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Well, it looks like the 'Mask Designer' didn't add much, if anything. They basically just took the masking capabilities of the PiP Designer and made it a thing on its own.  This YouTube video talks about the new features of PD15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fccm4hLAvs0
Russell1967
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Yeah, I am also not interested in 360 video editing, but blend modes and the mask designer might be worth it, depending on how full-featured they are.
For the time being, the titling I have with Titler Pro 1 is sufficient for my needs, but I can totally understand people needing or wanting more capability. As I mentioned earlier, this problem could be easily solved if PD was OpenFX compatible. This would open the door to hundreds of plugins as well.
Russell1967
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Well, PD15 should be released either this week or next week, if I had to guess. Today is the last day of the sale, and most of their releases happen around this time of year.
I hope the "Mask Designer" is what I think it is, and not just a built-in png-type graphic designer (which can have alpha areas, etc).
Russell1967
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Yeah, I have TP1, which I got with PD 12 or 13, I forget which. I think NewBlueFX is probably concentrating on the "professional" market now, so they don't support "the little guys" anymore.
But, if PD could make their architecture OpenFX compatible, it would make it better for everyone: The plug-in makers don't have to custom-taylor their plug-ins for specific NLEs and the customers have a MUCH larger selection of plug-ins to choose from. Not sure how much of a re-write this would be for Cyberlink, though. And to make it still compatible with legacy plug-ins might be more work than it's worth. Hard to say.
Russell1967
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I didn't know that NewBlueFX Titler Pro 4 didn't work with PD14. I see that it's about 3 times more expensive than PD itself, so maybe there just isn't enough of a market for it in the hobbyist NLE market. That being said, though, I see that TP4 is an OpenFX plug-in, so if PD15 is compatible with that architecture - which I believe has been hinted at over the years by Cyberlink - then it might be possible. Making PD OFX compatible would open the door to TONS of fx that are not currently available for it.
Russell1967
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Hey! Good tip! They have the entire course titles listed, which gives us an idea of what is new in PD15, such as "360 degree video editing", blending effects and....(drum roll please...) "The Mask Designer"!!! I hope this is what I think it is!
I expect Cyberlink to make the announcement any day now. REALLY looking forward to that Mask Designer! If it's a spline-type mask designer, I will flip my proverbial wig!
[edit: I see that Cyberlink's "final" sale is until September 6th, so probably immediately following that they will release PD 15.
Russell1967
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Yeah, and optical flow is available as open source code so CL wouldn't even have to research it. There's a free open source program called "slowmovideo" (by granjow) that does some very interesting things for dynamically adjusting the speed of video. As far as I know it's the only free option out there right now.
Anyway, as PowerDirector 15 is due to be released any day now (my guess), really we should be putting in suggestions for PD16 instead. Hopefully Cyberlink reads these suggestions...
Russell1967
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For that matter, it would just be nice to have more control over bitrates and other aspects of video/audio, period. But, I'm sure the reason is that PD is geared towards the consumer rather than the professional and they want to keep things simple.
Russell1967
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What sorts of stability problems are you having? I think I've had it crash maybe once or possibly twice since I've had it.
Now, another NLE, whose name rhymes with "finnacle" is world-famous for crashing. Maybe they've fixed this in the last few versions, but I upgraded through three versions with them and finally said "It's not worth the frustration" and started looking for alternatives....which is how I came across PD!
Russell1967
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Yep, that was what I did. PD14 had some nice, but not crucial, features...so I was going to wait until PD15 came out. But then the deals they were offering were getting better and better until finally they had an upgrade that included PowerDirector 14 and ColorDirector 4 for about half the price of CD4 by itself, so I went for it. I have to say that I'm glad I did because CD4 is a lot of fun to play with and can really lend a professional look to you videos. And PD14 is no slouch, either!
Russell1967
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Well, at first I was going to say that PD14 just came out, but actually - as hard as it is for me to believe - it's been about a year! So, I would say that PD 15 is probably right around the corner (historically they've been released around August-October). Another thing that makes me think it might be coming up shortly is that they've been promoting some major deals lately, which they usually do right before the new version comes out. I waited and waited and then finally pounced on a deal that had an upgrade from PD 13 Ultimate to PD 14 Ultimate WITH Colordirector 4 for about half the price of CD4 by itself!
I hope they have some really cool stuff planned. The user-defined masking tools I mentioned would be SUPER DUPER cool and useful! Even if it is only polygonal (instead of bezier or some other curve model) it would be really nice.
Russell1967
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Well, this feature is there already (sort of...). When you're in the PiP room, you'll notice that in the corners of the video there are blue squares. You can use these to change the perspective of the video. They can even be key-framed! (Click on the 'freeform' keyframer diamond). Let me know if this helps!
Russell1967
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Sorry for the late reply. Once you are done editing in ColorDirector, click the box in the upper left that says "Back" and it will take you back to PowerDirector with your changes in place.
Russell1967
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Just a few things:
The subtitle room supports .srt files but it doesn't understand the / tags which turn italics on and off. Instead they show up on the screen verbatim as "Hello!".
Speaking of subtitles, it seems to me that almost every operation in the subtitles room is unnecessarily slow. Should it really take 3 or 4 minutes to load a tiny text file and attach it to the video? Surely some optimization can be done here. (That being said, I'm thankful that CL PD even supports subtitles, as many other NLEs in this category do not).
When creating masks, it sure would be nice if I could draw my own mask right there on the screen in addition to using the pre-made ones or loading a graphic file from disk.
Some very simple drawing tools like circle, rectangle, line and freehand in the PiP room would be very useful sometimes. Additionally, the ability to edit the draw-on-the-screen lines from PiP after they are made (possibly by editing the curve they follow) would be useful.
The ability to play the video back inside CL PD at slow speed so that when adding beats (manual operation of the detect beats dialog) it is easier to do. This would not affect the actual speed of the finished product. This is only so that you can get the beats timed more easily. Sometimes the beats are pretty fast. Nothing special: 75%, 50% and maybe 25% speed would be fine.
That's all I can think of right now.
Just thought of another one: mp4s (and other types) can have embedded information in them like subtitles and chapters. It would be super nice if, when you load one of those videos CL PD could recognize that and offer to set your chapters using that informaiton and/or use the subtitle information as well.
Russell1967
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Yeah, if the "color picker" is not available through the SDK's interface then there's not much NewBlue can do about it I guess. Still kind of silly that nothing was done about it. I mean, step one of the help instructions says to use the color picker! Helloooo, guys, what color picker? D'oh!
CL supports OpenFX doesn't it? If so, an OpenFX version of that plug-in might behave better.
Russell1967
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Yeah, I think PD users are such a small percentage of their user base that they have not put in the effort to fix these issues. Funny that it has not been brought to their attention (NewBlue). Or, maybe it has but they are not motivated to fix the problem. Kind of a bummer. PD has its own eyedropper in its chroma key, so you'd think that would be available for 3rd party vendors.
Russell1967
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Quote:
Hi Russell1967 -
Probably the "standalone" version of NB ChromaKey Pro has an eye-dropper (or in other NLEs) but in PDR it's gone AWOL!
All is not lost. Here's a workaround I have used in similar circumstances.
First, you need an HTML colour picker - a tiny piece of software that allows to to get the RGB values/HTML code from anything on your screen.
The one I use is Quick Color Picker from http://www.allgraphicstools.com/
When you go to Chroma Key Colour, all you have to do is enter the RGB values.
Cheers - Tony
Thanks! I found a freeware one called "color mania" that (as far as I can tell) does the same thing, but actually allows you to copy/paste the color values into the proper boxes with one click. I'm going to check it out tonight and come back here to post how it works out.
Russell1967
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Quote:
Russel, Have you thought that this question should go to NewBlue?
I don't see any eyedropper either.
Yeah, I tried that. I went to Newblue's website and I either got a message like "ERR: page has redirected too many times" or "ERR: Page does not exist" when trying to get answers from NewBlueFX through their community.
I was hoping that I could find a system replacement color picker (because the NB plug-in seems to use the default Windows system one, but that one does not have an 'eye dropper' either). I found a freeware program called "Color Mania" that supposedly can do what I need and then copy/paste the color into the system color picker. I'm going to try that one out tonight.
PowerDirector's built-in chroma key has an eye dropper, so I can't imagine why the NB one wouldn't. I'll let you know how the workaround works out.
Russell1967
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I just bought NewblueFx's 'Video Essentials VI' through the e-mail promotion ($129 down to $26!) because I wanted their 'Chroma Key Pro' and 'garbage matte' capability (I REALLY wish PD had a masking capability where you can create your own custom shaped mask from within the program - without loading a black and white image to act as a mask). Anyway, I'm playing around with the chroma key, and it seems to be powerful, but there's no 'eye dropper' to sample the key color! Is this a bug or am I missing something? (The help page for NBVE6's chroma key pro says to use the eye dropper first, but it's not there).
Anyone know anything about this, or found a workaround?
Thanks,
Russell1967
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Now don't get me wrong. Overall, PD is excellent in almost every way and I tend to use it more than the other options I have at my disposal (which shall remain nameless). I wish the forum had an official "Feature Request" section that the powers that be at Cyberlink actually looked at. We could even vote on the ones that the people want the most. Talk about giving your clients what they want! And, as we've pointed out here, a large number of the features we're looking for are relatively minor tweaks.
That's my $.02
Russell1967
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To be honest, the minor tweaks we're asking for could easily be released in a program patch rather than the next full version upgrade. And the users would be very grateful.
Russell1967
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