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I installed Patch 1012 successfully. However "Set Aspect Ratio" still hangs and crashes, which was specifically addressed by the patch. Is anyone else having this issue?
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Is anyone else experiencing these?
1. Right-click "Set Aspect Ratio" still hangs after successful installation of v1012 patch.
2. All three panels in the "Upgrade" box are empty, even though I have successfully installed three packs. Was the v1012 patch suppose to appear under "Update"?
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Below was my "Wish List" posted for PD10. Can anyone tell me which of these requests are included?
Preview Window When playing a movie in the timeline, Movie Mode should activate automatically (rather than Clip Mode). This would save repeatedly having to click the Movie Mode or Page Down buttons.
Magic Motion / Motion Designer Utilize subpixel processing to smooth pans and zooms. Currently moves jump from pixel to pixel. Most competitive products employee subpixel processing. Plus, add an option for slow-in and slow-out on pans and zooms. IOW, the move gently accelerates at the beginning and decelerates at the end. Currently. moves start and stop abruptly. Most competitive products offer this option.
Nudge Controls Allow the use of arrow buttons in all windows to increment controls, keyframe position, values, slide bars, etc. And, permit the direct input of numerical values (in addition to the slide bar).
Audio Level Meter A VU meter, digital bar graph or anything that indicates audio level that can be turned on/off as desired. It could be placed under the Preview Window or be user-positionable.
Space Bar Enable the Space Bar to start and stop playback in all preview windows including Media Viewer, PIP Designer, WaveEditor, etc. This is a universal shortcut employed by most media playback devices.
Color Controls Add RGB controls to Color Adjustment, and a Gamma slider.
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My Wish List
Preview Window When playing a movie in the timeline, Movie Mode should activate automatically (rather than Clip Mode). This would save repeatedly having to click the Movie Mode or Page Down buttons every time.
Magic Motion / Motion Designer Utilize subpixel processing to smooth pans and zooms. Currently moves jump from pixel to pixel. Most competitive products employee subpixel processing. Plus, add an option for slow-in and slow-out on pans and zooms. IOW, the move gently accelerates at the beginning and decelerates at the end. Currently. moves start and stop abruptly. Most competitive products offer this option.
Nudge Controls Allow the use of arrow buttons (or comma and period) in all windows to increment controls, keyframe position, values, slide bars, etc. And, permit the direct input of numerical values (in addition to the slide bar).
Audio Level Meter A VU meter, digital bar graph or anything that indicates audio level that can be turned on/off as desired. It could be placed under the Preview Window or user-positionable. It's primary purposes would be to indicate relative levels and clipping.
Space Bar Enable the Space Bar to start and stop playback in all preview windows including Media Viewer, PIP Designer, WaveEditor, etc. This is a universal shortcut employed by most media playback devices.
Color Controls Add RGB controls to Color Adjustment, and a Gamma slider.
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Here is a demo of Ease-in / Ease-out vs. Linear. Available for public viewing.
http://youtu.be/m7Dg8vUiPT0
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Jirka demonstrated that PD9's Slideshow Style "Camera" may be the only place where PD9 performs an ease-in and ease-out, but how? Since one cannot actually edit this "stock" effect, one cannot see how it was accomplished.
Granted, this is not life-and-death stuff. PD9 is a terrific application and when we find a limitation, we just want to make sure we are not missing something.
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"Ease-in & ease-out" refers to accelerating and de-accelerating the beginning and ends of pans and zooms. Rather than a move jerking to a start and jerking to a stop, it ramps up in speed and then ramps down. This option is available in APP, APE and AAE.
I would have accepted that it was currently beyond the capability of PD9 and something that may become an option in future releases. However, the canned Slideshow Style titled "Camera" utilizes ease-in and ease-out, making the pans fluid and not so robotic. Even when you go to Customize, you cannot see the method PD9 is using for "Camera."
Tony, I hope this makes it a little more clear.
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So, ease-in and ease-out is not possible. No amount of playing with keyframes will smooth the start and stop of a pan or zoom. For this function, one must work outside of PD9 like in AE. Thank you Tony for the confirmation.
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Is there a way to apply ease-in and ease-out with Magic Motion, Crop Video or PiP. The slideshow style "Camera" performs ease-in and ease-out perfectly, so it appears that PD9 is capable of doing it. But, how do we perform it manually, rather than being restricted to a pre-produced template?
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Tony,
In the second screen shot, you are right, I moved the marker, but did not hit play (oops). I inserted a replacement screen capture that indeed shows that the ducks in Track 2 take priority over the PE (Particle Effects) on Track 1.
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Melissa,
I appreciate fully your confusion, higher/lower numbers and higher/lower tracks. I guess it depends on what experience you have had with other programs that prioritize tracks according to hierarchy (top tracks affect those below). You are correct, it is counter intuitive if it is outside your sphere of experience. With PD9, everything below affects everything above.
Can you attach a screen capture of your PD9 screen? That would help.
Another suggestion is to try different variations on the same timeline. IOW, place your video on Track 1 and the PE (10_Flowers) on Track 2, and next to it, place the PE on Track 1 and the Video on Track 2. Experimentation shows you what works and why.
Also, try dragging a clean copy of your video onto Track 1. Is there a possibility your video is Standard Definition (4:3) and is being imported into a 16:9 project? Perhaps that is why you are seeing stuff on either side. Just thinking out loud here. When I imported a SD 4:3 video into a Widescreen 16:9 project, I saw black on the sides.
To change the Project Aspect Ratio, look to the top of the PD9 screen, you will see a little window with "16:9" in it. Click it and switch it to 4:3.
Attached is a pair of screen captures to demonstrate experimentation.
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Melissa,
1. PE needs to be below the video. The hierarchy is upside down, meaning lower tracks have priority.
2. If you are getting a partial video, did you accidentally reposition it in the preview window or accidentally add a mask?
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Lap1VideoDave,
I have been in TV production since 1964. I conquer with your suggestions, especially about the VU meters. Having an option to display audio level meters would be a huge benefit, no matter how basic. This would help even-out levels and avoid clipping. Adding Normalization or a Compressor to WaveEditor would also be a huge help.
I too have used many big-name editing programs and PD9 is amazing. It is fun and a pleasure to use!
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Dafydd,
Got it! PD wasn't tested on non-consumer cpu's, so if it works...then great.
My apologies, I stand corrected about mentioning other company's software. I am just grateful that someone suggested a third party workaround to resolve the PD9 issues. As a result, I achieved success.
After batch-converting all 29 MOV files to MP4, I was able to edit my short 10-minute video. It contained lots of split and cross-faded audio tracks. There were no issues, except one time during the hour-long edit when I got ahead of the memory and PD9 crashed. But that stuff happens anywhere.
I produced the project and burned a 16:9 DVD. Perfect!
I am grateful to all of you for assisting me by providing clues. That lead to the discovery that it was the audio component of the MOV clips that was giving PD9 a fit. That lead to the format conversion workaround.
Thanks so much to everyone!
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Nina,
Thank you for the three clips. Like you, they all played fine in my PD9.
It is interesting that you also had poor results with FF. With FVC, I batch-converted my 29 original MOV files to MP4 @ 44,100/stereo with no issues. Although there is only 10 minutes of total content, the conversion went smoothly and quickly. The files then imported into PD9 without issue and populated the timeline (with waveform) without issue.
This workaround should hold me over until PD9 is fixed...perhaps with the next build.
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In this case, it appears the crashing of PD9 was rooted in the audio portion of the video clip. In addition to the varying and inconsistent experiences other members had with audio extraction from my sample clip, here are additional curiosities:
FormatFactory - No matter what codec I tried, only one frame of the conversion would process. However, using another source video converted perfectly.
Freemake Video Converter - I found this converter at CNET (also free). The conversion from MOV to MP4 worked perfectly and imported into PD9 fine, along with a visible waveform (see attachment). As Jeff noted, whenever the waveform does not appear in the PD9 timeline, there's trouble ahead. Let that be a red flag to us all.
Now, the next test is to batch convert all the clips to another codec and try editing again. If no more PD9 freezes, then problem solved. If the problem returns, then I do not know what I will do.
To Nina, Robert, Adrian, Hal, Cranston, Fred and Jeff...thanks for all your input. I think when experiencing problems, our initial reaction is, "What did I do wrong?" However, it is more often a combination of factors that are generally outside our control. Perhaps the problems never get fully resolved, but at least we feel vindicated and discover we are not alone.
To Dafydd, thank you for your support and submitting the bug report. To reiterate, I did not know Xeon processors were "Server CPU's" and may not be suitable for use with editing software. Info nice to have known before buying that particular PC last year. I went for "Dell, Workstation, Quad Core, 6 GBs" thinking that would cover everything, without any knowledge about the differences in CPU's. So, does that mean PD9 may never work with a Xeon properly?
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My Panasonic pocket camera outputs SD Widescreen at 848x480, 30 fps and HD at 1280x720, 30 fps. Ironically, QuickTime Player identifies the codec as Photo JPEG and another player identifies it as Motion JPEG. Apparently they are one in the same.
This old SD footage is to burned onto a DVD at 16:9. I have performed this successfully many times with other editing and DVD authoring software.
I have attached a short sample clip from the camera to see if anyone can extract the audio. In PD9, the process stalls, producing a WAV file with no content.
Per QuickTime Player, the audio format is 16-Bit Big Endian, Mono, 16,000 kHz. Hey, it's a pocket camera! As a an ex-news photographer, I learned a small camera in the pocket has more value than a high-end camera at home in the bag.
All my recent footage is HD at 1280x720, and that will be burned to Blu-ray. That is why I purchased PD9, because my old editing software and computer was not designed for HD. I am using the old SD footage just to get up to speed with PD9.
As far as conversion, I have been using different programs. However, I will indeed download FormatFactory. Thank you Nina for the tip!
It sounds like MPEG-2, WMV and/or H.264 are the codecs of choice. MOV not so much. So, perhaps conversion prior to editing will resolve the issues.
Gee Dafydd, I did not know Xeon processors were "Server CPU's" and may not be suitable for use with editing software. Information it would have been nice to know before buying that particular PC. Last year, I went for "Dell, Workstation, Quad Core" without any knowledge about the differences in CPU's. Does that mean PD9 may never work with Xeon properly, or could work with at little patience?
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Nina, thank you for your reply and jumping out in front.
My Panasonic pocket camera records video in the QuickTime Photo JPEG format, which is a video codec that uses a JPEG compression algorithm, where MJPEG (Motion JPEG) uses an MPEG algorithm. In theory, both compression schemes at 100% quality are about the same.
Reading between the lines, the source of my problem with freezing and crashing may be the inability of PD9 to handle this particular codec well. Okay, let's assume that is the issue and reason why I have had no answers.
That begs the next question. Since I can convert any codec to any other, which codec does PD9 like the best? The idea being I could batch convert all my footage first, then edit in PD9 without hiccups. Is the theory plausible?
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Seems like variations of PD9 crashing have been posted numerous times. So here goes mine.
PD9 Build 2930
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Dell Precision WorkStation T3500
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) W3530 @ 2.80GHz (4 CPUs)
RAM: 6 Gbytes
Video card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 (Driver Version: 8.17.12.7536)
Video drivers & QuickTime are up to date.
I am editing a 10-minute video in SD Widescreen. Source is from a Panasonic Lumix pocket camera as QuickTime Photo JPEG, 848x480, 30 FPS / PCM S16 BE, Mono, 16,000 Hz, 16-bit).
A minor problem is that the Extract Audio feature will not work with this particular QT format. More importantly, the program works for a brief time and then freezes. There is no single action that causes it, it just freezes. The event Viewer reports:
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The program PDR9.exe version 9.0.0.2930 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: 17d8
Start Time: 01cc44b058a93b85
Termination Time: 75
Application Path: C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDirector\PDR9.exe
Report Id: e02088da-b0a3-11e0-8000-b8ac6f921019
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