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Hello, HeavyTiger!
If you have a disc copying software on your computer, just use that. The retail versions of Power Director come on DVD so simply make yourself a back-up copy using Roxio or Nero or any other disc copying software you may have.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, all!
I've just completed a 1-hour video of a trip I took last Wednesday to the Sydney Tramway Museum at Loftus(an outer southern suburb of Sydney) and a Smartsound track(about two minutes worth) was used at the top and tail end(opening title & closing credit sequence), but thankfully to my own practices, this won't be going to YouTube, Instead, it will go onto disc for viewing by family or friends, and maybe, just maybe, submitted to a community TV station in Newcastle(if ever the government backs off and gives the community TV sector a fair go by giving them a "permanent" presence on our free-to-air TV channels, which is their proper entitlement). The Smartsound track was(I think) "Hoedown" from the Country/folk grouping. If I do say so myself, I'm quite pleased with the result of my latest effort as I used some stills which I'd scanned in from the museum's souvenir guide book and superimposed them into the video, using transition effects to bring them in and out of view. Smartsound copyright won't be, or shouldn't be an issue for me if I do decide to submit my video to that community station. I have, interestingly enough, found another source of music by going into my Programme files and going into where my Power Director 8 is installed, I was able to copy and paste to a separate folder, the music that goes with the menu pages for PD8. There's another resource for intro/exit music for videos can draw from.
Cheers!
Neil
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Hi, Eric!
The community TV station isn't mine, it's operated by another person based in Newcastle. The thing is, the federal government, here in Australia, wants to kick all community TV stations off the one solitary FTA(free-to-air) channel that was allocated to them, Channel 31. One Sydney-based station has already called it quits, TVS, Sydney, closed down just prior to Xmas last year. How many more will follow, I don't know, but it saddens(nay, angers) me that the station operators aren't fighting back. The government wants these "stations" to be seen only via the internet, but that defeats the purpose for which they were set up in the first place. Not everyone owns a computer, and of those who do, not all of them have reliable internet access, in some places here in Australia, the internet access is anywhere between woeful and non-existent. Thus potential viewers and station operators are effectively "disenfranchised". It's a disgraceful way for a government to behave. Well, that's my rant and rave!
Cheers!
Neil.
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Quote:
I had to missunderstand you. I confused some stuff and I thought it is not possible to cut one frame off in PD14. It's good if it's possible. I'm glad to hear that ![]()
Cheers!
Hi, Karab!
Yeah, I found the ability to split off just one frame extremely useful for the way I edit video. My editing practice involves rounding off each clip to an exact number of minutes and seconds, so any surplus "frames" get the chop. In PD8 I was not able to do such fine editing as the "split" function would be greyed out until I counted off at least three frames from the start or end of the clip, but with PD14 I can now do such fine editing with ease, so, if you have a clip that runs one frame over, say two minutes and ten seconds, "snippity-snip" and it's "bye-bye, spare frame!" ha-ha!
Cheers!
Neil.
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Thanks Neil , I guess if my tapes have all been gathering dust in my basement this is going to keep happening, hmmm not sure what t do about that, just try and clean them from the outside I guess.
Is PD14 a good idea if I have Windows 7 and just an integrated graphics chip? I figured with my old computer the older version would go easy on it.
Hi, Ryan!
You shouldn't have any problem with PD14 on Windows 7. My computer also runs W7 and I have PD14 Ultra. Something I should've mentioned but forgot to tell you is that I also have PD8 Ultra on the same computer. Unlike PD7 or 8, any later version of Power Director(Version 9 through to 14) will allow a previous version to remain installed and will not ask you to first uninstall the earlier version before installing the newer version. I've found this useful in that with PD8 I can burn my DVDs at DVD-SP profile and pack close to 2-and-a-half hours worth of content onto them, wheras with PD14 I can only choose between DVD-HQ and "Smart Fit" If I want DVD-SP in PD14 then I'm restricted to 4:3 aspect ratio content, but I'm hooked on wide-screen 16:9 so it's PD8 for my DVD burning. As for cleaning VHS tapes, there was a device put out some years ago that cleaned the tapes. I forget the exact workings of these devices but video libraries used to have them(maybe there are some still out there, somewhere), and I think there were cleaners also sold to the public. There were also VHS tape rewinders(if you have one, you may be able to adapt it to clean your tapes as you rewind them). Remember those days when you hired a movie for the night, the cassette itself or the presentation box it came in would have a sticker saying "please rewind before returning to library"? Those rewinders were for those who hired out multiple tapes(movies) and while one was playing, another was rewinding. Just a thought. If you hunt around second-hand shops or recycling centres, you may find one or the other.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, ChristianW!
Glad to be of some help!
Gee, you must've pounced when you saw the reply, jumped on-line to answer then jumped off-line again just as quickly!(who was that masked man? LOL).
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Ryan!
This subject has been dealt with at length in the PD14 forum. The situation you have is where dirty tape in your VHS deck is triggering a false "copyright protected - recording is prohibited" warning at any point along the tape where dirt or damage to the tape itself is caused. This is not the fault of the software, your computer or your VHS recorder, though it can't hurt to run a cleaning tape through the VHS recorder to clean the heads after this incident. The PD8 programme bundled in with your capture device will, however, be a "bare-bones" version with many if its features unavailable. The full version has been long deleted from the catalogues and is no longer available, but you may be lucky to find a copy at some "bargain basement" shop or warehouse that sells to the public. Failing that you can always go for the later versions of Power Director. PD13 may still be available but 14 is the current version, and yes, your USB capture device will work with the newer PD versions because it is essentially a "plug-and-play" device.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hello, ChristianW!
Welcome to the Forum! Whether using PD13, 14 or any version of Power Director which handles AVCHD or MP4 shouldn't matter(I think PD8 was the first version with AVCHD and MP4 capabilities). You shouldn't loose much image quality if you're only producing once, that is, you've edited all your clips together, put in any transitions, titles, music and/or narration(possibly, up to you if you did or not), then rendered(produced) this as a finished product, there should be no noticable loss in image quality at all. Just a note though, depending on how powerful your computer is, rendering in AVCHD can take ages to complete, you'll need plenty of patience!
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Eric!
I'm not a YouTube contributor, I put all my videos on to disc to be viewed by family and friends, but if I were to use your material, I'd certaily credit you. Where I am, there's a community TV set-up in the neighbouring city of Newcastle(Australia, not UK). We're going through some hassles at the moment with our federal government trying to deprive community TV stations of their access to the free-to-air TV channels, a disgraceful act indeed! If the community TV sector can win this fight, and Newcastle's "Hunter TV" can finally get its on-air licence, I may be contributing video content to the station, in which case, your music may well come in handy and will be fully credited along with your website, probably someting like this:
Music by Eric Matyas - http://soundimage.org/ or words similar. (just finished typing and the address changed to blue, nice touch!) I look forward to sampling your wares soon. Address colour went blue in the writing of the post, back to black afterposting but turned red when cursor held near it, still, nice touch!)
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Tony!
Just watched your clip on Title Designer Malfunctions(or "Falmunctions" ha-ha). Cyberlink seems to have a funny(read: strange) idea about "what is an innovation". Cyberlink's "innovations" are turning out to be design faults, as witnessed by the subject of your clip.
The situation with transitions is another case in point that I've dealt with in another thread. Makes me wonder what those "boffins" at Cyberlink must be thinking to come up with these design faults passed off as innovations.
One thing I did notice on your clip.... no audio! Seems you've been "bitten" by YouTube on the use of SmartSound music recently as well, ay?
Cheers!
Neil.
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Neil I believe you can overlay the clip with new one or with background at exact, defined time. It will trim the clip precisely the way you want. I haven't tried it but it should work. Especially that it's possible to create video from single frames so this idea should make it work. But we'll... yeah it's kind of workaround...
Hi, Karab!
You're correct, overlay is an option in PD14 but I've not tried it for myself, and thus far, have not had a use for it. Some time in the future, I might get around to experimenting with it. What happens is, if you're inserting a new clip at the beginning of your video, or inserting a clip between two other clips, you're given the option to overwrite, insert, insert and move all clips(after the inserted clip, obviously), crossfade or replace the clip. For myself, I assemble-edit my videos, that is, I pull all my clips from a folder into the media library, then drop each clip, in turn, into the timeline(I always put a black colour board at the very start, then use a transition effect to "introduce" the video). Asfter I've added several clips, trimming them down to exact minutes and seconds, as I've explained in my previous post in this thread, I add transitions, always at 5 seconds duration(including those as the start and end). I always use transitions. I watch TV shows put together by so-called "professionals" and see a scene change without a transition effect to "segue" from one scene to the next.... and they call themselves "professionals"....Hah! What a joke! Scene changes like those in TV shows, sudden jumps, look bad. Drop in a transition and it eases you out of one scene an into the next, smoothly, much better looking too!
Cheers!
Neil.
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Yeah, CS!
I think we've gone as far as we can go on this thread. But just a word or two on videocassette formats, anyone remember the earliest Philips-devised "VCR" cassettes? Cartridges made of cardboard.... yeah, that's right... cardboard(though it was thick cardboard) and the feed and take-up reels were concentric(feed above take-up). They were limited to 1-hour record and playback, and the machines were notorious for chewing up the tapes! Just thought I'd shed a historical light on this subject before closing.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Gordon!
Yeah, that's an interesting feature to have. Something I have noted though, in PD14 that I could not do in PD8, was to split a video wit just one frame's length from a previous split, in a better explanation: cut a single frame out of the clip. I could do this in Corel, but in PD8 you had to count at least three frames before the split function could be used again. I value the one-frame split because, when editing I try to keep my videos running to an exact number of minutes and seconds, with no "spare" frames. So, if I can take a video back from, say, 1 minute, 23 seconds and one frame, snip off that redundant frame and have 1 minute, 23 seconds exactly, Wunderbar!(er, that's "Wonderful" in English). The only things PD14 falls down on are DVD authoring(restricted to DVD-HQ or "Smart-fit" for 16:9 wide-screen MPEG2 stuff) and setting transitions to automatically "crossfade" instead of "overlap" and have the audio component of the transition added as well, I have covered that elsewhere. I consider these as design faults rather than innovations in PD14.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, all!
These capture card devices are generally "plug-and-play", if software comes with them, it's usually a bare-bones(cut-down) version of a popular editing software thrown in for the desired purpose, but when a user starts to "explore the possibilities of the software, he/she is disappointed to learn that in this bare-bones version, many of the "features" are not available. The capture card itself, is effectively a stand-alone device that will work with any editing software. It's far better to chase down a full version of the editing software than settle for the bare-bones version that came with the device. As for quality of performance, the old adage, "suck it and see" applies. If the capture device delivers a reasonable quality feed to your computer, well and good. If not.... well..... always try for another later. The first one I had, gave good video feed but the audio quality was attrocious, I bypassed the audio connections and fed the audio in via the line-in of my computer, had problems in that department but better that than the horrid audio delivered by that first card. The next card was a Pinnacle "Dazzle", it did the job, and gave good audio but then I struck a problem where I was getting false triggers of the "copy-protected" warning. I learned later that the false trigger was due to the condition of the tape. The capture card I'm using now does the job just fine for me(K-World brand).
Cheers!
Neil.
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Quote:
Well, I get their point... somehow they need to sell the product. It's fair.
However, this "activation" process didn't work as desired (as in preventing piracy) for MS with their WindowsXP, 7, 8 and 10 or Office suite. Didn't work for Adobe or Autodesk either.
And even if it worked, they are thinking that all those pirated copies are lost revenue? Wishful thinking... 90% of those "pirates" would not use their product anyway, I think that they are more like kids trying different things, not serious users.
Hi, SoNic!
As I see it, the software companies defeat their own purposes by making the product so expensive, and by putting their restrictive licensing on their product. They'll never defeat the "pirates"(arrrr, me 'earties, we be piratin' softwares!) no matter what they try, the pirates will find a way around the "safeguards". If the product was not as expensive(in Australian dollars, for example, a software product[any software] may retail for well over $100, too heavy a price for many, especially after laying out over $1,000 for the computer itself, that thousand bucks being saved up for many months). If software prices were down around $20 or so, much more of it will be sold and the companies would make their money back a lot more easily! Product price can be a deal-breaker for items of any description! As for the licensing regime, I've covered that elsewhere(earlier comment of mine on this thread).
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, James!
By what you've written here, you're obviously an "insider" in the industry, either that or you've managed to digest all the written data from the tech "boffins" who put all this together. They are the only reasons why you have such vast knowledge of all this material.
For me, it boils down to need versus want. I might "want" all this new technology, but do I really NEED it? The answer there is a definite NO! What I have now, serves my purposes just fine.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi all!
4K video? What....? It'd have to be the hungriest beast alive for chewing up gigabytes by the ton! It would demand far too much of a computer's meagre resources to process. And these new 4K sets..... not in my little lounge room, I wouldn't be able to fit the creen into the small space I have, that's if I could afford the huge asking price.... but then I've got to ask myself: "Do I REALLY need this?" The answer would come back a deafening roar of NO!
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, all!
I'm back on-line. Gee that AVG can be a right pest at times! Right in the middle of answering posts on this site, this notice says I've got to shut down/restart my computer to sort a piddling little security thingy that AVG could've sorted out "in the background" without bothering me. Hmmmmphhh! Now I got that off my chest, where was I? Oh yes! Capturing old VHS stuff. As I mentioned, the capture card I'm using now is from K-World, and identifies itself as USB2861 Device in either PD or WMM, or any other capture/edit software.
Yeah, setting the capture profile to DVD-LP certainly fixed up one problem I had, in that in DVD-SP I was getting what looked like "scan-lines" in the captured video. Setting the profile to DVD-LP eradicated that bugbear. But regardless of what settings you use, CS, a lot of the problem with dropped frames comes back to the condition of the tape you're capturing from for your project. You might also, perhaps run a video head cleaning tape through your VCR(likewise a Video-8 format cleaning tape for your camera), that might help a little.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hello, bjmjpl!
The capture card you're using, I've not come across that brand before. Nonetheless, here's my two cents worth(copper coins are worthless in Australia these days, though! LOL). I'm guessing that you're doing a bulk capture, i.e., capturing the entire content of a tape in one "gulp" (burp!) Sorry, just adding a bit of levity there! but seriously, try just taking half-to-one-hour at a time, processing it, tuck it away in a file folder, then take the next half-to-one-hour's worth of content, working, piecemeal, as it were, and it may make your computer's job a bit easier. Capturing and editing video is resource-heavy, it puts a huge burdon on the computer to process all that content. I suggested half-to-one-hour, but more practically, watch the capture screen for any "breaks" in content and end the capture at that point. You can then "play around" with that fresh capture(edit it, clean it up) or just store the capture under a tentative title and edit it later. Basically, it's better to have several small easy-to-handle "grabs" than one large resource-hungry file.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Mike and CS!
I've been doing a bit of my own "rescuing" of old VHS content(some of the material shot on Video-8 or Hi-8 and dubbed to VHS) and I'm set to do some of this work for a friend so the subject is still quite topical for me at the moment. CS, glad you've found a capture card that will "do the job" for you. Getting some of that old content onto DVD can be fun, and, with the tricks available through Cyberlink's various tools you could almost make the content look as if it was shot digitally! You don't even have to settle for the cramped 4:3 aspect ratio because CLPV can stretch the image out to 16:9 without making the people in your clip look like they've been "raiding the fridge". At the moment I'm using a K-World brand capture card that's doing the job for me, it came with a bare-bones version of Power Director 8, but, thanks to another Neil(Cubby House Films) in Melbourne, who sent me his surplus-to-requirements PD8 Ultra disc. I still have PD8 Ultra alongside PD14 Ultra.
Mike, yeah, wear and tear on a tape can give a lot of grief, in some cases it even falsely triggers the "copy-protected" alert which stops the capture cold. even on home-recorded tapes. Bloody nuisance, that is! I have a Dazzle capture card tucked away in a drawer which I haven't used for quite a while. The K-World device does the job better, for me at least.
Gotta jump off-line for a bit. AVG is bugging me to sort out some computer security issues. Back soon.
Cheers!
Neil.
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Hi, Mike, CS and Tom!
Yeah, I came a cropper on Windows Movie Maker. I have set WMM up for capture(my capture card is labeled as USB 2861 Device) and it's set up for audio and video capture through this device, but, as yet I've not tried it.
Mike, that Dazzle capture card(from Pinnacle) will work with any capture/edit software, not just Pinnacle Studio, heck, it'll even work with Power Director!
CS, as I said earlier, a lot of your frame-dropping could be related to the(physical) condition of the tape, its age, how often it's been played, leading to some wearing(and tearing). You can't expect the tape to be in "pristine" condition, it loses that quality as soon as you take off the cellophane wrapper and insert it into your VCR or your camera to record on it for the first time. Transferring these old tapes now will get them before they've been allowed to deteriorate any further. Dropped frames may well be part and parcel of the process.
Cheers!
(a slightly less-embarrassed) Neil!
P.S. I have downloaded your JPEG image Tom, Thanks!
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