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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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Yeah, CL PD is one of the few editors out there that does the counter-intuitive "top is the bottom and bottom is the top" for video priority. I and others have complained about this many times, but it appears to be here to stay. Shame, really. A simple option in the "preferences" would be fairly easy to implement I would think.
I'm pondering whether this upgrade is worth it for me, as PD13 does what I want. Do "srt" subtitle files still take WAAAAAAAAY too long to load (like several minutes on a 90 minutes clip)? In fact, just about everything relating to subtitles is EXTREMEMLY slow. Like, Commodore 64 slow. Other programs that specialize in creating and editing subtitles, many totally free, load them instantaneously. And "srt" support is incomplete anyway because tags like <i></i> for italics are rendered exactly as-is instead of in italics, so <i>hello</i> gets rendered as "<i>hello</i>" instead of hello.
If they fixed the subtitle room and added freeform masking (instead of just pre-made shapes), I would totally upgrade in a second!
I might wait for PD15. Who knows?
Russell1967
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I have a laptop with Win7 Home Premium and a desktop that I use PD on with Win 7 Professional. I'm going to try Win10 on the laptop first and see if I like it. But! Before I do, I'm going to use "Macrium Reflect", a disk-imaging tool that used to be free and is excellent. Hopefully if I have to re-install Win7 it will still be valid for updates, etc.
Russell1967
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Well, Windows 10 upgrade is free for Vista, 7 and 8 users for one year, so I might give them several months to work out the kinks. Also, I hear you have 30 or 60 days (I forget which) to roll back your upgrade if you want to if 10 doesn't work out.
Russell1967
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This may not mean anything, but if I remember correctly when you update, it downloads the update file and then installs the new one, BUT! If you still have a previous update file in the same save location it will act as though it updated but it will not. So, before you update, look in the save location to see if there's another 'update file' in there.. If so, delete it or any others before proceeding (You don't need the old ones anyway once you've installed them). This got me by on a previous update.
One way you can tell that this is happening is that the download progress indicator will go to 100% almost instantly. If you see this, you need to delete the update file that's already there.
Hope this helps someone.
Russell1967
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My main complaint with the subtitle editor is that it is extreeeeeeeeeeeeeemly sloooooooooooooow in almost every way. Even just selecting all of the lines of text takes up to 10 minutes (for example if I want to change the font size for all of the lines)! Before anyone asks, my system is by no means "bare bones", so that's not the reason.
Another complaint is that I can not offset the subtitles by a set amount of time, like have them start a little earlier or later. I have to do this in a free external program (which does it within a few seconds at the most).
A third problem is that although PD13 supports .srt files, it doesn't seem to know that an "i" enclosed in less-than-greater- than means turn italics on and the same series of characters with a backslash means turn italics off and just prints the symbols verbatim right with the text. Italics are used when talking is coming from off screen or from a TV, etc.
Anyway, the speed thing is the major thing. It is mind-bogglingly slow. Like, Commodore 64 emulator running on a Sinclair ZX80 slow. And THAT is slow!
Russell1967
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Ok, it worked this time: Apparently I still had a patch file from before in the destination directory, so I deleted it and it worked. Without deleting it, the downloader would not give me the opportunity to change the save location and would not actually download anything (since it sees that I already have the file?)
Russell1967
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Silly question, but, why can't I just do this from within PD13? (I have build 2215 also, even though I downloaded the patch: Strange, the 105MB file 'downloaded' instantly...). If I select 'Update' within PD13, it shows no available updates, even though there should be.
What gives?
Also, should I delete ALL of the .ini files in the given directory (There are 8 different ones in there, "Item0.ini" through "Item7.ini")?
Russell1967
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It seems to work fine for me - standalone and within PD13 - so I'm not going to worry about it. I have the license key saved if I ever need it.
Russell1967
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PD13 Ultimate comes with proDad Adorage pack 9 and 13 (which are combined into one program). After installation, the installer for Adorage asks if you want to run the program right away since it can be run as a stand alone program as well as a plug-in. It seems to work fine, and I can see the #9 effects and the #13 effects nodes in the program. I haven't used Adorage within PD yet. I just can't figure out why CL sent me a license key for it if it's not needed. No big deal as long as it works, I guess!
I looked all over the standalone program, Carl, and found nowhere to enter a license key. I can't imagine they would make it this hard to find if it's required, though.
Maybe it'll ask for it later?
Russell1967
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So I bit the bullet and upgraded to PD13 Ultimate with Adorage. On CL's download page for the 5 separate files, they have a serial key for PD13 and Adorage, but when installing Adorage it never asked me for it, and I don't see a place to enter it in the stand-alone program. According to the online Adorage manual pdf:
During installation, you are prompted to enter a licence key. If you have received the software via
download, this licence key was included with the e-mail sent to you providing download instructions.
I was never prompted for that license key. Anyone else know what to do?
Russell1967
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I'm on version 12 still and it currently meets my needs. And, my version has partial multi-monitor support (although, as you point out, it doesn't always seem to remember the window locations the next time you start PD - Perhaps a "Save Workspace As..." function would be useful here?): The preview window can be detached and moved to your second monitor and made full screen if you wish, freeing up some space for the various rooms and timeline, etc.
I've had only a few crashes over the years, believe it or not (unlike when I had a certain other NLE that rhymes with "Finnacle" and used to crash very frequently...)
Russell1967
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Yeah, no 'must haves' for me on this version. I was excited, at first, to see there is a 'Transition Designer', although it seems to just use the color gradations in a source image (exactly like now), albeit with slightly more control/options. I would have liked to see even more openness - like using animated images for transitions, etc.
PD 12 works quite well for my own personal needs, so I'll probably skip this version and wait for v14 - with fingers crossed.
Russell1967
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I and I think others have mentioned this before, but it would be very useful if PD had a 'verbose' option or some sort of on-screen logging of exactly what it is currently doing, so that it might be possible to say where (and why) it is hanging up at some particular point. I've had 3 hour renders that resulted in a single file of zero bytes in length! And one time a 3+hour render of a 20 minute video that produced a 67GB video file! Anyways, sensible error messaging/logging would be very handy!
Russell1967
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@Kyle 40: "ALSO.... is it possible to click on a clip in the timeline to find that media in the media content bin?"
Unfortunately, no, I don't believe so... But agree that this should be the default behavior. Especially, as you say, when you have a lot of clips in the media bin.
By the way, this "resetting back to the first row" behavior can also be seen in the subtitle editor and is also very annoying (More so, in fact, because a typical video production can have HUNDREDS of lines of text or more, easily).
The good news is that these are extremely easy fixes that Cyberlink could put in a "patch release" before the release of PD13... hint hint. I hope CL reads these posts...
Russell1967
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It's about choices. That is, Cyberlink (or any other company) has to weigh cost to add lots of functionality versus keeping the price point at a level that the average non-professional video user is willing to pay. Plus, to keep us "coming back", CL adds just enough new functionality to each new version. Would people be willing to pay more for premiere-like level of functionality? Probably, but who knows? Maybe they could have a "Professional" level version for $100 more that has higher-level features?
Maybe they should do a survey to see what we'd be willing to spend. Because I like the way PD is set up, I certainly would pay more money. How much more? Depends on what I get in addition to the current high-level PD.
Russell1967
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@Kyle: I don't have AudioDirector or ColourDirector, so I don't know what the current workflow is for editing video audio or video color, respectively, so I can't say whether or not it would confuse that process to have multiple videos loaded (in parallel, I guess?). However, if the user has these tools (AD and CD), it wouold be cool if the features of those programs were incorporated directly into the PD's UI so the back-and-forth isn't necessary.
@mbdh2014: I agree, but keep in mind that Premiere is, like, $600+ and PD can be had for well under $60. But your point is well taken.
Russell1967
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Well, in a few months or so CL should be releasing PD13 so we can see what they've been working on the past year or so... Hopefully, '13' is the lucky number.
To be honest, I generally don't use PD12 for the final DVD/Bluray setup and burn (I have another one I use specifically made for this purpose that, although slightly more technical to use I'll admit, is MUCH more powerful and flexible in this area). For just about everything else, though, PD is just the ticket.
Russell1967
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BarryTheCrab: These kinds of interface problems often occur when a company uses their own in-house designed user interface instead of the native OS's GUI elements (They're sort of having to re-invent the wheel, so-to-speak, and so problems like this crop up). The funny thing is, though, is that usually companies usually do the custom interface thing so that their interfaces look the same on multiple platforms (like Mac OSX, Linux, etc). In CL's case, I can't think of a reason why they decided to do it this way, since PD is only available on Windows (as far as I know!).
Anyway, using Microsoft Window's own GUI elements they could get it to look and act about 99% the same as it does now, but would *probably* behave better, since it has had many generations of OS versions to fine tune it.
Russell1967
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Carl312: Yes, a logging window giving (optionally) verbatim details of what the program is doing would help to find where the problem is. Sort of a debug log. Consumes almost no processor power, is easy to add - programmatically speaking - and extremely useful when there is a problem.
Russell1967
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I sure hope Cyberlink reads these forums for suggestions/bugs/complaints (of program functionality)
Russell1967
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