Using Videopad to stitch many MP4 files of large folders of pictures, using PhotoStage.

[Russ Croucher]

I've been having a problem with PhotoStage in that one particular option was using up a tremendous amount of memory.  I was hoping to help the developers to solve this problem but it doesn't really matter. With this option turned on (filename as text overlay). I was only able to store 222 photos until the program locked up. Without this option turned on. I was able to get well over a thousand.

I had to write my own program over top of PhotoStage (scrip oriented using TCC.exe) to handle thousands of photos. 1 of my customers gave me  9000 slides to have the filenames scrolling along the bottom. So my script very carefully submitted 200 photos to PhotoStage 50 times to produce this result. This took 9 hours on a very fast workstation using SSD's. I think this is something that could be incorporated in PhotoStage as a very good asset. In talking with the customer, this is the smallest set of photos and video. Since it organize them by folder. It creates an MP4, of the folder name.

Now what does this have to do with Videopad? We use Videopad to stitch all the outputs from PhotoStage into one large MP4 with cross fade transitions into the file. These cross fade transitions require the "ctrl-7" key.  My TCC script does not allow for ctrl-7 combination key with numbers. So I want to propose that we use "alt-7" as another alternative. The script does allow this combination and is not used in Videopad anywhere. We could do this with all of the control keys with numbers to alt keys with numbers.
I want to make a post here to get some inputs from people.

The link below is a single small PhotoStage file with the filenames scrolling below on the pictures that was okayed from my customer.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AuSetTxgq7JxqdNBvu9Ip0kCrg7Xpw?e=eRh4Og

Thanks for all your help

Russ
Central Virginia Video

[n1x1]

Thank you for your detailed input on PhotoStage and VideoPad. I have forwarded your suggestion directly to our development team and am currently awaiting feedback. I will notify you as soon as I have any news. We appreciate your time and effort in helping us improve our software.

[Russ Croucher]

For over 30 years I have been engineer working in large companies with complicated software in C and C++. Now years later I have my own business using many different software pieces. I'm on the other side of the coin buying your software but yet understanding the problems that you're having. I always said engineers are lazy we don't like to do the work. The above example is perfect because I took 9000 slides and automated a procedure so the computer just  spit out the MP4s using your 2 programs after 9 hours of work.

I'm actually currently have a problem with Videopad that I'm trying to understand if any my procedures are going to be harmed. I took advantage of the fact that you had your unnamed projects labeled "untitled" with all versions all the way up to 13.35. Now I just loaded the latest version 13.61 and it uses the current date plus the name of the computer as its default project. Using my above example this would cause a problem after midnight because the date would go to a new date and I'm going to make a suggestion that least you support the old version maybe with the checkbox in the options because it's a great idea in general but not for people like me.

[Russ Croucher]

It looks like I should be able to get around "untitled" issue by creating a project named "untitled". That way the export will still do untitled 1 through XX without having to create an export project name. It's easy for me to change filenames outside of Videopad, it is just rather difficult inside video pad.

[Russ Croucher]

I just want to point out. I was able to update my TCC script to handle the case of the no project case using the name "untitled". I am using the current version of 13.63 of Videopad. I just created a project named "untitled". That way I don't get the name of the computer and the date and time. It also allows my project to go past midnight without any problems.