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On the Create Disc tab, there are drop downs under video and audio settings for format, encoding, etc. But some of them have no options. I can choose widescreen, and Enable True Theatre Surround, but for Video encoding and format, I am only presented with MPEG-2 and HQ-Best Quality. There's nothing else displayed in those drop downs (although I can thankfully check Smart Fit).
When I'm in the Produce tab, I have a WIDE array of choices. I don't understand the paucity of options for Create Disc, when so many of the same parameters would seem to be appropriate.
Is this normal behavior, or something peculiar to my installation?
I was editing away, I had carved up my video (of a play produciton) into clips, and was applying crop.
All of a sudden, Power Tools options just disappears. And I can't put a transition across clips.
If I select earlier, cropped clips, Power Tools reappears.
What gives?
Also, I was trying to trim the video down to fit on a single DVD (by trimming out scene changes and what have you). It's larger now than when I started.
What gives, #2?
Any help appreciated.
I realize this sort of question crops up fairly regularly. But it needs to. The s/w changes, and more importantly, the hardware capabilities evolve. So...
What's the best machine for PowerDirector?
And btw, I also do a significant amount of audio mixing with Sonar X2, so multi-channel audio processing (and response) is also a consideration. Also, may as well assume Windows 7 as the operating system. Macs are not an option. Put more explicitly (and offering a range of replies):
If "money were no object" (ha!), what hardware should desktop have for outstanding, "never lock up" video editing? You know: memory, processor(s), processor speed, disk space, video card, audio support.
What configuration would you consider absolute minimum?
Any brands you would never, ever consider?
Any brands you would highly recommend?
PD 11 killed my desktop last night (or perhaps it was my NVidia card in conjunction), and now I'm ranging my eyes over upgrade possibilities. Thanks for your input.
Chuck "TMI is okay on this one" Puckett
"I don't want to steal the show. I only want to borrow it for a while."
www.puckettpublishing.com
I raised this issue many months ago, but have yet to see it addressed, at least not in any bug fix point releases. I saw another posting just the other day with similar issues, and wondered where Cyberlink was on the problem.
To refresh: I do a lot of live music vids, and use audio mixing board audio to replace the video on the various clips from cameras. I run 2-3 cameras simultaneously, then put the clips on multiple PD tracks, and transition from clip to clip, with the constant music audio track subtending the whole thing. We'll do "synch" mark (rim shot on the snare) to synch all clips. The original problem was that if I synched (using the audio on each track) on a rim shot, the video was not actually synched. In a long video clip (say 20-30 min), it was the original video clip that was not even synched with itself, at least in editing mode: it played fine. I eventually had to manually synch the audio to each clip, watching the drummer raise his hand and inch along until audio synched with video, then split it there.
They may not be a crystal clear explanation. The thing is, for a while, I just assumed it was the editing process that had the synch problem. Now, however, I find that PD drifts the synch in a sufficiently long produced video. I made a video of a whole one hour set from a gig, board audio overdubbing video audio, single camera. I synched up the beginning using my manual method, and it starts off fine. But in the rendered video, by the time I get to the last song, the synch is awful, japanes B movie awful.
Is Cyberlink ever gonna fix this problem? Or is it just too hard? And if so, why? I don't see why there should be any drift in two digital sources.
Thanks for the info. The really surprising thing, I think, is the lack of flexibility w.r.t. menu. That's just plain dumb. And, imho, the default they enforce (additional hierarchy) is the wrong default. Sigh.
As for music Apply, I was trying to leave a background music on the pages that had chapter selections, but remove it from the chapters themselves. But perhaps I misinterpreted what that meant. I basically wanted the music to play when the menu selection was up, but not for the video itself. But removing it from one removes it from the other. In retrospect, I doubt PD would arbitrarily overdub whatever was on the video during the video itself. That's probably not what it does, but the GUI is ambiguous and unclear.
Here's a surprise: when PD renders to write a DVD, it doesn't seem to save away the rendered video. I exited PD and came back to burn a couple more, and it had to re-render. That seems very inefficient. BUt wait, I just noticed there's a Create Folder option. I'm trying that now. I bet it saves the rendered stuff in there. Having grown so use to PD rendering youtube videos to a local file, I guess I expected it do do the same for DVD. And "folder" does not read the same as "file".
Hmm. I am really dense.
I don't usually make DVDs, rather I create youtube targets. But I wanted to make a DVD, and immediately got flummoxed. To wit:
First of all, there are almost no DVD menu templates delivered. The "Download Content" route is maddening. Kept asking me to login (multiple times). No indication how to install the download content (found out by accident). And these things have themes, but no way to search the 5000+ entries based on themes. Really?
Once I got a theme loaded, I applied it, then previewed. Now, I started with a a single project that I had divided up into chapters. But when I previewed, I saw the root ("Bimini Road, February, 2012"), but each chapter was situated below some introduced hierarchical node ("My Videos"). Why wouldn't the chapters just be located root node? And more to the point,how to get rid of the intervening menu node? NO clue.
The downloaded menu template had music (!) that I did not want for each node I did not want (!). I see no way to remove all this unwanted stuff in a global manner.
Not the issue really. There's going to be a local video file generated regardless (default is Produce.WMV).
But it's a two step process. Render, then come back and upload.
Having PD do it was the convenient thing. You know, render & upload, then go do other stuff.
I saw where JimBee2 had experienced double images. As nearly as I can tell, this means you've accidentally clicked 3D somewhere for some clip, and any 3D clip makes the whole video "3D". I noticed that when I modified a clip (seems like it was mostly a Title), when I exited the Modify dialog, the clip was suddenly marked "3D" (it's a little icon on the slip, similar to what's tacked on when you use a PowerTool).
I never intentionally click it, but it's happened so often, I now make a habit of checking the clip in the Timeline after I've done such an edit to see if it was accidentally done.
Not ready to say this is a PD bug, but something is turning that attribute on. Maybe there's a "too sensitive" spot on the dialog, near the Save button?
Youtube has decided that my videos are so outstanding [], or else because I've posted so many... In any case, they've lifted the 15 minute upload limit from my youtube account. Unfortunately, PD10 still enforces it. When I have such a video, only recourse is render and upload it separately. Seems a bit presumptuous for PD to predetermine a time limit, when youtube might change their policy at any time
On the other hand, the time limit is somewhat immaterial, because PD10 has suddenly started to declare Upload Failure regardless of video length. This is only after the upload is 100% complete, THEN I get the failure message (how is that even possible? After PD spent all that time shipping the video up?). I saw a (somewhat confusing) reference to this problem on the forum, but the thread was locked, and the information sounded conflicting. In any case, I always choose Entertainment as the category (category seemed to be a factor). Why the failure?
This is not youtube-related, but it's an irritation. When PD finishes rendering, it automatically adds the newly rendered video as a media file to the project. I looked for an option to disable this behavior, but did not see anything whose wording implied it was related. How does one stop this from happening?
Just verified that latest build (1129a) does not address the video/audio "slippage" that PD10 introduced (video and audio lose sync the further one progresses into a clip), but no matter! That just means we still have something to look forward to in the coming year!
Speaking of which, in the spirit of the holiday, I thought I'd share my latest SAW (Song-A-Week) Video, in fact the penultimate vid of the year, #51. It's a Christmas carol I wrote a number of years ago, a sort of reaction to the lack of new Christmas tunes in the "traditional" style. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukha and a Sincere Solstice to all!
Thanks to YNOTFISH and Carl312: This is exactly what I need.
Had never really been sure what the 3rd tab in PIP Designer actually did.
And had been eternally distracted by the name of the Video Crop Power Tool. You know, "crop" Things are not always what they seem.
"What's in a name? A video crop by another name would surely crop as well."
Wrong.
Was working on a video and realized that I could no longer "make work" the Video Crop in PD's Power Tools. I invoked Premier Elements and used their crop effect to just plain crop the video clip, rendered it out, and then used the resulting clip back in PD.
I must be missing something. The first time ever I tried to us PD's Video Crop, I fully expected to see some way to fence out a crop area, hit Apply and Voila! I would have a cropped clip. Instead, there's some kind of proportional fencing, automatic insertion of keypoints, and unless you fix it, a clip that automatically zooms in over the duration of the clip.
I worked around this when I first encountered the phenomenon, and managed to hobble something together, but it was never what I was really seeking. After being forced to resort to PE today, it occurred to me to ask: Surely there is some way to do a simple crop of a clip, so that only the portion I want to see is displayed, without proportionally filling the screen. The way crop works by default is more like zoom, not crop.
I just wish PD10 would stabilize. Thursday night, I spent hours trying to edit a Title (from a personal template I've been using all year), only to have PD lockup every time I hit the Modify button. Cyberlink received several auto-gen email reports from that experience. Friday night (after loading the latest patch, which did not mention any problem of this sort in the patch notes), I added the same Title template, and voila! Modify worked. Of course PD locked up when I added and tried to modify a Credits template. But it worked the second time, so I guess I have to claim, with the Bard, "all's well that end's well".
Looking forward to seeing whether my audio/video synch problem is in anyway alleviated by the latest patch. Had to match it up manually for my most recent effort. Tried using something called DualEyes (which was suggested on this forum), but found it totally inadequate.
PD is a great program, a great NLE, certainly at the price. But I do hope for more stability.
This has been a pain since I got PD10. I have several video tracks (3-4 usually). After I get them synched with the master audio track (Oh, please, please, please, PLEASE let the latest patch fix the audio/video slippage problem! Although I see no mention in the release notes...)
Anyway, after I get them synched, I unlink the audio from the video, create 3-4 video only tracks, move the video into these, then remove empty tracks. This just cleans up my track space, makes it easier to edit. Fine so far.
But NOW, when I add like a Title or credit, PD just automatically creates a new video/audio track. Boom. No reason. I don't need it, don't want it, have to remove it again.
I've included all my workflow details, whether they are germane or not, I do not know. Anybody else seeing PD pop in new tracks without being asked to?
Just checked: still have the audio/video slippage. So I guess I'm still at the mercy of Cyberlink developers and when they can "Get A Round Tuit". (Used to have a button with that phrase on it. Ah yes, the joys of refined humor )
That would have been swell, but for some reason, PD did not so alert me. If I can get that working, I'm a happy camper OTOH, my camper felicity is somewhat dampened by my failure to see anything in the Patch Details that mentions my problem. Since some of the fixes described seemed relatively minor compared to what seems a fairly significant bug, I have not much hope that build 12 solves my particular problem. But I'll know later today, I reckon.
I just (accidentally, while searching the forum to see if there was any news w.r.t. my audio/video "slippage" problem) noticed that there's a new build available for PD10. The thread in which I discovered this fact was seemingly related to the sync problem I had reported a few weeks ago. Therefore, it may be germane and helpful (I'm downloading it now, so I'll soon find out).
You know what would be nice? Some sort of broadband announcement to the community that a fixes build was available. Not all of us live on the forum: we're off doing lots of other stuff, so we may not see a posting that mentions it.
An email to all registered PD10 users would be nice. Or even a build announcement posting in the "constant" area of the forum. Sibelius's (a first-rate music composition app) forum does that: at the top of the forum topics, there's the list of FAQ and First Timer postings, plus they always put notices of new releases and update fixes.
Just a thought for an inexpensive way to make all our lives easier .
I have posted in this forum about a similar "audio slippage". I sent my technical stuff into Cyberlink (at Dafydd's urging), but have yet to hear back.
I think they have a definite issue in this area for the PD10 release. Something changed in this processing arena, and we need to keep pressing them to address the problem. I do music videos, and I have relied in the past on using the drummer's sync mark (like the way they used to use a clapboard for movie takes) to synchronize 3-4 camera clips. This PD10 slippage makes that impossible now.
Oh. Gee, I was kinda looking for an acknowledgement, like "Got it. Working it."
Whatev. Turkey time coming up, and (pour moi) the Alabama-Auburn game, and seeing what insanity the BCS will produce amid this SEC domination.
So I can ease of the video production for a few days Oh, and Roll Tide!! (in case there was any ambiguity).
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