VideoStudent

I've been using the H264 compressor to export to .mp4 because of what I read about them. For example: https://www.velleman.eu/downloads/3/h264_vs_mpeg4_en.pdf "H.264 is a new standard for video compression which has more advanced compression methods than the basic MPEG-4 compression. One of the advantages of H.264 is the high compression rate. It is about 1.5 to 2 times more efficient than MPEG-4 encoding. This high compression rate makes it possible to record more information on the same hard disk. The image quality is also better and playback is more fluent than with basic MPEG-4 compression." But maybe H264 takes more processing power than MPEG4 and MPEG4 would be a better choice if lots of processing is required due to lots of effects.

Borate, thanks again very much for all your excellent help. I learned a lot from you. I exported the video to 1024x576. I had saved an earlier version of the project and exported the video at 1280x720 before adding additional video effects. I looked at the .mp4 again and saw it also had some freezing. So I re-exported it to 1024x576 and there was no freezing. In a new project I combined the two sequences end-to-end with the older one first and then exported that, also to 1024x576. I posted it as "Bohm-ba-dup-ba-da-ba Music Video" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqZjfrv8l4M&feature=youtu.be and mentioned you in the comments: David Savage singing multiple tracks and playing cornet and harmonicas. The second time through has extra special video effects. Video editing was done with NCH Software's VideoPad. I learned a lot, and had excellent help from "borate," one of the "Einstein level" users in their forum. Dedicated to: "David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. Wikipedia" I live in Vienna, Virginia, US. I'm curious about you. Are you paid staff of NCH Software or volunteer here? Where do you live? Do you have videos online that I could watch and learn from?

Borate, I send you the link to my backup folder in a message. I read and skimmed some of the information in the links about virtual choir that you provided. One suggestion was to export one or a few tracks and then re-import the rendered file to replace those tracks. I might tray that with my project. I already did that with all the audio tracks.

Okay, thanks. I saved the sequence audio to a wav file, muted audio tracks 1 through 8, and added the sequence audio file as audio track 9 to save VP from having to process all the audio effects, but that didn't help the video glitches and freezing on export no matter what resolution I used.

The fade problem is solved now. The title slide at the end was after the end of track 1. There was an unintended snippet of a clip. I deleted it. I also moved the end title clip above video track 1, to track 11. The fade is fine now, 5 sec. Thanks also for the tip about Storyboard mode. I will look at that later; I've only used Timeline mode. Thanks for the info about effects. That's cool. I will experiment with it another time. I'm uploading the backup folder to Google Drive. It says it will take about half an hour. 21 min left now, uploading file 6 of 15. I will get the link and send it to you in a message when it's done.

I'm really frustrated with VideoPad. After installing the latest version, Fade only allowed 0.002 seconds maximum. After closing the program and opening it again it allows 5 seconds and probably more like it did before. It now plays fine in VP in the small sequence window with no glitches or freezing. However, I have exported it four times using 29.97 fps, same as all the source videos, first highest quality then default quality, 720p, 1024 x 576, 480p, and finally 1080p thinking maybe it's easier for the software to export using the same resolution as the source videos. They all freeze and have glitches at certain points. I really want to finish this project and move on to a new one. I'm done with the editing and just want to export it and upload it to YouTube and post a link on Facebook. I did the backup, but I see what it did is copy all my source files and project file. This is a personal video (just music, nothing objectionable). 1.44 GB. Haha, it reminds me of the size of a 3.5" non-floppy floppy disk, 1.44 MB. I do not want to share all that material. I would be okay with sharing the project file. Features requests: I would like to be able to save and load the effects on a clip so that can be applied to other clips even in other projects. I would like a programming language that could be used to specify effects instead of in the UI. I looked at the project file in Notepad and it's kind of like that already. Just need an interpreter to make it a little more user friendly. You could specify effects in the UI like now, and then modify them in the project file if it were a little more readable and vice versa.

Thanks, borate. The whole project is about 1 min 20 sec. The video source .mp4 files are all 1920 x 1080, about 20,000 kbps, 29.97 fps. I'm trying to export to 1280 x 720, 30 fps constant. I have thought that constant fps is easier for software to process than variable, but maybe I'm wrong. I also made it 30 rather than 29.97 because I thought that 30 is for video and 29.97 is for NTSC TV, but maybe I'm wrong about that too. Maybe the export would be better if I kept it at the source resolution and fps, but that wouldn't solve the freezing on playing the sequence in VideoPad. I did "Save Sequence Audio as New File." I could Save As the project as another name, delete the existing audio tracks which all have effects and replace them with the single Sequence1.wav file. That would save some processing load on both playing and export. Okay, I see that version 8.99 was released December 2 and version 8.98 was released November 25. Releases appear to be quite frequent. I just bought the Pro version on November 10. I downloaded "the latest," which for Windows is 8.99, closed VP and will install 8.99 and see whether that's any better. I also signed up for the NCH Newsletter so I will be notified of future updates.

I made a video with 10 video tracks, 8 audio tracks, and "lots" of effects. When playing the sequence the video freezes every few seconds and that's also how it looks when I export it to .mp4 1280 x 720. No problem with the audio when playing the sequence in VideoPad or playing the exported .mp4. I have tried closing all other programs (but not processes), and setting the priority of VideoPad in Task Manager to High. Neither of those help. I am running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit on a Dell XPS 8900 with desktop PC with 24 GB RAM, Intel Core i-7 3.40 GHz. I'm using VideoPad Pro version 8.97. Task Manager says it's 32-bit, by on the NCH website it says version 8.95 is 64 bit. I just realized a workaround might be to solo one video track at a time and all the audio tracks, export the project 10 times and then start a new project and import the 10 rendered .mp4 files, but I hope there's a better solution. I tried soloing video track 1 and playing the sequence and it still freezes on the first effect.

More experimenting: It's Rotate / Vertical Flip = 90 degrees that makes the video on edge so it's invisible (Horizonal Flip = 90 would do that too). That effect is interesting too. But the other video is still going behind rather than in front. It doesn't allow me to flip negative 90 to flip it the other way. Haha, yes. Rotate_to_edge is the same as my experiment, which I did before seeing your post with Rotate_to_edge.wmv.

My version 8.97 of VP Pro has Rotate, which has Vertical Flip (degrees symbol), Horizontal Flip (degrees symbol), and Rotate (degrees symbol); and Rotate & Flip, which has Rotation (degrees symbol) with dropdown in which the only choices are 0, 90, 180, and 270; Horizontal Flip, which is a checkbox; and Vertical Flip, which is a checkbox. -0-0- I tried a test. Put a clip in the upper left corner, added Rotate, added keyframe at zero with Rotate = 0.00 degrees there, added keyframe at 2.5 seconds with Rotate = 180 degrees there. What that does is rotate the video clockwise in the plane of the video so that at 2.5 seconds it's upside down in the lower right corner. Removed that effect and selected Rotate & Flip, for Rotation selected 180 from the dropdown. It does the same thing as the first effect. Neither rotate/rotation rotates on the Z-axis to show the clip on edge.

I may not be understanding your first sentence. Your first sentence, no. You can add any number of effects to a clip and then split it. After the split, both clips have the same effects and Unsplit is available. After a split if you add or change effects in the left clip or right clip and do not make them the same in both clips, then Unsplit is not available. That is what I had done; after the split I added different effects to the left clip and right clip. Because the effects were not the same in both clips, Unsplit was not available. I deleted the effects that were different in each clip and then Unsplit became available. For the over-under problem I used transparency animation to make the upper right clip go from opaque to transparent over 2.5 seconds while the lower right clip was flipping up during that time, and then made the upper right clip go back to opaque over the next 2.5 seconds while the lower right clip was flipping back down. It's not really what I want, I really want the upper right clip to remain opaque the whole time that the lower right clip is flipping up *over* it and back down, but this is art, not science, and going transparent and back to opaque is an interesting effect in itself, so I'll just use that. I don't think I'd want to scale the upper right clip to zero size and back during the flipping up and back of the lower right clip, but that would work too. I don't think either of the rotate options rotate the clip through the Z-axis so that at the apogee of the animation you would be looking at the clip edge-on. But the effects in your clip split_match.wmv do that, although with additional effects I wouldn't want for this purpose. What effects did you use for that clip?

Okay, through experiment I found the answer: If either of the clips on the left or right of the split have effects, the effects have to be the same in both clips for the Un-Split Clips menu option to display. I started a new project, dragged an .mp4 file to the timeline, split it, and hovered over the split. The Un-split option displays. I unsplit it and it worked. I added one video effect, then split the clip. Again the unsplit option displayed. I added another video effect to the left clip so that it had two effects and the right one only had one. Now the unsplit option does not display. So those are the rules of how it works. Now that I know that I can make the effects the same on both clips, or just delete the effects on both clips, and then unsplit will display and I can unsplit the clips.

Cool. I used the free trial version of WavePad for a previous project. It's nicely integrated with VideoPad. But when the trial expired and I needed some more audio features I had to decide between buying the Pro version of VideoPad and the paid version of WavePad. I emailed NCH to try to get a comparison of the audio features available in VideoPad vs. WavePad but they didn't have one. I decided to buy the Pro version of VideoPad. Still, I will keep it in mind. I just realized I can right-click an audio clip and Open File With offers the option to open it in GoldWave because I did that before with Choose Another Program. Then I can immediately save it from GoldWave as .mp3. So that's even more time saved. Problem solved. Thanks again, borate!

Thanks again. Regarding Save Sequence Audio as New File, it saves it as .wav; there is no option to save it as .mp3, so I still have to open it in GoldWave and save it as .mp3. But the rendering of the sequence audio takes less time then rendering the video using export, so it does save time if not number of clicks. And there might be situations where exporting to .wav is preferable to .mp3. I haven't installed VideoMeld, just read the description on the website. It says you can export the audio to .mp3 but doesn't say whether you can export it to .wav.

Thanks. I don't know why I thought you needed to hold down <Ctrl> when dragging a track. I thought I read it somewhere, but now I can't find that instruction. I watched Drag.wmv. I was trying to drag a clip between tracks like what happens when you drag a track up or down. What it shows is dragging a clip to a new track. I think that might work to solve the problem I'm having. Last night after I turned my computer off, thinking about the video that demonstrated rotate, I think I may have misunderstood what rotate does. I thought it meant rotate left to right, like what happens when you click "rotate" in graphics editing or photo display programs. But in the video it appears to be rotating along the Z axis front to back so that at one point you're looking at it on edge and it appears as just a line. That might work also. Last night I also thought about making the clip transparent. So now I have three things to try! Regarding the virtual choir, in another project I'm using VideoPad to make a multi-track music video with other musicians. I email them an .mp3 file and they listen to it through earbuds or headphones while making a video on the device of their choice of them playing along on their instrument. They send me their video and I add it to the VideoPad project and sync it with existing tracks by lining up the audio. So far so good. To create the .mp3 file each time I have to export to .mp4 from VideoPad, then open the .mp4 in my audio editing software Goldwave, which just opens the audio, then save it as .mp3. I don't see a way to export just the audio in VideoPad to .mp3. Goldwave also has a video editor VideoMeld that does offer that option. I haven't tried that software yet. https://www.goldwave.com/videomeld.php I did find a way to export just the audio from all tracks in a project, but it's more complicated than what VideoMeld offers. A comment in this thread tells how to do it in VideoPad: https://nch.invisionzone.com/topic/24113-how-to-export-entire-audio-track/ Thanks for your patience and all your help!

Thanks again, borate. I solved the split clip problem by finding the value of the animation line at the same point in another unsplit clip as the end of the first clip of the split clip and used that as the value at that point in time at the end of the first clip and the beginning of the second clip. That works just fine and seems easier than the second sequence approach. A Z-axis is one that is perpendicular to the X and Y axes, that is, a value of 0 on the Z axis is in the plane of the video or picture, negative values are further away from the viewer behind the plane of the video or picture, and positive values are closer to the viewer in front of the plane of the video or picture. The combination of coordinates on the X, Y, and Z axes describe a three dimensional space. I don't see how rotate and scale could simulate that. Rotation is in the plane of the video/picture, and scale just makes the video/picture larger or smaller. Yes, scale could simulate perspective because objects appear larger when they are closer to the view and smaller when they are farther away, but that doesn't solve the problem of having one object directly in front of another and then switching the position of the objects along the Z axis. https://www.google.com/search?q=z+axis+in+video+editor I haven't read any of those articles, but it looks like in some video editing software you can specify values on the Z axis. In Microsoft Word you can specify that a graphic is in front of text or behind text. That is moving the graphic along the Z axis. In VideoPad the only way you can specify where a track is on the Z axis is by control-dragging the entire track above or below another track. I experimented to see whether I could drag just a clip above another track rather than the entire track and it doesn't allow that. I don't want to share my whole project and all the source files. I might upload a rendered version of just the section of the video that I'm having a problem with, showing the upper right clip successfully flipping down over a period of 2.5 seconds to cover the lower right clip and then back up over the next 2.5 seconds, and then the lower right clip flipping up over a period of 2.5 seconds but unsuccessfully going *behind* the upper right clip rather than in front and then back down over the next 2.5 seconds. I want the lower right clip to be higher on the Z axis than the upper right clip just for the 5 seconds when it's flipping up and back down, not for the whole duration of the clip.

Thanks again, borate. They both play directly in OneDrive, but I also downloaded them. The second one is the situation I have. The problem is that before that I have the reverse, i.e., the upper right video flips down to cover the lower right video, and that one works now, but if I control-drag the track for the lower right video above the track for the upper right video, then I will have the reverse situation: when the upper right video flips down it will go behind the lower right video and when the lower right video flips up it will go in front of the upper right video. What I need is a Z-axis video effect so that I can change the Z-axis value at any key frame. Regarding the previous problem, I don't understand your answer, but I realized that I have three other flips in which I didn't make that unneeded split. If I can accurately determine the end of the first clip, which I think is at 4.830 seconds, then I can find what the value is at that point in one of the other flips without a split and use that value for the end frame of the first clip and the beginning frame of the second clip in the split sequence. I also wondered whether the Un-split is not available because both clips have effects. I will try playing around with that. Because I split the clip after I added effects to it, both clips have the same effects, so maybe if I remove the effects on the second clip, which I won't need anyway if I can Un-split them, the Un-split option will be available. If not, I can document all the effects settings and then remove all effects from both clips and see whether the Un-split option displays in the context menu. Then I can unsplit and then add the effects back from my notes.

Thanks for the quick reply. Okay, thanks. I will try your second suggestion first. But why is the Un-split Clips context menu option missing? Well, that's not perfect, but it worked well enough. What I'm animating is Rotate, flip vertical 180 degrees over 2.5 seconds and back again over the next 2.5 seconds. I don't know what the vertical value should be at the end of the first clip and the start of the next clip to make it seem like the slope of the line is continuous from 180 to 0. Maybe algebra or calculus would help with that, but I don't know how to calculate it. If the line is at 180 at 2.5 seconds and 0 at 5 seconds, then at 4.830 seconds where the first clip ends and the second clip begins the value should be n. Solve for n. Also, now I have another problem. I have another video clip showing in the bottom right of the screen and I'm using Rotate to animate it flipping upside down 180 degrees to the top right over 2.5 seconds and then back down again right-side up over the next 2.5 seconds. The problem is that there's another clip in the top right, and when the bottom clip flips up I want it to cover that one, be in front of it, but instead it goes behind it. How can I make it go on top/over/in front of the clip that's already there? I don't want to control-drag the whole bottom clip above the top clip, I just want it to be on top while it's going upside down and back. Thanks.

I want to un-split a track I split. Because of the split point when I add a video effect and use animation, in the animation part of the effects window I can't see far enough to the right on the timeline to put a key frame to where I want the effect to end. This is truly a track that I split, not two clips. I tried right-clicking on the split point. The context menu displays the options to Group the two clips, but doesn't display the Un-Split option.