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The links you provided do not provide the functionality I'm looking for. Basically I'd like to load an audio file (for example, a recording of a record) and load it into the edit window and do the following after applying any necessary noise reduction operations. I'll discuss this as if I will be creating a CD, but these days it's really to create a separate file (WAV or MP3) of each song that was on the original record.
1. Identify the beginning of each track. If necessary the space between the beginning and end of each song can be trimmed.
2. Identify the album title, title of the song, and performer(s).
3. Output a file for each track in selectred format (WAV, MP3) using the song title for the name and also saving the metadata for playback on equipment that will display it.
Even when clicking on the CD creation from the file menu, these do not seem to be functions that are available. With all of the noise cleanup functions listed for Audio Director, this basic operation does not seem to be readily available.
Just purchased Audio Director and I can't find any information about how to set up track markers (as well as labeling info about each track like title of song, performer, etc). This is a basic requirement for me, both for converting older recordings (like of a record or tape), identifying the beginning and end of each song, entering the title/performer/etc about each song, and finally producing a separate file for each song (as well as one for the entire set of edited songs). Basically it amounts to editing a recording, then setting up a separate track for each song as if I were going to make a CD, but instead just creating a separate file for each song.
This has been easy to do with the audio editing software I've used in the past (mainly Samplitude), but I can't find any useful references in the help/manual.
I have asked questions related to cropping before and been told that the cropping tool is a quick way to crop but is limited, whichI realized because the window that displays it does not allow expansion of the timeframe for placing keyframes, meaning that you cannot precisely place keyframes in longer clips. Suggestions were made that either the PIP designer or the keyframe button would provide a better way of cropping.
After many tries I cannot figure out way to set up a keyframe to crop an image using either one of these tools. It was suggested that there are tutorials about this, but I have been unable to find them.
Could someone provide the specific links to the tutorials about using PIP or the Keyframes button for cropping? Although I was able to accomplish the editing I needed to do using the crop/zoom tool, if there is a better way that provides additional options (like the keyframe tool would) I'd like to learn how to use it.
QuoteI'm glad you found a workflow that met your needs.
To be clear, a request to customer service/tech support is completely different than using File | Rate Us & Provide Suggestions, and I suggest you use that tool to make sure that your request is seen by the right people.
Can't you pass it along? It is extremely frustrating to try to make this request (which I have tried various ways to make) and be told that I need to resubmit it somewhere else.
I used the group name for those keyframes as displayed in the PiP Designer. Unfortunately, CL doesn't have the word Scale in the Keyframe tool, but the actual controls are called Height and Width, which is the same as in the PiP Designer (shown on the right in the screenshot below):
I agree that the C/Z/P tool is more intuitive, and it also provides an automatic zoom from one crop to another and to/from full screen but that's of little use if you can't find the exact times to make your crops.
Be sure to send feedback to the developers to increase the chances that an expandable timeline shows up in that tool in a future version.
I did send a request, although not sure it got to the developers, since I finally received a reply today that misunderstood what I wrote, as if I couldn't get the crop function to work. So I wrote a reply saying it does work for me but the expansion function should be included in an update of PD.
But I did want you to know that I did finish editing my video using the crop function by just creating short clips. Each time I created a clip (starting at the beginning of the video) there usually was a second keyframe that had a crop. As long as I paid attention to that and modified or deleted it as appropriate, the editing went well, thanks to the duplicate keyframe option that allows duplicating from either the previous keyframe in the clip or the following keyframe.
Hopefully my request will be giving serious consideration and be done!
QuoteHmm, it's almost like you didn't even read my suggestions
Again, there is NO reason to combine clips after they've been split (so stop trying to do that AND if you split you clip according to the scenes you wanted to crop (which means you'll have access to the starting and ending cropping keyframes int he same clip), you won't have the issue of trying to guess what size and position the clip was in in another section.
I'm also unclear on what you mean by "the normal keyframes tool does not include the crop keyframes"
Both it and the PiP Designer have Position and Scale keyframes, which are how you adjust the size and position of your cropped content. Using those keyframes is obviously a different technique than the one used in the C/Z/P tool, but they do the exact same thing without any of the limitations mentioned above.
Overall I think you'll be better off using the Position and Scale keyframes even if it takes a bit of practice to get the hang of it. there are many tutorials her on the forum, on YouTube and in the CL Learning Center to help as well
When I say the "normal keyframe tool" I am referring to the button labeled "keyframe" which is to the right of the tools button and fix/enhance button. The C/Z/P tool is, frankly, intuitively easy to use, but I guess I'll have to look further into the PIP designer and keyframe tools. However, I did look under clip attributes in the keyframe tool and could not find anything labeled "scale".
The problem is that the normal keyframes tool does not include the crop keyframes. If it did that would solve the problem. And not having the last crop (from a previous clip) creates a real problem, as I mention, since with the following clip you are starting from scratch as far as the crop. It also appears (unless I'm doing it wrong) that when you combine two split clips the crop keyframes are deleted. I will try one other thing, which is to set a second crop keyframe in the leadning clip, then set up two crop keyframes in the second clip, combine the two (hoping the keyframes are not lost), and if the crop keyframes are still there define a new clip that starts before the end of the first clip in the hope that the desired crop at the end of the first clip has been preserved. Then I could delete the crop keyframe that was defined at the start of what had been the second clip.
One of the problems is that a clip with the same crop settings for most of its length may be quite long, much longer than is available for setting crop keyframes.
I also assume that this problem (of crop keyframes not being displayed in the keyframes tool) continues with PD 21.
QuoteTo make the Crop/Zoom/Pan tool full screen, click on the Maximize icon at the top right of the tool's window like any other Windows app:
If you're having difficulty finding the exact time to place your keyframes, simply use the Split tool to cut the main video into shorter sections. That won't affect the produced video and the shorter sections will give you much more keyframe placement accuracy.
I decided to try the split tool but ran into another problem. I tried splitting, setting up keyframes, then used combine to remove the split. My keyframes (and crops) disappeared. Tried the same thing but used group clips, still doesn't solve the problem.
Here's the problem
1. Split a clip.
2. Place crop keyframes as needed in first clip. One where you define the starting crop, the second where you want to end up with the crop.
3. Now go to the second clip. You don't have the second crop because it was split. So you need to somehow accurately guess at the initial keyframe crop for the second clip (which should match the second keyframe crop in the first clip) and then define the next crop keyframe.
However, you can't use the combine function to bring the two clips together without losing the keyframes you've defined.
Very frustrating. If the crop keyframe window had the same expansion/contraction ability as the other keyframe window this sould not be a problem. But right now it's a major problem when working with long clips. And I'm working with, for example, videos of an entire 1 to 2 hour performance where the camera was turned on and left alone (no operator), with the idea that by recording in 4K the raw footage can be edited with cropping, zooms, pans, etc easily to create an HD quality video.
Thanks. I didn't think that there was a function in keyframes to do this, but I was hoping I was wrong, since there are so many things that can be accomplished with keyframes and they are so easy to use and manage in Program Director 20. At least now I know and as you could tell from the video I sent you I did figure out a way to accomplish it without the keyframes.
Best wishes for the season and next year!
Bob
I'm now working with a long video (about 90 minutes) and I need do some cropping, etc, during the clip, but when I select crop/zoom, the keyframe window I get cannot be expanded so I can accurately place (and move) keyframes for crops, etc., unlike the keyframe windows used for other effects. There does not seem to be a way to stretch (and shrink) the displayed section of the clip.
It would very helpful (and much easier) if I could work with the longer clip and accurately place keyframes for crop/pan.
If I click on the keyframe button (rather than the Tools button) the crop keyframes are not displayed.
Hi, as far as I know, being able to achieve what you want on a single clip only with keyframes is not possible.
If you use overlay clips and masking, as Optodata indicated, it can be relatively straightforward but care will be needed to make the clips "fit" the overall screen when zoomed and panned, as well as accurately synching clips (in this particular case).
As always, there will be more than one way to achieve your overall aims, such as pre-producing clips and then fitting them into your final production, so others may have alternative suggestions.
Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator
Thanks. I didn't think that there was a function in keyframes to do this, but I was hoping I was wrong, since there are so many things that can be accomplished with keyframes and they are so easy to use and manage in Program Director 20. At least now I know and as you could tell from the video I sent you I did figure out a way to accomplish it without the keyframes.
Hi,
Might I suggest that you take about 20-30 seconds of any HD video you have and just click on the keyframe button and then try to select a section of the video (let's say the center area using the entire width but halfway down from the top and halfway up from the bottom) in the keyframe window without distorting the image. At this point I would bet that none of the functions available with the keyframe window will allow you to do that....but I hope I'm wrong. If you get this to work, then try doing it while keeping the entire height of the video but cutting off part of each side (sort of like a 4x3 frame would be).
Best,
Bob
I should have also suggested that you could just tell me the functions to use and briefly describe how to use them, assuming you get this to work.
Hi,
Apologies for the format, too quick off the mark in the production window.
Any chance you could upload the raw footage from each camera for that performance?
If so I will probably have time on Thursday to do a more comprehensive version of the way I would approach it. I can then upload the project file and you can study it, if that would be helpful?
Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator
Hi,
Might I suggest that you take about 20-30 seconds of any HD video you have and just click on the keyframe button and then try to select a section of the video (let's say the center area using the entire width but halfway down from the top and halfway up from the bottom) in the keyframe window without distorting the image. At this point I would bet that none of the functions available with the keyframe window will allow you to do that....but I hope I'm wrong. If you get this to work, then try doing it while keeping the entire height of the video but cutting off part of each side (sort of like a 4x3 frame would be).
Attached is a H.264 version mp4 so you can play and let PDM know if he provided you a solution.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff for converting the file to a format I could see.
This file does show what I'd like to do using keyframes rather than a mixture of keyframes (for the videos on the top that are just scaled down sizes) and the tool for cropping etc. If you can point me to the function that is availble in the keyframe window that enables the selecting a section of a video (and possibly resizing it), that should solve my question. I understand how to change the position of the selected area, but getting the right section of the video is.
Apologies for the very quick and dirty simulation. I had to use your download, duly hacked and butchered to get bits of content.
Ignore any content synching (obviously I didn't have the full clips) and the odd glitch - but is this the sort of visual effect you are looking for?
If it is, then it's relatively easy to achieve and I can explain with more detail.
If it isn't then I didn't understand the question!!
Sorry!
Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator
Unfortunately, neither one of my computers could play the video of the file you sent, saying it's an unsupported format, although I have no problem with other mp4 files.
I'm attaching a screen shot of what I want to get from the center camera video file, since that's the one that the keyframe editor won't let me do If you look at the video I had sent earlier you can compare this screen shot to what the full screen of that video looks like. Hopefully this will clarify what I'm trying to achieve in the keyframe window rather than splitting a section from the video to use the crop tool on it to select just a section of the video.
QuoteThanks very much for all the details. If the only thing you were looking to do was to immediately cut to that triple view for a few seconds, then trimming the main clip like you did and moving the screen position of just that clip down was the simplest way to go. No keyframes needed at all.
If you wanted to use keyframes, you could have left the clip intact and simply placed a Position keyframe at around 1:59:00, followed the very next frame (1:59:01) with a new Position keyframe with a Y value of something like 0.9.
You'd then place a 3rd Position keyframe (with Y still at 0.9) at the last frame where you wanted to main clip to be in the lowered position, followed one frame later by the final Position Y keyframe with the value set to 0.5. The clip would instantly drop and return at the desired points in the video.
Take a look at the sample project where I used just 4 keyframes to move the main clip just like in your video.
I also used 4 keyframes in the Mask Designer to remove the top part of the lowered clip so it didn't cut off the bottom area of the two upper clips. Open up the Step Down Keyframe project (from the same link in my earlier post) and experiment to see how things work.
The problem isn't moving th clip, it's selecting a portion of the screen like you can do wth the crop/pan/zoom tool. In the function with height/width/maintain aspect ratio if the maintain aspect ratio is unchecked you should be able to adjust the height and width to select an area of the screen (or maybe do it in the freeform function, but there should be some place where you can select a portion of the screen without distorting the video.
What I was doing with the crop tool was selecting an area near the middle of the screen but with the full width of the screen and only part of the height which excluded some of the top part of the screen as well as part of the bottom of the screen. Then I can position that selected area where I want.
If I try the freeform functions they just distort the picture rather than doing a freeform selection area. It doesn't matter if I do it in the display window or by changing the values in the freeform parameters.
QuoteCan you please take a screenshot of your project's timeline?
Use Alt+PrintScreen or the Windows snipping tool (Win+Shift+S) if you have Win10/11, then paste it into Paint or any image editing app then save the image as PNG or JPG. Click on the Attachments button below the forum's text box to upload and share it here.
It would be ideal if you could mark it up showing how you're trying to make it look after the keyframed changes.
Also please note that just like the Crop/.Zoom/Pan tool, keyframes can only be applied to one clip at a time, so if you have mutiple clips and want to shrink or change the aspect ratio and rearrange them you'll need to do that individually.
If there are only sections of an individual clip that you're trying to change, you'll first need to mask that area and apply keyframes to the masked clip, not the original.
Not sure what you mean about "mask the area".
I did achieve the end result (as shown on the attached 2nd screenshot) by splitting the bottom file into a clip of the part I wanted to cloose a section to place across the bottom half of the screen, but I would have thought that the keyframe editor would have that capability within the functions available. I'm including a link below to the complete video (which is less than 3 minutes long) stored on my Google drive so you can see how this fits in to the overall video. I had already produced an edited version of the video using Magix Video Pro X13 but was not able to do a number of things and wanted to use that source material to see what was involved with PD 20 and to learn PD20 since it appears to work better for me for future projects.
What would be very helpful would be a written list of the various functions available in the keyframe editor with a brief description of what each one means and a few words (where necessary) about how to use it. I don't think there is something like that in the help documentation. Brief explanations of the intended function(s) of each parameter would go a long way in helping users, even where a user may need to explore a funtion further the brief explanations would help a user to know which function(s) might be appropriate for their needs.
I've managed to figure out how to do in the keyframe window a number of the functions that I need, but the one that is very important to me but eludes me is the ability to select a section of a video, particularly one that has a different aspect ratio. In this case I want to select a section of the video that is only a portion of the vertical area of the screen, but is still the entire width. The reason for this is I want to use the top half of the screen to display two other video clips, one on the left side and the other on the right side. Those two additional videos may end up as sections of each or just each video scaled down in size to fit the area of the screen.
While this can be done with the crop/zoom/pan in tools, since earlier in this discussion it is said that the keyframe window and the tools option are basically intended to be mutually exclusive, I really would like to set this up as a keyframe within a clip to start and end at specific points in the clip(s). But, as I said, there does not appear to be a function that is available in the keyframe window that enables selecting a section of a video, especially one that does not match the aspect ratio of the video.
There must be a way to accomplish this, but but everything I've tried has failed miserably.
QuoteThere are so many keyframe tutrorials out there I can't begin to point you to any one of them.
What you're looking to do is very simple. This screenshot shows where to put keyframes to hold full frame steady for 1 sec, zoom in while holding the left edge over 1 sec, pan left to right for 4 sec, zoom out while holding the right edge for 1 sec, then playing 1 sec full screen again.
It might look complicated with all my markups but it's very straightforward to make. Here's what the produced video looks like:
You can download the sample project from this OneDrive folder to play around with. You may want to use the ease-in/ease-out options to soften the start/end of the zooms and/or pans, and you can drag any of the keyframes left/right to change the timing.
What would be very helpful would be a written list of the various functions available in the keyframe editor with a brief description of what each one means and a few words (where necessary) about how to use it. I don't think there is something like that in the help documentation. Brief explanations of the intended function(s) of each parameter would go a long way in helping users, even where a user may need to explore a funtion further the brief explanations would help a user to know which function(s) might be appropriate for their needs.
I tried using a "clean" copy of the same clip I was working with before, but just clicked on the keyframe button. What I can't figure out is how to crop the video (at a certain time) so that the cropped video will be full screen. I want tostart with the original video, then go to a cropped area that will fill the screen, then create a panning effect to pan from left to right, then go to the original video that I started with.
When I tried adjusting the height/width it's changing it at the center of the original video and I can't seem to find any way of (in this case) moving it to select an area from the left side of the screen (that I want to be displayed fullscreen). And then further down the fimeline I would want to move the same area to the right side of the original video so I would end up with a left to right panning action that would all be shown full screen.
I can't find an instructional video that address these ideas, which would basically duplicate the results of using crop/zoom/pan but with the keyframe editor would provide the abiliity to do other things.
I just played around some more and may have made progress by changing the position attributes
QuoteThe Crop/Zoom/Pan tool is a self-contained feature and is typically used when you want a quick and easy sweeping path rather than any tightly controlled movement. To completely control the crop size, direction and speed of your pans, use the Keyframe tool on its own.
Basically you need to chose one or the other as they don't share info and trying to apply keyframes to a CZP clip (or vice versa) will only cause frustration.
I tried using a "clean" copy of the same clip I was working with before, but just clicked on the keyframe button. What I can't figure out is how to crop the video (at a certain time) so that the cropped video will be full screen. I want tostart with the original video, then go to a cropped area that will fill the screen, then create a panning effect to pan from left to right, then go to the original video that I started with.
When I tried adjusting the height/width it's changing it at the center of the original video and I can't seem to find any way of (in this case) moving it to select an area from the left side of the screen (that I want to be displayed fullscreen). And then further down the fimeline I would want to move the same area to the right side of the original video so I would end up with a left to right panning action that would all be shown full screen.
I can't find an instructional video that address these ideas, which would basically duplicate the results of using crop/zoom/pan but with the keyframe editor would provide the abiliity to do other things.
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AND if you split you clip according to the scenes you wanted to crop (which means you'll have access to the starting and ending cropping keyframes int he same clip), you won't have the issue of trying to guess what size and position the clip was in in another section.
