Hi Markal,
You appear to be using up your Ram and PD is then struggling to deal with the additional expectation.
1. I use Ctrl+Shift+S to save a new backup pds each time I carry out an action, I would hate to lose because of a crash. This is an "old habit" from "yesterday" but one I always recommend to editors. I save pds' in consecutive numbers 001.pds 002.pds for example. Please make sure you save.
2. I would suggest you save, shut PD down and re-open, it'll free up your temp memory somewhat and speed up PD.
3. Please provide a diagnostic and a screenshot see A,B,E,F of the guides http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/7958.page
4. You will appreciate that the above are guesses/my opinion only.
5. There is a pre-render capability in PD9 and it is a real pain, stalling workrate, hanging PD and is mentioned on the forum somewhere.

Dafydd Wrote:
2. I would suggest you save, shut PD down and re-open, it'll free up your temp memory somewhat and speed up PD.

I suggest that you turn off the computer after shutting PD. That would erase anything still in memory. Then re-start.
The only way I know to completely clear Memory.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I too have worked out that it is essential to do a save before trying to render, but now, I have resigned myself to the fact that the project has become too big for the capabilities of either my computer (Which is 32 bit and has been expanded up the yazoo with max ram, hardrive space, video board, dual processor etc.) or too big for PD9.

For that reason, I think my main question should be, "What is the correct 'procedure' to follow when working with such complex projects?" (Apart from switching to Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas.) I dare not try make it any larger, so my obvious gut thought is to render it to an avi and then import that avi back into a new project. My concern there is that after doing that a few times, surely I am going to degrade the quality of the resulting video.

Also, it is an absolute nightmare to have to retime everything after adjusting a clips timing, working with 7 layers of video and 3 of audio. Even after grouping everything, and turning the relevent options of PD9 on or off as needed. My guess is that rendering to an avi will also make that problem more manageable. What is the common opinion of that?

I love PD9, to reuse the words from another forum posting, it allows me to quickly accomplish my artistic (snigger!) flow and makes it easy for me to achieve the results I am after. I could get the same results from other programs, but not as intuitively, or as painlessly. I tried to redo the first opening titles and intro of this project in Sony Vegas 8 when PD9 started to bog down but it was a lot harder work (Maybe because I was trying to duplicate the same results as I had already achieved in PD9) but Sony did not feel like it was weighed down with all the material. It did stiffle my artistic flow, perhaps because I was having to learn the program as well.

Lastly, am I expecting too much from my beloved PD9? or am I suffocating its potential by running it in a 32 bit environment?

Thanks to all for the feedback. Your opinions are valued. Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

Please select the finish file format you are aiming to produce your project to in PD9 - that's what I'd do (example: MTS format and maintain project resolution and quality).

Please go to Preferences > Editing > Link All tracks when inserting/removing content in timeline. Then tick/check the option.

I would suggest you move to 64bit, increasing the ram to 8gb, ensure you have a suitable graphics card (igb min), SATA HDD's of 500+ as C drive and i7 and then start whizzing along with a smile

Thanks for the reply., and thanks for the tip on link all tracks. I have explored that option, although via the drag and right click option to group tracks. At least now all the tracks move together when I swap a clip, particularly in Video 1 track. It makes it easier to drag the displaced portion once completed. Thank you.

All the stills have come from my Canon EOS 450 and I guess are enormous in video terms, being the native resolution of some 4272 x 2848 pixels per shot every 2-4 frames. I guess that is seriously over doing it, but it rotoscopes & greenscreens so well at that res. I guess it also means that I have a little headroom to play with when rendering.

Thanks for the advice on the PC. I was fearing that you would come up with an expensive answer like that. I was hesitant at buying the 64bit PD9 fearing that my system might not extract the optimum from it. Graphics I have (4gb), Sata I have, 2 x 1TB. You have confirmed that my Ram (4GB) and my measley dual core are the stumbling points.

I will play around with your other advise on the maintain project resolution and see how well it works. I was just concerned about the degradation of doing that every 1 minute of video. I guess I am over doing it. And having extracted what i need, I am sure I can afford to lose a bit of that. I am filming really small objects.

What is the best resolution I can save at? It seems to be that I can get 1920 x 1080 using H264 lossless quality with the .MOV option. Do you think I can do better than that?

Thanks again for your really valued advice. I am open to learning here. It may be blatently obvious that I am stubbling around in the dark here in terms of not knowing what I should be doing in terms of resolution.

Thanks again.

Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

I would try a sampling of about a dozen or so photos after lowering their resolution some. You can still maintain picture quality with a lower resolution. Make a short project with them and see what resolution works and still maintains the picture quality you want.

I have never tried stop motion but have always wanted to do it, but I do however make photo slide shows (which basically is all you are doing) with hundreds of photos/titles and transitions. Seldom do I crash and yes after I have my timeline over 45 minutes I save every move. I have made slide shows up to 1 hour 45 minutes...

You would have similar problems using the Pinnical , Vegas or Adobe software. Just go into their forums and you will see we all have the same basic issues trying to do commercial TV quality video with non commercial TV quality software on mediocre to substandard computers.... I have used Pinnical and Vegas Pro in the distant past and was no happy with them either, but stayed with PD. But thats just me.

Having said that.... you need to find that sweet spot between your photo resolution size, your computer capabilities, and PD9's ability to run all that on your computer. I have found that less is more.... less strain on your computer that is...

__________________________________________
Windows 8 Pro 64 bit

CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Tutorials
PDtoots PowerDirector Tutorials

**NOTICE**
When you are asked to provide a DXDIAG you go the following link and do part "B". Your posted specs are NOT what we are looking for as they tell us nothing. The specs on the box of your computer mean nothing. The DXDIAG shows us how your computer is configured as it runs.

DXDIAG Link

What are you doing exactly to create the stop motion video?

When I do time-lapse clips I render the jpg series into mp4 using ffmpeg. By default ffmpeg will render video the same resolution as the jpegs. You can either re-size them before hand, or use a command line option to scale it down a bit. Editing 4K video is overkill.

If you use SVRT you can re-render as many times as you want without loss of the body of the video. In theory.

FYI, this is the command I use to render at 15 FPS

ffmpeg -y -f image2 -r 15 -mbd rd -flags +mv4+aic -trellis 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -g 300 -i "%%d.JPG" -b 30000k "outputhq.mp4"

The file naming needs to be sequential starting with 1.JPG, so I use this quick bat file to renumber the files:

@echo off
setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set x=1
for %%i in (*.JPG) do (
ren %%i !x!.jpg
set /a x+=1
)

Thank you Bastian74 for your advice and info. I am also using 15FPS which seems to be the ideal frame rate.

I am animating each animated actor individually except where there is some form of physical interaction. There may be up to 5 PNG shots overlaying jpeg or AVI backgrounds.

For example, I have a scene with a ship blowing up, so I have the sea and ship as an AVI which gives me the movement of the waves thanks to the excellent and free 'Sqirlz water reflection' software. I then overlay three or four explosions which have been chromakeyed to remove the background and then three or four layers of of 3D generated debris I made & animated in Carrara flying around which are exported as PNG Sequences to allow the images to be manipulated as necessary. Then an added PNG of the edge of the ship to stop explosions spilling outside of where I want them and spoiling the illusion, plus three tracks of audio for the explosions, etc. This previews very well considering. These PNG's are only HD resolution 1920 x 1080 which is the max Carrara will do. The problem I think is that when it comes to putting the animated actors into the shot. These are the 4K PNG's and have up to three actors overlayed at a time as well as all the above.

I am taking the JPG's from my Canon and into Photoshop removing the background and saving the result as a PNG 2 frames long, sometimes a little longer. My guess from the advise you have all given is that I should perhaps be reducing the resolution at this point as all the extraction has been completed. This will certainly take the load off PowerDirector & the PC and the quality is not so critical as all the delicate stuff has been done.

Do you think that reducing the PNG's to 1920x1080 would be right if it is being rendered to HD video? or should I go Less or More? Or do you think I should rather keep it as JPGs and use chromakeying? I have to admit that my Blue & Greenscreening do not always work out as planned, hence the necessity to extract in photoshop. Would working with JPEGs rather than PNG's make any difference? I thought I was been clever using PNG's for a cleaner overlay.

I know this project is probably overdoing it for the design of PowerDirector, and I should be using some fancy & expensive Pro level software but PowerDirector just makes the flow so easy and I am not having to learn some complicated program that would destroy the fun of producing the movie. As a hobby, I can't justify spending thousands of dollars either. I really enjoy using PowerDirector and the features it has are just so logical to use.

Sorry, so many questions, and I guess it has become more about general film making.

I truly appreciate everyones contibution to this learning curve.

Thanks you all. Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

Do you think that reducing the PNG's to 1920x1080 would be right if it is being rendered to HD video?

Yes, 1920x1080 is far better on the computer than 4K. You will not lose any quality at that size. After all the HD render is to 1920x1080.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thank you for that. Good advice. But - Now here is the million dollar question -

How do I change the resolution of a PNG without changing its physical size? Or even more, how do I batch change the resolution of a PNG without changing its size & without loosing its alpha channel.

I have tried good old Photoshop Essentials & tried using the batch convert facility. This works great for JPEGS as it just saves them as a low res JPEG. However, for the PNG's the resulting files have lost their alpha channels, so I have to go into PowerDirector and apply Chromokey to each and every 2 frame shot, and, the Mb size of the file has increased considerably as well. I used the batch change and changed all the PNG's to 75DPI which is the only option that I can see.

This I have had to do because when I try to render the scenes to a MOV or MP4 at HD Res as per the advise given, either PowerDirector crashes half way through, or the resulting video has the images flashing almost like it is only rendering half the information. I guess this comes down to the computer not being able to process the information fast enough. At lower resolutions, it does not have a problem. I have tried breaking the scene into 10 second scenes, but it still is not working out.

So, my theory is to reduce the resolution of the PNG's so that there is less information having to be processed. Once I have salvaged what I have done so far, I can make sure I use lower res PNG's. They definately overlay better than JPEGS with Chromokey, but are3 so incrediably enormous in comparison.

Any advise on how to save this situation?
Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

Markal, Bastian

An old woman is struggelig to keep up with you!

We're back, again, to the resolution thing here- as many times before.
Just made a post the other day : http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/18764.page

Anyway, I do think I'll have to read up on even more.
When I have, I'll get back to it.
Markal, found you something on the.png :
http://www.snaphow.com/how-to-reduce-size-of-png-images-without-losing-quality/
http://www.queness.com/post/2507/most-effective-method-to-reduce-and-optimize-png-images

(BTW: when we talk about "lower the resolution" here, it's for the pupose of the computer, yes?)
Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

It can mean the bitrate also Nina.

How do I change the resolution of a PNG without changing its physical size? Or even more, how do I batch change the resolution of a PNG without changing its size & without loosing its alpha channel.

The free Paint.net is a great Photo editor and handles PNG files very well. Save using 32 bit will not lose the Alpha channel or Transparency.

Irfanview has a batch function that can resize photos.

You can lower the resolution of a photo without changing it aspect ratio, maybe that is what you are concerned about?

Its file size will change when you lower the resolution. But the aspect ratio will not change if your have maintain aspect ratio enabled.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Excellent, thanks for that advise Carl312. It is exactly what I am concerned about. I need to make the images smaller with out changing the aspect ration.

I have been trying all sorts of PNG optimizers etc that Nina suggested, but they seem only to reduce by 78% at best, and take a long time. The other link she supplied (Thanks Nina) is to Posterize the images which can reduce the image by 50% without loosing any visible quality or size.

I will look at the Programs you have recommended and let you all know.

Thanks Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

Thank you Carl312, I have just tested Irfanview on your recommendation. I have done a few test shots and everything still lines up in PD9 so the size advice is sound. The preserve aspect ratio is the important factor.

BUT, trying to preserve the Alpha channel, I have suddenly got ghost actors. They are semi transparent. If I turn the alpha channel options off I get a black background. Have I done something wrong? I have tried different settings.

I have selected PNG Compression level 6(Default),selected 'Save transparent color', 'Save transparency as Alpha channel'.

I then select advanced options and resize to 1920x1200 preserving the aspect ratio.

As I say, I end up with a ghost actor with Save Transparent color, or a black background with it off.

Frustrated as I clearly do not understand what I have done wrong, and muttering to myself under my breath at how stupid I must be, and this whole computer thing is just a conspiracy to overthrow the civalised world, I look further afield and have now tried a plethora of different programs, but none have been able to do what I require.....until.... (suitable pause)

I came across 'AnyPIC Image resizer pro' which is a lot happier. I have been able to get an image with the required alpha channel that is transparent and a subject that is not transparent, with a good quality that has not become pixelated, or with jagged edges. Yes it does cost $19.90, but it works and it works well. It's quick. For something that costs less than a paperback novel! I will happily pay the money as it is the final part of the solution just to get rid of the watermarks the test version makes.

I have whistled through all the PNG's in all the different folders with 'AnyPIC Image resizer pro' and reloaded my failing project back into PowerDirector. I have now rendered the final MOV of the scene that was crashing PD9 before and .... Yah, happiness and light, it works, I am so chuffed, you have no idea. All those sleepless nights have been finally paid dividends, oh joy, oh bliss...etc etc. This 'AnyPIC Image resizer Pro' is going to take pride of place in the production pipeline for each scene now that will be offered up to PowerDirector. It is way more friendly than Photoshop Elements in that, Photoshop Elements batch process did not give a useable alpha channel either. Shame on them, they are supposed to be the professionals, how can they miss such an important option out. (Maybe because I am using an old version, V2)

You can say it is me. It's my fault. I don't know how to use the program etc. Yes you are probably right, but that is what drew me to PowerDirector 9, I like software that doesn't take a year to learn how to use it. It's intuitive, and makes everything so much more pleasant. I am sure I am not alone in this sentiment.

Thanks to you all for your help getting me to this point. Hey, I don't need to rush out to buy that expensive new computer either 'Dafydd Bevan - SoftDeko'. I know i will have to eventually, but maybe not until PowerDirector 10 or 11, or ....

Nina, this whole resolution, image size, file size stuff, works best with a glass of red wine, I am sure you will agree. Makes it much less stressful. The great thing is you don't need to read a thesis on PNG's to make things work, you just have to know who to ask to get to the right solution, or be pointed in the correct direction. :

Thanks again everyone. A load has been lifted from my shoulders. I really did not relish the prospect of repositioning some 200 frames again and redo all the chroma key work, and resizing and synchronising of sound effects etc.

By reducing the image by 50%, I am getting a 72dpi PNG with alpha channel weighing in at 594Kb @ 2136x1424 from a 1.85Mb 4272x2848 image in about 2 seconds. That has got to lighten the load on PowerDirector now. Checking the resulting image in photoshop, the deterioration in quality is not worth getting upset about.

Now I just need to put all the rendered HD AVI scenes together and check what new problems I have caused myself. But that is a problem for another time and another thread.

I have read lots of advise going into this project telling me to story board the movie, think your scenes & shots through, think about lighting, camera angles, optimum fps, how to accomplish the special effects in postproduction etc. But no one has ever offered the advice that you should consider the dpi, or image size that you are shooting in or the consequence of going too big. You want good results, so you automatically think that big is best.

So it has now been proved that 'Less is more'. I always used to scoff at that saying, it certainly does not apply at MacDonalds. Now I know what it means.

If anyone can help, I'm still struggling with the meaning of 'Pink is the new Blue', I guess that must be something to do with Chromakeying.

Thanks again to you all.

(Skips off happily into the sunset. Fade to black. Roll credits.) Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

I came across 'AnyPIC Image resizer pro' which is a lot happier.

Very good, anything that works is the tool to have.

$19.90 is more that many paperback books, I have bought paperback books for a quarter.
I have paid more for programs that do the job, so $20 is not a bad price.

Photoshop Elements batch process did not give a useable alpha channel either. Shame on them, they are supposed to be the professionals, how can they miss such an important option out. (Maybe because I am using an old version, V2)

You are using an older version, I think Photoshop Elements is why up in the numbers now. I believe the current version is 9.

Paint.net is a free photo editor and does a better job on PNG transparencies than Photoshop Elements.
I use Paint.net for nearly all of my photo editing. You sure can not beat the price.

There is no need for images any larger than 1920 x 1080 for HD Video production. The final render is always 1920x1080 interlaced or progressive.

Congrats on getting your project finished!
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Nina, this whole resolution, image size, file size stuff, works best with a glass of red wine,
I am sure you will agree.

Ooohhh yes...

You want good results, so you automatically think that big is best.

hmmmm...... now listen, boys......
The Gigs and the Rams aren't always the answer.
Quite often, the workarounds can give good results.

Markal; thanks for your (enjoyable reading) feedback!

Nina


Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com