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Quote: To insert an image sequence, you use the Time-Lapse slideshow and set the duration of each image. To start place the images on the timeline and then click the Slideshow button. The Time-Lapse slideshow thumbnail is in the lower right. Click on the thumbnail and follow the wizard.


Hi Xerox.

Appreciate your input but see my second point on my second post. (#2 PD has a 2500 image import limit or something to that order)

Thats only 1 and half minutes of footage that its able to import.. I've got 5, 10, and 20 minute long uncompressed image sequences. Far more frames than the limit allows for. The slideshow feature is really good for simply slideshows.

Virtual dub for anyone else interested can at least bring in the images and bind them into a container PD will accept. So while its and extra step if one really wants to work the content with PD it must be bound to a video container first.

For others like myself who may have some high end animation software then you can bind your image sequences using 3dsmax's ram player, or similar in maya or softimage etc.
If I understand you correctly Ron I would hafto agree 110%.... Its not at all a good idea to have to gut a working project file down to 40 seconds just to render that particular piece.

Should you save it by mistake then you are suddenly having a very, very bad day. And I'm my case could possibly have lost a considerable amount of capital given the man hours spent working on it, then in needing to rebuild it.

Frankly the only reason I've purchased PD is because a smaller studio I work with has asked multiple times if they can send me PD project files. In fact this is the second time I've purchased. The last time was with PD 10 which I recognized immediately was not appropriate for even "casual" professional usage, it was returned and refunded promptly. I figured I'd give another look at PD 11 assuming its grown up a bit.

That said. it is probably the best home/consumer editor available for a hundred bucks. ie. you tube vids, home movies, family album DVDs, "light" marketing presentations or product highlight vids etc. If they would implement some of the above features I could easily feel good paying 200.00 to 250.00..
Another oddity.... When I do "render preview" of the timeline or any section of the timeline, then save the project and reopen the project the preview is gone, does this sound right? That you must re-render new previews each time you open and revisit the project file?

I was working on a rather heavy and demanding movie that was forwarded to me, but I had a meeting to attend. So I rendered a preview of the larger and more demanding sections of the timeline. I then saved the project so that when I revisited the project later after a meeting I'd have somewhat smooth sailing. BUT upon reopening the file I discovered that the previous preview I generated was no more.

Is this expected behavior for PD? :/

Thanks in advance.


*********edit
Correction.. My bad. It does seem to save the rendered preview with the project file. For some odd reason I closed and reopened the project and the previewed frames reappeared on the timeline. And seeming all 3 quality previews were saved. Certain portions were rendered to low quality, others to normal, and yet others to high quality. All three were retained. So this is at least a good start to the morning
Hi Guys Thanks for you efforts. But… 
Dafydd. Thanks I appreciate the ideas but on point

#1. That’s not how I mean. What I mean is that if I’m specifically working on one part of movie. I should be able to easily select that section of the timeline which could contain 2 or 3 clips, part of the music, and an effect or two and work simply just within that section to adjust timing against music and effects and such. Ideally when one hits stop it goes back to the beginning of that section and NOT the beginning of the whole movie. And it should also “stop” at the end of that selected section not play through to the end of the movie. Hitting “pause” stops the play head of course right where it is, but to hafta constantly be manuvering the play head is a nuisance. Think of it this way, its like the way PD can isolate clips and play just the clip. There should be another option, as it stands now you can select for playback “clip”, or “movie”. There should be a 3rd choice. “timeline selection” so one can isolate specific sections that may contain more than just one clip.

#2 No that’s not what I mean, PD has a 2500 image import limit or something like that. So you can’t use that sort of method. A simple 3 minute movie in the form of an image sequence is 5400 frames. And there appears to be no handling of image sequences in PD at all. Often within other applications or from other studios for example I may receive a preproduction image sequence. Basically a movie in the form of lossless or uncompressed still images, anywhere from 2000 to 50 thousand images or more. This is to retain the original quality. One does not want to re-encode something repeatedly. For example to bring an mp4 or what not into PD then re-encode it again is not always a good idea. By the end of the production if something’s been re-encoded 4 and 5 times the final quality will suffer greatly. These image sequences typically are brought into the editor on the timeline for further work and to ultimately become encoded and bound into the container (.mp4, .avi, etc) it’s clear that PD simply has no consideration for importing and or exporting image sequences.

#3 if using a background image really is the answer that at least is some sort of a “work around” but not ideal.

#4. A bunch of blank tracks you can’t remove is not professionally logical, it’s a waste of very valuable screen real estate, . . And right click simply won’t remove them unless my PD is broken. If I open PD it gives me a default layout of 8 tracks, there is apparently no way to remove these tracks. “Remove empty tracks” simply does nothing at all to these tracks. I understand that most consumer oriented users probably just figure that’s the way all editors are and give it no thought at all, but truth is its quite “different” and definitely not ideal.

#5 see Rons second post.

Thanks for your time and efforts DafyDD Its appreciated.. I think it’s safe to say PD just doesn’t do this stuff.
Ron also thanks for your input as well, I guess I’ll just hafto work projects with 2 files, 1. The master project and 2. A fodder project that can be stripped out and down to the part I want to produce and share with a client for and as a topic discussion. When I need to “share” just 40 seconds of a 5 minute movie to illustrate a transitional idea or whatnot I’ve been having to “capture” the pd preview window using camtasia studio as a work around which is also a bit of pain.. I think a duplicate project that can be torn down is a better idea at least. But it’s just crazy to not be able to render just frames “455 to 950”, it’s even crazier to not be able to render to the resolution of your choice…

Anyways thanks again I guess I’ve got my answers, even if I’m not pleased with them, what does one expect for a hundred bucks I guess, its just strange that free software that's been around forever such as "virtual dub" for example can do all of this. Yet PD cannot. Cyberlink should spend less on marketing and more on bringing PD up to speed. It has some very nice features, but also lacks a good amount of very important ones as well.

Best regards
T.
**post edited to make it "easier on the eyes"...
Sorry didn't have too much time earlier,

But just to offer some more information to those who are having the “simple” version of this issue.

One can trouble shoot it easily.

Typically it seems to stem from a corrupt install of “apple application support” (or some component of).
When I said “install PD with quick time”. And then “update” quick time. What I meant is actually install the full boat PD including QuickTime. Then go to apple, download the latest QuickTime install and allow it to “remove” the previous install and reinstall itself entirely (repair/modify will not work to solve the issue), where by reinstalling “apple application support”. I assume one could likely skip the PD QuickTime installation and just do their own QT installation after but this I have not specifically done.

So.

**To reproduce the issue on a PD installation that’s not experiencing the problem (assuming QuickTime was installed) one can go into the control panel and uninstall “apple application support” and you should receive the error from that point forward when starting PD.

If one is already suffering from the issue its easy to confirm the source of the problem by going to the control panel to see if “apple applications support” is installed. If not then there's your problem. If it is installed then uninstalling QuickTime completely should at least allow PD to start without error. This too will confirm the issue.

If that’s the case then you simply reinstall QuickTime in its entirety allowing it to remove the initial installation first.

This for me is 100% percent reproducible on windows 7 64 bit systems. (although I am not certain windows 7 or the fact that it’s a 64 bit system are relevant to the issue).

Im inclined to think that the QT install included with download version of PD is possibly corrupt and/or mildly damaged.. Either that or the qt install included with PD is just outdated and not handled well by 64 bit systems. I have not checked that personally. I have only solved the issue then moved on.
You hafto do the install with quicktime. Then update quicktime. This I've experienced on 3 seperate 64 bit systems of my own. As well as with 2 small production studios I work closely with. Thats all I can say is that an update fixed it eveytime on my end. And most likely would fix others.

*edited to correct my sloppy phone generated typo's
True yet you did do everything correctly. Your issue was quicktime. I also am a certified Microsoft systems engineer and administrator. This was not your problem.

But your up and running none the less. So that's good. But its new "consumer oriented" users that shouldn't be trying such impressive feats with the OS. a quitetime update generally will fix this in 2 minutes.
1. How do I loop playback of a selection, not a clip, but a timeline selection that could consist of 1 1/2 clips per say. Going back to the beginning of a clip or the whole movie is time consuming flaw in workflow.

2. How do I import an image sequence? This is a video editor, that's such a fundamental basic function?

3. Is it possible to change the color of the background in the title editor? I can't for the life of me figure out why the title editor is using what appears to be an alpha channel within the editor itself when its only needed on the timeline. Its difficult to work with flat white text in such a work environment. And having to add an background image that then needs to be removed is another flaw in work flow.

4. How do I truly remove empty tracks? the workspace is cluttered with tracks that cannot be removed it seems.? If I'm not using the so called sound track I should be able to remove that track, same thing with the text track and the effects track, as well as the audio track from track one. Is it even remotely possible to have simply one video track without anything else, and I don't mean a video and audio track. I mean quite simply 1 track. 1 video track. When you open PD and use the "remove empty tracks". you should then have no tracks at all.. is this broken? or does cyberlink call 8 tracks "no tracks"? PD opens up by default with 8 blank tracks. I don't understand this logic. Its not standard.

5. How do I render to video just a section of my production? Is it really the case that it wont render to file a simple timeline selection, It must render the entire production? or at beast all one can do is render preview to be watched only on the timeline. Clients like to see updates, they like to review things, they like to participate and make decisions. Power director make its impossible to produce anything other than the complete movie. Whereby making it so you really cant offer much to the client until your done and have rendered the entire sequence. Its just crazy that I hafta use a another program to "capture" a small portion of the PD timeline. This cant possible be correct, right?

6. How do I render to a lossless image sequence. To use the content in another application?

7. How do I render to a custom resolution? If I bring in a video that's 674x344 do I really hafta rencode the whole thing to a canned power director template resolution? That's insane?


And as a suggestion for improving workflow the "effects setting page" should be accessible to the user even when no effects are implemented. One should have the ability to "add" effects within the effects settings page. The effects room is fine, but again its time consuming to dig through there looking for a fade or something simple that you don't have to "see". One should simply be able to "add" it from a dropdown list in the effects setting page. as of now you can reorder the stack, and you can remove effects, you can manipulate effects settings. So this makes no sense to me to leave off the main function which is actually adding an effect.

Somebody help me out here, everywhere I turn in PD I feel like im in prison, I cant do this, I cant do that, its not capable of this, and it doesn't implement that. Its sorta hard to believe this is actually the case. hell even FREE video applications offer most of these basic capabilities... ???? I anticipate this list will get much longer if this stuff really is the case.

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows where all these basic yet hidden features are. :/
Good call Thurston.. The obvious solution..

I hate to say it guys. BUT 99% of the information in this thread is pointless and nothing more than guessing and random shots in the dark.

VERY time consuming shots in the dark too for anyone who tries to follow it. Not to mention that its telling the average person to do things they should not be messing with. I feel awful for the original poster who installed PD like 5 times. The only reason he actually solved the problem is because his quick time was updated with win8 and he doesn't even know it.

In the interest of customer service and accurate information the whole thing(thread) should be deleted except for Thurston's post. The rest is just leading people on an insanely time consuming wild goose chase that has no relevance to the problem. .
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