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Windows Media Player maintains the original aspect ratio when it plays the file. When I play it on my TV it appears with both sides squashed horizontally as it should. I don't know what changed, because Windows Media Player still shows older files as half width when it plays them. So the problem isn't that I can't produce half width SBS files, just that I can't tell they are half width when I preview them with Windows Media Player. That's less serious, though it's still an inconvenience. And I have no way of knowing whether Windows or Cyberlink is responsible for the change.
Fabbian
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I've done it before but now I can't produce a side-by-side half width file. On the Produce screen I have selected the 3D tab, H.264 output, MP4 format. Instead of coming out half width the file comes out full width, which plays as half height when the video is scaled down to fit the screen's width. Has anyone else seen this? Is there something I'm overlooking?
Fabbian
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Dafydd, I have attached the file dxdiag produced as fgd3dxdiag.txt. It will probably tell you I can't run PD13 on my computer, but I do it anyway. I appreciate all your help in getting me started with my project.
Neil, thanks for the pointer to your tutorial. It was very helpful.
I finally finished my project and am very pleased with the results. I learned a lot about using PD13. I also discoverd one mistake I made shooting the event--I should have kept all three cameras rolling through the entire event. I was able to use audio analysis in the main edit window to synchronize the files from the two continuous cameras but I didn't have much luck with the third camera which had a lot of short clips. I think there just wasn't enough audio information in the short clips for PD13 to find their match in the longer clips. I believe if I had just three clips of the entire event the audio analysis would have been able to synchronize all three.
MultiCam Designer didn't work for me. I think my computer just isn't powerful enough. With multiple video streams I could only preview for about five seconds before the video stopped and all I was previewing was the audio. When I stopped the audio playback by clicking the Pause icon the play head jumped way ahead in the video. MultiCam Designer relies on a solid preview playback for you to select different cameras at the appropriate times.
So what I did was add two tracks before the fx track. I put the two clips from the camera that recorded the entire event onto track 1. There were two files because the camera started a new file when the first grew to 4GB. The second camera failed to create the second file at the 4GB mark so I put its single clip on track 2. I then aligned those two tracks with the audio align feature, using track 1 as the master audio track.
I tried placing all my short clips from the third camera on track 3 and synchronizing all three tracks at once. The short clips weren't placed anywhere close to where they belonged so I cleared track 3 and populated it manually. I would preview the clip in the media library. If I wanted to use it I dragged it to track 3 as close as I could to where I thought it belonged. Then I previewed that segment of the timeline with the audio enabled on tracks 1 and 3. Where timing was critical I slid the clip on track 3 later on the timeline until I could hear a word from track 1 repeated on track 3. Then I slid the clip earlier until it sounded natural. I usually did that with track 2 suppressed entirely. I always suppressed the audio from track 2.
When track 2 was enabled it would obscure track1. To show track 1 I would split the track 2 clip and create an opening by trimming the two clips. I trimmed by dragging the end of the clip and then choosing "Trim only" from the pop-up menu. That sets mark in and mark out without moving the clip on the timeline. Having worked so hard to align tracks 1 and 2 I didn't want to move either of them.
Any place I had a clip on track 3 I trimmed away the track 2 content behind it. That seemed to help with the preview. It meant I had content on at most two tracks at any point on the timeline. Track 1 was continuouis. Sometimes track 1 was visible, meaning there was no content on the other tracks at that point. Sometimes track 2 was visibile, meaning there was no track 3 content at that point. Sometimes track 3 was visible, meaning there was no track 2 content at that point. I could have left the track 2 content intact behind the track 3 clips and it wouldn't have affected the final product, but it did seem to affect the preview.
Another thing that helped with the preview was to drag the play head slowly along the timeline. That forces the frames you want to preview to be loaded into memory so they will be available quicker than if they have to be read from disk for the first time.
When I produced my movie I had all three tracks enabled but the audio from track 2 and track 3 was suppressed. All the audio came from track 1. That way I didn't have to worry about matching varying volume levels. It also prevented any audible artifacts when starting or stopping a clip on track 2 or 3.
I hope my description will be helpful to anyone else trying to edit a multi-camera project with a slow computer. PD13 will synchronize tracks using audio analysis in the main edit window, so you don't have to use the Multi-Cam Designer plugin. I understand that was not the case with earlier versions. My two fixed cameras were mounted on tripods and connected to AC power so I had no worries about running them for the entire event. My hand-held camera was running on battery so I stopped recording and turned it off when it wasn't needed. I think that made the job harder. If I were doing the job again I would keep it running continuously even if it was pointed at the floor. It's easy enough to split and trim the footage later to remove anything unwanted. It's hard to get the audio synchronized. With a long running time different cameras may drift a bit, requiring the audio to be resynchronized later. If you have to move a clip to synchronize it with the audio from another track, split and trip the clip first so you only move the part that is out of synch.
If your computer is up to it, Multi-Cam Designer is great. But if your computer isn't powerful enough to run Multi-Cam Designer you can still produce a good three-camera project.
Fabbian
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Thanks for the pointer to the guide It was very helpful.
I was able to produce the file using the settings recommended by "Intelligent SVRT", so that problem is resolved.
I'm glad to learn about MediaInfo and I'll be taking a look at it as soon as I have time. Maybe having more detailed information about the file will help me figure out what the problem is.
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Thanks for the pointer to the guide. That's a big help.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if my computer isn't powerful enough to run MultiCam Designer. It works fine for trimming and assembling clips on one track, adding titles on another, and adding voice-over narration. This is my first attempt at combining three video tracks.
PD 13 will audio synchronize tracks in the main edit workspace. I'm hoping I can put the camera 1 file on track 1 and put clips from the camera 2 file on track 2. As I understand it, clips on track 2 will overlay the track 1 video, giving the effect of switching cameras. Does that sound right?
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Thanks, Dafydd. That's a start. I need pointers to some documentation or tutorials on how to use MultiCam Designer. I managed to import files from two cameras and perform the audio analysis to align them. The results look encouraging but after a brief preview the picture freezes while the audio continues and the timeline marker jumps way ahead. Where do I look to learn more about using MultiCam Designer?
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thomasc, fast video rendering was not checked.
Dafydd, thanks for your suggestions.
1. The video came from my JVC GZ-E10BU camcorder.
2. I don't know what MediaInfo is. What guides? All I have is a PDF file called Power Director Users Guide. It doesn't have anything I can identify as Part J. Nor does it contain "mediainfo" or "media info".
3. I tried producing to H.264 1920x1080 60i M2TS, H.264 1920x1080 30p MP4, H.265 1920x1080 30p MP4, and MPEG-2 1920x1080 60i, all with the same results.
4. I have not tried cutting the file in half but I have successfully produced other files that were longer, so I don't think that is the problem.
I tried clicking the "Intelligent SVRT" button and going with the recommended settings. The program is 21% done rendering the file now. It will be finished in about an hour and I'll know if I got a satisfactory result. All the previous attempts failed immediately, so I'm hopeful this will work.
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I shot a friend's wedding with three cameras, two fixed cameras that ran continuously through the entire ceremony and a hand-held camera for short clips. My intention was to put the media from each camera on its own track, use the audio tracks to align them, and then pick and choose which camera's output would go in the final movie.
For now I have tracks 1, 2, and 3 loaded with the clips from cameras 1, 2, and 3. Track 1 covers the full ceremony (except for a brief time when one of the bridesmaids stood right in front of the camera, then bumped the tripod as she moved out of the way). Track 2 covers most of the ceremony from a different angle but an unexplained malfunction caused me to lost the last ten minutes. Track 3 has lots of short clips showing close-ups, guests, or just a different angle.
My first question is how do I align the three tracks? I thought I read about a way to do that automatically by having the program match up the audio tracks, but I couldn't find it in the User Guide.
My second question is can I lock the three tracks after alignment so the alignment won't be disturbed by subsequent edits?
My third question is how do I choose which track is used at any point in time?
Pointers to tutorials on YouTube would be especially helpful. Thanks.
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Thanks, but no, SVRT wasn't selected in my case. I wish it were that simple. I found a workaround. I imported the file into Magix Movie Edit Pro and rendered it as an M2TS file. PowerDirector seems quite happy with that file. I would still like to be able to work with the original file, so if anyone has other ideas I'd like to hear them.
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The trouble with converting MTS files to something easier for you to edit is the loss of quality. If you are sure you will always be satisfied with DVD quality (not HD) that won't be a problem. But if you want to produce HD video you will need to migrate to BluRay and you will want the MTS files your camera produces. YouTube videos can be as high as 1080p as well, so you will want to stick with the MTS files if you want the best possible quality on YouTube.
I've had good luck editing 1920x1080 shot at 29 frames per second in PowerDirector 13 on a low-end laptop. It takes some patience but the results are worth it. I produce 1080p MP4 files for uploading to YouTube and 3D BD movies on BluRay disks. The 3D BD format is 1920x1080 at 24 frames per second. It automatically plays in 3D or 2D to match the TV's capabilities.
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I have a 4GB, 30-minute MTS file that PowerDirector previews fine
but when I try to produce a movie from the file PowerDirector reports
"Production unsuccessful". (See Production unsuccessful.jpg)
As far as I can tell the file is a normal MTS file, 1920 x 1080
recorded at 29 frames per second. Does anyone have any idea why I'm
having trouble with this file and no others? (See Properties1.jpg and Properties2.jpg)
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Thanks. That did the trick. I adjusted it in the preview window. When I dragged the cue ball handle in the lower right corner it seemed to affect only one side of the image. I had to drag the upper left cue ball handle to get the other half of the image enlarged.
The crop operation works just the opposite. You drag a corner handle in to make the frame showing the cropped area smaller, then it enlarges the outlined area to fill the frame. A bit confusing, but with the help of the undo function I got it sorted out.
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I have a short clip shot with the camera not quite horizontal. I would like to fix it by rotating the clip. Then I want to crop the clip so no black borders show around the edge. I thought Power Tools had the answer. I selected the clip, clicked the Power Tools button and selected Crop. I used the green handle to adjust the rotation angle. Then I used a white corner handle to crop the image just enough to get rid of the black borders at the edges. So far so good. But when I previewed the clip it gradually rotated itself back to the original off-kilter setting by the end of the clip. How do I preserve my rotation and crop settings through the entire clip?
Could you point me to a tutorial on YouTube that addresses that kind of editing?
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Quote:
Is there a way to copy a clip out so that I may convert just that clip to MP4 and replace it? I don't want to convert the entire MTS footage to MP4 and re-import because then I'd have to edit the video to the clip lengths again.
Here's one way you can do that.
- Save your project.
- Delete everything except the clip you want to convert.
- Save the project under another name.
- Produce the current project.
- Load the original project.
- Import the clip you produced in step 4.
- Replace the original clip on the time line with the converted clip.
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Quote:
Hi guys, another question for you here.
I've imported a number of videos into a new project and compiled them, edited, spliced, etc as I needed. Now I am running into the issue where it takes a moment to "render" a portion of the video. But it doesn't do this just once and then finish, it must render every time I play the project. I finally figured out what the green line on the timeline means, and I was able to determine that these render issues only happen for the clips that were originally in the MTS format (at higher resolution); the rest of my project was in MP4 format and I have had no issues with those clips. Also, the source footage for the MTS clips in my library have a little green film icon on the lower left hand side of them.
Why must it render every time it plays these clips, is there a way to make PD13 render and be done with it? Should I convert these clips to another format and re-import?
I'm using Windows 7 with onboard Intel graphics (non-dedicated).
Thanks
Try this. Once you have rendered your MTS clips into MP4 clips import the MP4 clips into your project and use them instead of the MTS clips. I am guessing that you are using the Edit function of Power Director when you talk about playing the project and the playback is slowerer with the high resolution MTS clips than with your lower resolution MP4 clips. You haven't actually rendered the video until you run through the Produce phase. If you produce an MP4 clip from an MTS clip you still have to change your project to use the MP4 clip instead of the MTS clip if you want to get the faster playback. Let me know if that helps.
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They will be both on the final movie, each at 1/2 of screen height. The TV knows how to combine them for a 3D effect.
Well... of course you have to select that from remote - see below Vizio's Side-By-Side or Top-Bottom. I strongly recomend Top-Bottom, on some TV's it has more (double) quality than SBS.
That's a useful trick and you are correct that TAB preserves more resolution than SBS on TVs that use passive glasses. Those TVs use alternate scan lines to display the left and right images so each eye sees a 1920 x 540 pixel image. Each half of a TAB image is 1920 x 540 so there's no further loss of resolution when the TV spreads them over alternate scan lines. With SBS format you start with a pair of 960 x 1080 images. The TV stretches the 960 to 1920 but, of course, it can't supply the additional detail. Once the image is squashed down to 960 that detail is lost forever. Then the TV throws away half of the 1080 pixels on the vertical dimension so you wind up with each eye seeing an image whose true resolution is just 960 x 540.
Active shutter TVs lose quality by showing each frame for a shorter period. Instead of losing pixels along the vertical dimension they lose them over the temporal dimension. The user perceives it as reduced brightness.
Multi-View Coding (MVC) works best for 3D Blu-Ray disks (BD). 3D TVs will detect the 3D format and automatically switch to 3D mode. 2D TVs will play show just the left eye view. It allows you to produce a single BD for both 2D and 3D viewers. If you use either SBS or TAB format for 3D you'll need another version for 2D.
I would really like to find a way to combine video streams from a twin camera rig directly into a 3D MVC format. I know you can render a movie in TAB format using your method, then re-render it into MVC. That process loses half the resolution when you compress the images vertically. If anyone can figure out how to avoid that step I would sure like to hear about it.
I know the original topic was how to combine video streams from two cameras into a 3D SBS movie, but I hope this topic drift is acceptable.
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Well, I said you need to be imaginative and you are talking about paint. You want a step-by-step...
Let's assume you aligned them already. A clapper helps for that.
1. Place the files on two tracks.
2. Select first track (from left camera) and reduce only the height at 50% (you need to de-select the "maintain aspect ratio" tickmark for that).
3. Move the compressed image to top of frame.
4. Repeat for track #2 and move the compressed image on bottom.
5. Render. You have a file in 3D HOU format, that will play on a 3D TV (like my Visio).
Like this one: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PzI_EfbaYU
]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PzI_EfbaYU
[/url]
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Do I understand correctly that you will have two tracks, one with the upper image and one with the lower and when you render your movie those two tracks will be combined?
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Quote:
Fabian, did you look at my post with attachment above?
I did, but it doesn't help me. You've uploaded a screenshot which shows one image over another on a 2D produce page. I can do that in Paint.
Can you describe the process, step-by-step, for taking two video streams, aligning them, and merging them into a single 3D video stream? Either side-by-side (SBS) or top-and-bottom (TAB) would be fine, but it would be better if you could combine the two video streams into a multi-view coding (MVC) stream.
In Magix, you place the two clips on the time line in adjacent tracks. You select the clip on the upper track, click the "Effects" tab, select "Stereo 3D/Properties" from the effects list and select "Stereo 3D pair (left image first)" from the drop-down menu. Now the two clips are linked together. Selecting either selects both. The next step is to align and trim them. Click "Stereo 3D/Aligning". Scroll down to "Shift frames" and click "Automatic". That aligns both clips using their audio track and trims them to the same length. Now you have a single 3D clip which you can edit as you wish. You can align the images horizontally, vertically, and rotationally. You can trim or split the clip as you would with any 2D clip.
My reason for describing the Magix process in such detail is to give you an example of the kind of description I need to accomplish the creation of a 3D video stream from a pair of 2D streams in Power Director. I need more than a picture to understand how to do it. Don't think I am in any way extolling the virtues of Magix over Power Director. Power Director is much faster and easier to work with than Magix.
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Personally I wouldn't want to edit multiple clips that way. Tedious at best. I know of only one consumer app that can create full HD using footage from two cameras and I'm not even sure if the latest version still does.
What program is that? I know Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus will combine two video streams into a 3D video stream. Are there others?
Power Director will align multiple video streams by matching their audio tracks. What would it take to add the capability to tell the program "these streams are the left and right parts of a stereo pair?"
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At this point the consensus seems to be Power Director 13 will create an ISO image of a disk or will burn a disk directly but it will not burn an ISO image to disk for you. To do that you must turn to an external program. Imgburn is one, Windows includes an ISO burning program in some versions and there is a freely downloadable product from CyberLink in the Power2Go pack that will do the job.
Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/
Windows ISO burner: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/burn-a-cd-or-dvd-from-an-iso-file
Power2Go 10 Essential: http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/trials/power2go-platinum/download_en_US.html
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