Announcement: Our new CyberLink Feedback Forum has arrived! Please transfer to our new forum to provide your feedback or to start a new discussion. The content on this CyberLink Community forum is now read only, but will continue to be available as a user resource. Thanks!
CyberLink Community Forum
where the experts meet
| Advanced Search >
Why does the behavior of mouse wheel in timeline differ from most softwares?
[Post New]
In Power Director, the behavior of mouse wheel in the timeline is unusual. It seems to cannot deal with the current position cursor correctly.

This behavior is different from every software I used which support zooming or panning the view through mouse wheel.

Is this a bug?
 Filename
mouse_wheel_in_vegas.mp4
[Disk]
 Description
The behavior of Vegas (same to Premire, Eagle CAD, and many other softwares)
 Filesize
2449 Kbytes
 Downloaded:
290 time(s)
 Filename
mouse_wheel_in_power_director.mp4
[Disk]
 Description
The behavior of Power Director
 Filesize
1805 Kbytes
 Downloaded:
344 time(s)
Carl312
Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline
[Post New]
Quote In Power Director, the behavior of mouse wheel in the timeline is unusual. It seems to cannot deal with the current position cursor correctly.

This behavior is different from every software I used which support zooming or panning the view through mouse wheel.

Is this a bug?
As far as I can tell Powerdirector using Ctrl+Scroll wheel to perform the same function, it is just the display is different in Powerdirector. The fuction that is happening in Powerdirector is expanding and contracting the Timeline (zooming the resolution) of the timeline.

You can do the same thing by expanding or contracting the slider on the bottom Left of the User interface. You can also drag the time marks right or left to expand or contract the timeline.

I personally have never used the mouse scroll wheel to do any of those functions. There are too many other methods.

As with any new program, you have to learn the functions and new methods. It is not reasonable to expect all NLE's to use the same mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

That would be like expecting MAC to use the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

JL_JL [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline
[Post New]
Quote In Power Director, the behavior of mouse wheel in the timeline is unusual. It seems to cannot deal with the current position cursor correctly.

This behavior is different from every software I used which support zooming or panning the view through mouse wheel.

Is this a bug?

Yes, the mouse wheel control in the timeline is a little odd. It zooms the whoie timeline without regard to current scrubber position. I'm not aware of a means to zoom around scrubber easily without this timeline movement. You can do it somewhat with a left mouse click in the timeline numbers and move mouse left and right but its got some issues too.

There was several anomalies with the thumbwheel behavior in PD15, these were corrected in beta patch 2421 http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/50731.page and then fully released patch 2509 https://www.cyberlink.com/support/powerdirector-ultra/patches_en_US.html so make sure you are current in releases.

Jeff
[Post New]
Quote
Quote In Power Director, the behavior of mouse wheel in the timeline is unusual. It seems to cannot deal with the current position cursor correctly.

This behavior is different from every software I used which support zooming or panning the view through mouse wheel.

Is this a bug?
As far as I can tell Powerdirector using Ctrl+Scroll wheel to perform the same function, it is just the display is different in Powerdirector. The fuction that is happening in Powerdirector is expanding and contracting the Timeline (zooming the resolution) of the timeline.

You can do the same thing by expanding or contracting the slider on the bottom Left of the User interface. You can also drag the time marks right or left to expand or contract the timeline.

I personally have never used the mouse scroll wheel to do any of those functions. There are too many other methods.

As with any new program, you have to learn the functions and new methods. It is not reasonable to expect all NLE's to use the same mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

That would be like expecting MAC to use the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows.


I knew that I can drag on the time marks to expand or contract the timeline. But firstly, it's slower than using the mouse wheel. And secondly, the draging operation only can be used to zoom, not to move in the timeline.

In the title, I said that the behavior of PD is different from most of other softwares. Actually, it's the only one I found difference on this point.

Besides Vegas and Premiere, other softwares, such as EAGLE (PCB design software), AutoCAD, and even Microsoft Visio all will zoom and move referencing to the cursor or position of mouse pointer, rather than only zoom.
[Post New]
Quote
Quote In Power Director, the behavior of mouse wheel in the timeline is unusual. It seems to cannot deal with the current position cursor correctly.

This behavior is different from every software I used which support zooming or panning the view through mouse wheel.

Is this a bug?

Yes, the mouse wheel control in the timeline is a little odd. It zooms the whoie timeline without regard to current scrubber position. I'm not aware of a means to zoom around scrubber easily without this timeline movement. You can do it somewhat with a left mouse click in the timeline numbers and move mouse left and right but its got some issues too.

There was several anomalies with the thumbwheel behavior in PD15, these were corrected in beta patch 2421 http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/50731.page and then fully released patch 2509 https://www.cyberlink.com/support/powerdirector-ultra/patches_en_US.html so make sure you are current in releases.

Jeff


Thank you, Jeff.

I saw these two patches. Because in the v2421 beta patch, it claims that "Fixes the issue that the mouse wheel scrolling behavior is changed when clicking on the timeline."

And I have installed the update to build 2509. So when recording the demo videos, my PD version was already 15.0.2509.0.

I did not found any difference on the mouse wheel behavior on timeline after applying this update.
[Post New]
Despite the odd mouse wheel behavior, the problem which lowers the operating efficiency is that I often need to drag the slim scroll bar in the bottom to move left the current scope of timeline.

Must I frequently switch between Ctrl + Mouse Wheel and Alt + Mouse Wheel to zoom and move respectively, instead of placing the cursor and mouse pointer in right positions and scrolling the mouse wheel only once?
Paul999 [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Dec 02, 2019 10:10 Messages: 28 Offline
[Post New]
Yes I agree, this scroll zoom behavior from power director is coompletely hidious!

I was loving PD for its other features and was just optimizing my setup, assuming I could fix this hidious confusing and unpractical scroll behavior, but it seems I can't....

So since I use zooming like this alot and click-dragging above the timeline to zoom works way to slow I will be SWITCHING to another video editor once I determine the best replacement.

It's a shame. PD is such a breeze to use apart from this broken zoom system. It's just so un-userfriendly to use that I can't life with it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Dec 24. 2020 05:03

Paul999 [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Dec 02, 2019 10:10 Messages: 28 Offline
[Post New]
Well, just did some hardcore timeline training to get intuitive and fast with it. Just navigating the timeline like a trooper on bootcamp.

Took quite a lot of timeline cardio but it's now intuitive and ingrained in my muscle memory.


Basically I now use a ctrl + mousewheel to zoom in, and click + drag the timer bar above the timeline to zoom out a bit when needed. To zoom out entirely I click the button 'view entire movie' at the left top of the timeline.

I never use ctrl + mousewheel to Zoom Out because that makes the timeline move in a way that's unpredictable. It's not a bug, it's just weird/un-intuitive. For zooming out "click + drag the timer bar" is much better.

Also, when using "click + drag the timer bar" the scrubber position can really help to get the zoom positioned just right in some cases.

I don't always use "ctrl + mousewheel to zoom in" to zoom in by the way. There's plenty of cases where "click + drag the timer bar" is the better option for zooming. Particularly for larger clips.

Quite a bit of nuances to get good with the timeline, fast like a trooper. But yeah that's what I learned. Now I'm good with it and sticking with PD.

Took some sweat and tears, but at least now I won't be banging my head against the wall and I can enjoy working with the timeline now too.

Oh and when you "click + drag the timer bar" to zoom in and out: the further to the right you click on that bar before dragging the faster it zooms in once you drag. Another nuance that makes a big difference to using it effectively.

Probably that's info overload 🙂 But if anyone else encounters that same PD workflow issue, that info should help you get quick with the timeline. I like to work very fast so that was hindering me. But it's solved for me now

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at Dec 24. 2020 12:24

Powered by JForum 2.1.8 © JForum Team