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I haven't spent much time with the new LUTs but I do see what you're saying. A few thoughts:
Use Undo/Redo (Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y) after applying a CLUT while previewing the clip to instantly see the difference. This also works if you've tried various CLUTs as only one can be applied at a time, so Undo/Redo will cycle through them all.
For a more muted impact, you can place 2 copies of the clip on the timeline and apply the desireed CLUT to one. Select the second copy as well and use the Color Match tool to copy the color of the "overcolored" clip to the second copy, then use the Level, Hue, Saturation and Brightness controls as needed to get just the right look.
Finally, I guess I'm not quite clear on what you're referring to as a time-shifted clip, but the quick answer for any effects that are hard/impossible to apply when other edits have been made is to produce the clip first so the edits are "baked in." You then have a plain, new clip with all the hard-to-process changes already made, so you're free to do anything else with it on the timeline.
Thanks Opto. The undo is a good idea. Didn't think about that. My description of the multiple timeline was essentially what you described. Just painful. If there was an option in the Effect to simply set the Opacity, that's all that's needed.
And finally, ya, I ended up making all the edits and then applying the color grade. Again, definitely more work than I would have wanted but it got the job done.
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I really want to use LUTs now and again but they are quickly falling out of favor, especially in PD 19. I'm pretty sure, in PD18 you could have a clip in your timeline, go into the LUTs (which I believe were in the Blending Mode for some of them), click on a LUT and you'd see them previewed immediately on the freeze-frame in the Blending mode. You could cycle through them rather quickly to see if you liked them or not.
Now, you apply them in the FX choice (which definitely makes them easier to find) but you don't get a preview until you drop it on the clip. Then you have to evaluate it and if you don't like it, drop another one on the clip and so on. If none of them suited you, you now have to do two extra steps, go to Effect and then remove the LUT. I don't know. Going into Blending Mode was a drag I guess but I could cycle through a dozen looks in a couple of seconds.
But now the biggie. You can't change the opacity of the LUT. Most of the time I find the LUT is way too strong. I found a workaround here. Put the clip on two timelines and lower the opacity of the one track. That works until you want to use a Time Shift. You can't apply a LUT to a time shifted clip.
It's just feeling like apply a LUT is more trouble than it's worth. Any words of wisdom in a technique that I'm not aware of?
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Kind of depends if you are referring to Lens Flare in the "Blending Effect" tool, if so that's in "Tools" menu above timeline or in "Plugins" menu. If you are talking about the Lens Flare Fx, it's in the Fx room, easiest to just type lens in the search field with "All Content" selected and you will see the Lens Flare Fx. Light Leak can also be a Fx from BorisFx, found the same way.
Also depends if you have the annual PD18 or subscription version as they moved some menu items around as shown here: https://help.cyberlink.com/stat/help/powerdirector/18/enu/01_01_02_whats_different.html
Jeff
Thanks for the reply. Your message pretty much sums up the issue. Are you talking this, or that, because they are in two different places. I was referring to the Lens Flare Blending Pack, not Fx. As you say, it's in the Plugins menu and that's my point. If the pack description would have said, look in Plugins > Blending Effect, I would have found it very quickly. I don't use that menu choice pretty much ever so I thought Blending Effect was the same as Blending Mode. And I do have the subscription so again, if it's different, then a line item would still be nice to say where to find it. Instead I spent an hour looking for it.
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This isn't the first time I've asked about the downloaded packs. I don't understand why Cyberlink can't include a simple sentence saying where to find the downloaded pack. Specifically. Like in the Transition Room, in some Enhancement. I've spent 1/2 hour looking for the Lens Flares from the new Blending Pack and the only ones I found are in Particles > General and those are not what I've seen in the demo. Am I that dense that I have trouble finding and using these or is it simply lack of documentation?
I finally found it. It's under the Plugins menu > Blending Effect. If there was a line item on the description page, this would have saved me an hour of frustration.
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I am always having the same problem. These packs get installed and it's like an easter egg hunt. I looked at your document and first, it's not totally current which is a problem since the pack I can't find is the Lens Flare Blending. Second, I'm looking for the puzzle piece icon and it doesn't exist anywhere I look. I installed the Light Leak pack to ensure that maybe it only shows if you have the pack. Nope. I still can't find it. So this isn't really very helpful. In the Edit window, click the puzzle piece. Where would I find this puzzle piece? Argh. Very frustrating.
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This isn't the first time I've asked about the downloaded packs. I don't understand why Cyberlink can't include a simple sentence saying where to find the downloaded pack. Specifically. Like in the Transition Room, in some Enhancement. I've spent 1/2 hour looking for the Lens Flares from the new Blending Pack and the only ones I found are in Particles > General and those are not what I've seen in the demo. Am I that dense that I have trouble finding and using these or is it simply lack of documentation?
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Got it! That's cool. Thanks.
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I think I've got it going in the right direction now. There is no way to delete a message out here so I'll just reply to it. The way tracks work in PD is just enough different than Vegas Pro to throw me for some loops. It seems like I had mostly an ordering problem. Once I got them in the right order it seemed like things were coming together much better. Sorry you had to read the original topic.
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OK, I found it. I knew I saw and used light leaks before. It's in the Blending Mode tool. Having just a quick paragraph in the pack description would have saved me 20+ minutes of trying to figure out where to find these.
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I don't know why I'm having so much trouble with these packs but some documentation, any documentation, would be helpful. I installed the new Light Leaks pack from Application Manager into PD 365. I can't find them. After my Action Pack incident, I wrote down the counts of each library and not a single one has changed. Fx, PiP, Particle, Transition. Where am I going to find these? All I know is that the pack has 12 Overlays so I expected to find them in the Fx or PiP room. Thanks.
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I want to be able to overlay a video on top of another. I do not want to BLEND the two. I see how to do that. Instead, this second video should overlay my video and have transparent areas. Basically like the PiP objects. In fact, there is a specific one that might illustrate the point. Polaroid tree. It's an animated video that has holes for the video underneath to show through. What I'm using is much more complex than just a static hole though. It might be something like colored flowers dropping from the top of the frame to the bottom. I want the flowers to be 100% visible and my video behind it, where the flowers aren't, to also be 100% visible.
If I was in Vegas Pro, I'd drop in my overlay and set the Track to Mask mode with an extra setting or two and be done with it. I simply can't find any information that gives me a hint on how to achieve this so any tips are appreciated.
PS. In some cases my overlay may be a grayscale video, in other cases it may be colored with say a black background. I tried the Chroma Key and it sort of worked. I had a black and white clip. If I set the Chroma Key to white then my video showed through everywhere it was white. The only thing I couldn't do was change the black areas to another color. But this was a simple case. So again, I'm probably looking more for some direction than an exact answer. Thanks!
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Oh my. I didn't realize there were two versions. I think I started with the transition and somehow found the fx. That being said, I still think I would need to have some saved transitions. I'd like them to have a certain duration and setting. Apparently Keyframes are not possible on a "true" transition (at least Blur of which I'm looking at now).
I looked at the nested project earlier and it didn't seem to make sense. What I would use a nested project for is something like my standard intro. Something self-contained. That being said, you cannot drop an fx on an empty timeline. You need content. If the intent is to blur a clip in the main project...well, I don't even know where to start. I'm not sure I need you to take the time to explain it (right now) but I appreciate the nice detailed answers.
I'm rereading your message. If I understand it correctly, I can drop in the expanded project, which would have the effect I want, and I could then do a copy/paste. Eventually, I'd remove the project as I didn't want it rendered (because it would have content only for the sake of getting the effect to render). Did I get that right? I think I could live with that as my project would have a very specific name to make it easier to find.
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First, thank you for your reply. It definitely gave me a thing or two to think about. Yes, let's get on the same page because I'm guessing I'm not doing anything you don't already know.
To modify any transition, drop it on your timeline and double click it or click Modify. From there you can set Keyframes. I set a Keyframe to be slightly blurred at the start and grossly blurred on the last keyframe.
You can copy and paste the transitions also but I think I understand where your confusion is. I'm using it as a post clip transition which is to say, I've dropped it on the FX line so it doesn't span clips. You can then right-click to Copy. I see that option is grayed out if I'm using it as a true, multi-clip transition.
I'll have a look at DZ and see if there is something like what I need. Hopefully, it's as simple as your nested project but I haven't got into that area so I have no idea how that works. I'll look into it.
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I'm pretty sure I know the answer but I haven't seen it addressed in a couple of years so I'll ask it again.
I've modified the Blur transition to be a specific duration and added some keyframes. I'm going to use this over and over again on many projects. Being able to save this would be a godsend. Best I can tell, I can only save alpha transitions correct?
I can create a project of nothing but transitions, essentially making a library, so I can copy and paste when I start a new project. The downside to this is I have to close the current project, open up the transition library project, copy the transition and then reopen my current project because I can only have one copy of PowerDirector open at a time. This is probably faster, and certainly less error-prone than trying to recreate them but...
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Thank you thank you thank you! I spent maybe 30 minutes or more trying to figure it out. I'm not sure why it's thrown in with the regular stuff instead of broke out. Being as it's my first time in the program, I wouldn't have noticed if they were new or not. That's also why I started by just installing 2 packs, not every pack available. Thank you again!
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I'm using PD 365 and installed the Action Pack and Action Pack 2 packs through the Application Manager. I see all of the Action Pack 2 items (Pip, Title, Particle) and I see the 5 Action Pack Titles but the 5 Action Pack transitions are missing. How do I get them to show?
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Both excellent answers. Cutting edge again...Argh. I spent the 80's and early 90's on the edge and now I'm much more conservative. Heck, I just went Vista 2 months ago. I thought AVC was mature enough to go between products.
I didn't realize YouTube took those files directly. That makes perfect sense why PD outputs in that format. Looks like MPEG-2 will be what I use if I want to edit my PD files. I bring them into Vegas because there are many more tweaks I can make in that software. I love the Video FX in PD7 though and Vegas doesn't have stabilization!
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I guess I didn't really understand what I was doing in the Trial version. I was looking at many products and I probably got confused. Regardless, I've settled on PD7. I've taken my 720p video and now I'm trying to output to MPEG-4 and all I can get is a useless m2ts file as output. I've read what I can in the forum and it seems like maybe I'm stuck. The m2ts file will not import to Sony Vegas 8 Pro nor will it play on my Vista x64. I can import it back into PD7 and it's fine. My alternative is to use/BUY a convertor. Uh, why? PD7 should have made a useable file. I mean what the heck am I supposed to do with the raw m2ts file?
Now maybe my solution is not to "want" MPEG-4. I thought it was the way to go because it would create the smallest file with the best quality. If I go MPEG2 then I see that I seem to lose audio quality (which probably isn't important since the camcorder sound can't be that good anyway). So my questions are:
1. How do I get MPEG-4 in 720p or greater that I can play in QuickTime/ IE, etc out of PD7?
2. Do I get better or worse quality by going to AVI or MPEG-2? It seems I certainly get a larger file.
3. PD7 outputs the m2ts file. Now what? They allow us to create it for some reason. What am I supposed to do with it? Store a collection of them for later reimporting back into PD7 to make a disc or another video? I don't get it and obviously documentation is NOT a Cyberlink strong point.
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