can't elaborate.   Apparently a reference to the nature of the data in the clips.

Yeah I just do not understand that either.

48 minutes ago, borate said:

As for quality, as noted earlier, the point may be moot in most cases, but re-encoding is bound to be slower. 

Totally agree!!

Thank you for your persistence in helping me understand whats going on, much appreciated.

Alan.

Thank you - but....

1)  "Only one file can be lossless".  What is meant by that?  A file is not lossless or otherwise, the process of creating that file is either lossless or not.  My understanding is that rendering a new output file can benefit (quality and speed) from a lossless procedure if the input file(s) do not need rendering (because nothing has changed that requires re-rendering).

Stage 1 - edit clips and pics - cropped blended transitioned etc and render to make one file.

Stage 2 - collect all the files from stage 1 and make a bigger file - no changes - no render.

2)  "When exporting lossless, the re-encoding part is slow because of the complexity of mixing different packets."  What are different packets?  This lossless exercise (as far as I see) is just taking a number of mp4's created earlier, and making a larger mp4 that meets all the criteria to qualify for lossless proocessing.  So where's the difference(s) that fail this criteria requirement?

3)  I guess this point is obvious.

I may not seem to fully understand the feedback we got, and would appreciate an explanation to my points above as I cannot see how any of the data involved fail the criteria checks for lossless processing.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Alan.

Thanks Borate - and these were with the 2 files I left on GoogleDrive?

I think how long probably reflects on hardware being, and that is very much 'it is what it is' - its more about how long in comparison.

Those 2 clips take around 27s for VP to export (render), whereas my 'other' VE not only confirms no need to render, but produces same combined clip in just under 7s.

20 minutes ago, borate said:

No reference to x264enc was spotted in the task manager, but perhaps it was missed.

No chance of missing it on my pile!!!

Thanks for your help - await with interest for developer feedback!

I certainly see no degradation.  It's just nice to get it done quicker, but as this process is likely to be done just once per project the overhead is not too unacceptable.  Shame that VP is not able to perform at the moment.  VP is far nicer to create with, especially as I now 'chop-up' large projects and deal with subject related sections, combining all mp4's only at the end.

Regards

Alan 

After many experiments I now have 2 clips rendered as mp4, dragged into VP, and then exported but did not go lossless as expected.

Also taken 2 clips direct from video camera, unedited and they will not export lossless either.

Input clips are mp4, export is set to mp4, and everything is 25fps..

The clips are available on GoogleDrive and the links are: 

File1

File2

Both are approx 15s long and take just under 30s  to export (so clearly not lossless).

My system is Windows 7 64bit and I'm running VP v 8.95

Would be interested if you run Windows7 64bit - do you see x264enc execute as native 64 bit or 32bit?

Apart from time - does unnecessarily rendering actually degrade the final quality???

TIA

Alan

I was given slightly more drastic instructions by support, something along the lines of "delete all from this folder and below" completely blowing everything VP knew about.

Deep in trying to cure a problem and excited by thoughts of a solution from the clean install - and away it all went 😢

Now I know.

We can move physical windows to layout where we want, cache where we want to store, would be useful to also be able to move other user resources where we want.  I run extensive backup routines, but steer away from including C drive as I routinely do not store any user files there, all my user folders are on E: system rebuilds do not touch user files has proved very useful in the past.

Thanks.

Ah right - not quite the way I went, but will try your route first to see if "auto" mode actually works!  If not I'll upload them for others to try!

Taken to a PM.

I have a project consisting of a number of mp4 files produced from all the segments of a large project, produced in pieces for manageability, but the task to join all as one mp4 using lossless export failed to work.

So I then did the following...

Took two mp4 files exported by VP to combine into one mp4.

Had assumed lossless export would be the way to go.

Dragging both into VP, then doing a lossless export seemed to result in rendering taking place, many minutes of 100% PC processing, I gave up.

Using a competitors editor to do the same, I loaded the same two mp4 files, and it subsequently took 12 seconds to make a combined mp4.

Reading VP manual it is suggested that if any Visual Effects are used Lossless export does not work!  Not sure I understand that - its just an mp4 irrespective of any fancy name used in its creation.

So - does it do what I want?

I have not examined the parameters in detail of the two mp4 files, but they are both mp4, fixed 25fps, HD resolution, and no editing has been done on them.  In that both editors are trying to reuse already rendered footage without rerendering unless necessary, I assume input parameters would be the same.  But VP seems to need to re-render whereas competitor does not.

Have I misunderstood something?

Am running VP 8.95 and cannot find any of the settings referred to in online documentation, so assume docs are not up to date with how 8.95 works today.

----------- time passes as I experiment ------------------------

I think I can see why VP fails Lossless export.

Here's what I do  - select Export Video and select Lossless Video from the drop down.

Select destination Local Computer

Export File Settings window opens.

I set filename and destination folder,

resolution is greyed out and matches source items, frame rate is greyed out but DOES NOT match source file frame rate, hence why I believe that's the reason VP always  decides to re-render.  Why does VP not pick up on the source file frame rate and use it as default?

My frame rate of the 2 smaller mp4 files was rendered fixed at 25fps PAL.  Why?  Because before I understood VP did lossless, I planned to use my old editor to do the bolting together job.  Now VP seems to have issues, looks like my old editor may yet "be the chosen one"!

Am I doing something wrong?