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Also a note on hardware.
I had to change out video cards to get away from the preview window going black and nothing playing but audio.
Changing from a card with 256MB memory on it to an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT with 512MB helped a lot.
I could not edit the full qual my cam would do in another package, and although PD7 would try it wouldn't display video from the timeline.
The graphics card change solved both problems.
Sounds like with your P4 you may still be editing in SD. It may just barely handle HDV but most likely you'll need to move up to a dual core processor based machine. If you are even entertaining thoughts of moving to "tapeless" HD you'll likey need to bypass the dual core and go right to FAST quad core.
Facts of life.
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I think this was a problem in some older builds of PD7. I encountered it, too, but things didn't get out of synch until about 9 minutes in or so.
The cure was to download the latest patch to build 2227c. Of course I had to start over on the timeline.
You might try "locking" the audio track and try sliding part of the video and see if you can get it back in synch. If sliding the video seems to try to leave a total blank space on the timeline which PD7 may not let you do, you may have to insert something like a black colorboard which you keep adjusting the length until the video and audio come into synch.
Work with a "stretched" timeline so you can make adjustments in small increments and when done you can "cover" any black with a video "cutaway" placed on the PIP track.
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Quote:
Thanks for the reply. You would think with how advanced Power director is, that it would have something simple like a "quick" transition Fade In/Out, like Windows Movie maker.
Well, in a way it does. The "fade" transition does double duty in that it works as a fade transition when used with color boards and as a cross dissolve when dropped between two video/image clicks.
Once you know this and do what you need a time or two it kind of becomes second nature.
One advantage. Fade to black is one effect, fade to white has yet another psychological "feel" to it. You merely change the color board to get the effect you want. A fade to red may have yet another "feel".
The programmers gave you more control in one transition.
I kind of like it.
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Try putting the black color board on the PIP track. Expand it till it completely covers the main video track. To have it fade in and out double click on it and the PIP editor opens. Above all the mask overlays you have 2 buttons, click on the right one (PIP motion properties) and at the bottom of the motion properties choices you have two boxes to check.
Fade in and fade out.
Adjust the length of the black color board to cover the video on the main track as desired. The color board clip should have no audio track, if there is one be sure and mute it. The audio on the main track will continue uninterrupted.
Then you can add a title on the title track below, edit it and trim to length, and add any effects (fades or whatever) by clicking the effects button in the title editor. If you're confused on this part check out the "Titles and tips" tutorial on youtube in the cyberlink channel.
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Many NLE's will not let you create a "blank" place on the video timeline, this is because if you could this begs for serious synch issues.
Two ways you can do what you want. If the video you want to "drop in" must synch up with a specific music beat, magnify the timeline until you can place the timeline marker or "scrubber" right on that specific spot after you "mark" the video clip as if you were going to trim it. Lock the music or audio track so it cannot move and split the video clip at the exact "insert" point.
Now insert the desired video clip and trim it as desired.
A second way is to use a PIP track to drop the inserted video clip in place. Expand the clip on that PIP track until it covers the original image and trim to fit so it does what you want (and mute it's audio). Your audio or music track is not disturbed on the main video track.
Hope this helps.
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Sounds like you fellas may have some registry entries left over that are causing some "grief"
I would try this:
Uninstall PD7
Run Wise Registry Cleaner (A free program from www.wisecleaner.com/download.html )
Then install your purchased version of PD7 and try to run the patch.
You may have some "leftovers" in the registry from PD5 as well, uninstalling a program does not always get rid of all registry entries and the uninstall, install, uninstall, install again routine often attempted keeps leaving irrelevant registry "stuff" there. Then when you try to run a patch that finds this "crap" and "barfs"
Wise Registry Cleaner is a very good little utility and I use it every time I have to uninstall something (after the uninstall). It seems to find these "leftovers" and gets rid of them for me.
Good luck.
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Well done, Cranston.
I enjoyed that.
You almost have a Benny Hill type there.
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My wooden nickle...
...just fell victim to termites...
Cranston. I did look at some of your videos.
Neat stuff, enjoyed them.
Damn, hobbling around with a cane again. Cabin fever bad.
Took a fall Christmas day and somehow got the back of my heel banged up bad.
Gotta get out and do some video or I go NUTS!
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James,
While the SVRT frustrates a lot of folks (and in other NLE's, too) PD7 works quite well with the files from my HF100's.
Most of my distribution is still on standard DVD and those on projects shot with the HF100, edited in PD7, and rendered to disk in SD look quite a bit better than SD from my previous cams used to look.
One other format I render (Produce) to is streaming HD WMV. I used to have to watch those on a 21.6" Samsung monitor using Windows Media Player but there's a new wrinkle on the market.
Hardware Media Player with HDMI connection to your HD TV. I recently purchsed the Western Digital WD TV. This is an amazing little box with 2 USB inputs and both HDMI and composite outputs to TV. You supply and external USB hard drive or other USB storage device with your HD media files on it.
I will eventually move an external USB 320GB drive in by the TV but for now I'm playing high definition content on my TV from USB "thumb" drives.
Don't worry about SVRT, just start editing and having fun with your cam.
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Quote:
For $25 I would have got 4 of their CD's. The songs adusting to the length you need is pretty amazing really.
Acutally they have a nice sale until Dec 31 where 12 of their CD's are $25.99 http://www.smartsound.com/specials/index.html
There always seems to be 16 songs per CD so $25.99 is somethign like $1.60 a track. There's so many things to spend money on. You'd really need to make a lot of videos to make it worthwhile.
With ANY purchase on that special you get SonicFire Pro 5 Express Tracks Edition free. I've been using their music for several years now and they have the most flexible and richest sounding of any royalty free music in my opinion.
SonicFire Pro lets you score the music outside of Cyberlink or any NLE, and gives you much more flexibility, allows you to get the full benefit of their "multi layer" music, and much more than I can type here.
Of the current 12 on sale, I highly recommend "Cinematic Excellence". I've used several tracks from that album. More than well worth the $25 cost, it has a rich variety of tracks from haunting and meloncholy to a couple of more adventurous tracks. If I didn't already have it I'd jump on that one quick.
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Thank you Bif. I appreciate the detailed response. It won't surprise you that I have some follow up questions... :
I am not clear on what an .mts file is. My Camcorder (Sanyo HD1010) produces .mp4 files that I copy over. What am I missing here? Also, the capture option is not available when I connect my camcorder - I need to copy over files using Windows Explorer. That's not a big deal but I don't have the ability to capture sections of the camcorder's file as I would in Capture mode.
You're not missing anything - .mts is the filename extension given the files generated by my Canon HF100, in AVCHD. Some other brands will also generate .mts some will have .m2ts and that has no real impact on you. I believe these may be in some form of MP4.
As far as not having to or being able to "capture" I think you are better off having to copy your files over. Capture can have it's own set of headaches.
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Let's say I have copied a file across from the camcorder and imported into PowerDirector. At that point I assume I still have the full resolution of the file available to me and any trimming, splitting, etc I do in the editing mode is just setting pointers to the content in the clips. It's only when I Produce that I have to make my decisions about the quality of the target format (and potentially lose resolution). Is that all correct?
I believe that is correct but with one caveat. Don't expect to see it in any quality in the edit window. Pretty much all NLE's show you a low res image there. The Power Director Media player will be a bit better but still not full resolution. And I'm seeing some complaints that the PD7 AVCHD rendering lacks a bit. But this doesn't worry me, AVCHD is still a relatively new codec in application and I have no need to render to it anyway.
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WMV is very interesting to me, because everything I do is with Microsoft technology (Windows, XBox, etc). I know XBox 360 supports HD but do you know if I can produce WMV HD files and then stream that to the XBox? That would be a pretty flexible solution, if so.
I don't know. Try it and see if it works. If not, the Best Buy price on that WD TV dropped from the $129.99 I paid a month ago to $99.99.
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The final question (for now!) relates to a title page and chapters. I like the ability to create chapters on a title page but it seems to me that this is really only available for a DVD (presumably including Blu Ray). My perfect solution here involves being able to produce to "some" format where XBox can recognize a title page and allow me to browse around the content, as if I had placed a DVD in its tray. I effectively want "DVD on a server". If this feasible in any way?
Most likely it's not. Menus seem to be available only on disk as far as I know. However the filenames (or titles) should show up as a listing and work somewhat the same way in a limited fashion.
Hope I've helped in some way.
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Mark:
On material that has been shot on HDV or AVCHD I have done the following: Captured HDV (or copied over the .MTS files) and edited, adding titles, transitions, voice overs, and music.
When done produced (rendered) to regular DVD for any distribution I've had to do, and then taken the same project and rendered (produced) to hi definition WMV files that play back using Windows Media Player (and look great, too).
The latest "wrinkle" comes with Western Digital's new WD TV. This is a little box with 2 USB inputs, an HDMI output (also regular composite output for TV's that have no HDMI) that connects to an HD TV. The USB inputs take an external USB hard drive or other USB storage device (I use thumb drives) and allows one to play HD content from the hard drive or thumb drive on the TV.
I tested this with a 26 minute WMV file rendered to 1920x1080 and stored on a thumb drive. Full HD from a thumb drive!
This may not answer all of your needs but may give you a partial answer. Out of Power Director 7 I've tested with a 15 minute HD WMV at 1440x812. Looked pretty much as good as the 26 minute file.
Some are speculating this may allow a lot of us to "bypass" Blu-ray as a few years will likely see most content delivered electronically or on flash media. Sony may have kept Blu-ray prices too high for too long.
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Will customer support or operations produce a succinct training video or step-by-step tutorial for novices, for PD 7 (or any program)?
Hi, Gary.
Already been done. Check here to start:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/3523.page
I'd suggest the youtube option where you can select "Watch in HD" option. You'll be able to see detail better although the files may take longer to load and may halt frequently until the whole thing has loaded.
When this happens to me (my internet connection is only 1.5Mbps) I just open another window and go find something to read while waiting then come back and watch it non stop.
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Before you start PD, using Windows Explorer, double click on the ZIP folder icon which will open the ZIP archive and show you the file icon for the footage.
Drag 'n drop that to another folder where you can find it and import it as media in PD. Then see if you have any better luck. I think you'll find you can move it to the timeline and use it.
Power Director and many other programs don't understand a ZIP archive, you always have to unZIP it. Fortunately Windows does this when you double click on it.
Anybody remember the old DOS days when we used PKZIP and PKUNZIP...Manually?
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Bobby,
Nothing to apologize for. If you made another reply I never saw any but this one.
All I was doing was supplying info and ideas. I've used SmartSound music for a few years now and have looked at other "royalty free" stuff and nothing campares.
I keep purchasing albums and occasionally will purchase a single track that seems right for something I'm working on.
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Quote:
Bif,
Actually it was your posts about your system specs which got me researching computer hardware for my soon to arrive camera. You indicated something about a video memory problem with your old ATI card.
Pinnacle Studio gave me a warning about not having enough graphics memory to edit 1920x1080 (17Mbps) and that hardware acceleration would be turned off. Attempts to continue editing w/o hardware acceleration ground to a halt.
PowerDirector would not display 1920x1080 in the edit window. It would show it if I double clicked on the clip in the media room, but not from the timeline.
Both NLE's would handle 1440x1080 (12Mbps)
Changing graphics cards made simple editing of the 1920x1080 with both NLE's.
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When I was playing the rerendered clips it was produced from AVCHD back into AVCHD and played using PD. That's where I noticed the degraded quality. As for the other output profiles, I didn't know what they were for. I assumed the ones with BD were for blue ray disk, but I didn't consider the others.
Again, an NLE is not the best for playing back and judging quality. What is your final format going to be? Render to that format and use the appropriate player to judge what you are getting.
For instance, I am not planning to go the Blu-ray route until and unless the hardware drops to close to what we are paying for our current players and burners (and media). Unless of course BD really goes full tilt boogie mainstream like DVD is now.
My output is to SD DVD for distribution, and WMV HD on disk and hard drive for those who have a way of viewing it. The new hardware media players open up a whole new avenue.
Back to playing back in PD, most NLE's will have different reduced resolution in various modes. Playback on the timeline, playback from the clip in the media room, and playback in the included media player (best quality there) will all be different. PD is meant purely for editing and producing.
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Regarding your current system, how long does it take you to render your HD video using your quad core setup. For example, 20 minutes of AVCHD video? Is there a noticeable difference between 15 mbps vs. 24 mbps.
For a 26 minute project shot in 1920x1080 17Mbps rendered in Pinnacle Studio 12 to a 1280x720 wmv filetook 12 hours.
A 12 minute project rendered in PD7 Ultra to 1440x810 wmv file took about 2 hours so had it been the above 26 minute project it would likely have taken only about 4 hours.
So PD7 does the faster render. Detail looks to be similar quality on my 42" LCD TV from both files.
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Thanks for the info about the HD video transfer box by Western Digital. How much did that cost at Best Buy?
$129 plus tax. It should start showing up for less on amazon.com before too much longer.
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The price I paid for the little "box" was $129USD plus tax. Real simple, it has no internal storage, you have to supply USB hard drive or other USB device but it does what I want, shows my rendered HD content on a big screen HD TV.
Just thought I'd share...
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The "freebie" selection of SmartSound music is very limited compared to what smartsound offers. Go to www.smartsound.com and find the customer service contact. Leave a message asking to be put on their email list.
Right now they have 12 disks on special for 25%, thats 75% OFF!!! You can click on products/music and the disks on special have $25 in red at the rightmost margin. Normal price is $99.
This special on those 12 ends very VERY shortly, but they will likely run a different 12 at the same price for one week at a time until the end of the year. But watch it closely. I just "snapped up" Richard Band Volume 6 - Family (I have several other of his, Action, Dramatic, Suspense, and the one multi layer disk - Volume 7 Scoring Suites).
Another tip: If you really like the smartsound approach look into SmartSound's SonicFire Pro. This is a standalone soundtrack score editor that now comes in two versions. The ExpressTracks version often comes free with a $50 music purchase, I have the Scoring Edition which costs $99 to upgrade from Express Tracks. Express tracks allows a lot of extra control over the music, Scoring Edition allows even more including "mood mapping" on their multi layer music.
SonicFire Pro works independent of your video software yet allows you to produce a music score that fits specific video sequence length. In Express Tracks you produce it to a time length, in the Scoring Edition you can import a low res version of the video segment you are "scoring" and watch it play to trial music tracks.
Talk about flexibility. Work with the Magic Music implementation of SmartSound music, do it with Express Tracks, or go the whole route with the Scoring Edition.
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Susann,
Pay special attention to Adrian's warning. The IEEE1394 "Firewire" port on many digital cameras can be very sensitive to electronic damage. The only "safe" way to connect or disconnect is with both camcorder and computer turned OFF. Once connected and powered up try not to move the camcorder as any flexing or strain on the cable connector at the camcorder may cause a short. These connectors are notorious for not being strong.
Most DV cannot be transferred from Camcorder to PC by USB unless the camera can be configured to be seen by the computer as another "drive" and then the content may not be recognized by the editing software as a video file.
If your PC does not have the IEEE1394 port, you can usually have the card installed by most computer shops for not too much cost. Look at your USB ports, the 1394 Firewire port is often located with USB but it will be a "fatter" connector and if your ports are identified with symbols the symbol on that one will be different from the USB symbol.
The reason your video camera capture icon is disabled is because PD7 is not seeing a live IEEE1394 Firewire connection (Again BE SURE BOTH COMPUTER AND CAMCORDER ARE OFF before connecting or disconnecting either end).
I know Firewire is supposed to be "hot swappable" but over on HV20.com there are a few discussion threads on "fried" ports mostly on camcorders but occasionally also on the computer.
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A new way for us to play and view our created HD content!
I've been watching the progress of hardware media players that connect to our HD TV sets for the appearance of some that support HD WMV files and other HD video formats. Up until now several players have been available but none actually supported high definition video.
We'll see many configurations but I wanted the simplest possible, something that would let me use my own USB external hard drive(s) and USB thumb drives. And that is just what Western Digital has brought out. Quietly introduced a few months ago, some of the retail outlets don't even realize they have them; Best Buy told me that they had nothing like that yet, but when I told them their web site said they had them in stock and they looked it up they had 5 on hand.
Two minutes later they had four (Took me that long to get checked out).
I hooked it up to my TV with an HDMI cable I had on hand, powered it and the TV up, plugged in a 4GB thumb drive to one of the two USB ports and in seconds was watching a 26 minute 1280x720p WMV file in clear, clean, crisp HD on my 42" LCD TV.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572
I don't have a Blu-ray player, for now don't plan on buying a Blu-ray burner nor pay the price for BD media. I think Sony has blundered by keeping the price too high, Sony is disappointed in the sluggish market reaction in that folks have not purchased Blu-ray players in the numbers they had hoped and I think there is a very real chance that electronic distribution of HD content may overtake the optical disk marketing in the long run. I think we'll see more movies sold by download and on flash media.
And this WD media player may be a step in that direction. At least for me it is a way for me to show/view my produced content in my home.
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You may have to run a registry cleaner.
Do a Google search for "Wise Registry Cleaner", download, install, and run it.
This is a free program and on my system does an excellent job of quickly cleaning up my registry.
Uninstalling a program may remove it from your system but will often leave some info in Windows Registry and that may be where your system tells you the trial version is still installed.
Hope this helps. Post your results here.
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