"Pack Project Materials ..."
It contains everything that is in your project, what is the timeline of PD13.
Everything is saved in a folder that you determine, all original material, videos, music etc ...
This feature is great to save your project to work in the future or to take other PC etc ...

"This is optional"

Video files that are saved, MPEG2 save to folder that you determine. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

Thank you for your reply, PlaySound, but I'm afraid I don't understand it...

You say that "everything" that is in my project gets put into that new Pack Project. Well, as I said in my initial message, when I look in my project directory there are *_0.MPG files for every one of my original .MP4 files, and those do NOT make it into the new Pack Project result.

Could you please try running your answer by me again?

What are those *_0.MPG files in my project directory? I didn't put them there? Aren't they needed by the Pack Project?

Sorry for being dense about this, but I'm a total newbie to video editing and PowerDirector.

Thanks.

"Pack project Materials"
Means Package with all materials (videos, photos, music, effects) and also the project file, all stored in a folder.
this is done eveltualmente to carry your project to another PC or store.

See these tutorials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAOnn8g0C_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2CYLYIynB0

AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

Pack Project Materials writes the original materials to the folder of your choice of the materials that are on/in the Timeline.

Pack Project Materials does not save materials in the PD library that is not on/in the Timeline.
You can create a subfolder to copy your extra materials that you did not use in your finished project.

Tutorial:
Project Management Tutorial (Part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2CYLYIynB0
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.

Hi Eldor -

If those *_0.MPG files aren't needed, what are they used for in the project directory? I suspect they are not the shadow files, because in the project directory there are sub-directories for shadow and preview cache files.

I'm a little intrigued about those *_0.MPG that you didn't put there! These would typically be shadow files and be stored in the ShadowEditFiles folder (as you've noted)

Do you have shadow files enabled?
If so, are the .MPG files landing in that ShadowEditFiles folder?
Are the *_0.MPG files low res versions of your original .MP4s?

Could you please attach a screenshot of your output folder contents?

I can understand your slight confusion if those files are generating themselves and not being stored correctly.

When you pack project materials, the shadow files are NOT included in the packed folder because they're unnecessary. They're only used to make your editing easier... less stressful on the PC.

Cheers - Tony

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Eldor: When you use Pack Project Materials everything that is on your projects time line--and nothing else--is saved to the directory you specify. That's enough to reconstitute your project later. There are parts of your project that aren't saved. For example, if you produced (rendered) a movie it will appear in your media library but it won't be saved in the Pack Project Materials directory because it isn't on the time line. So you might lose a little time when you revisit your project and have to render the movie again.

Original clips that you imported into your media library but didn't use in your video won't be saved, either. That means if you want to revisit your project and modify it you may need to import the original clips again.

That implies that you need to keep your original clips in one folder which you will archive separately from your completed projects. Pack Project Materials is useful for archiving completed projects. It's a little more tricky to use for moving projects between computers before they are finished. One thing I learned the hard way: never pack project materials into the same folder you used to pack them before. Everything on the time line will be written anew to the folder, resulting in duplicate files. A sequence number will be added to give you unique file names but the files will now take twice the space they did before. If this happens to you, reload the project from the pack folder, select Pack Project Materials, and make a new folder. Only the copies of the files on the time line will be saved. The sequence numbers will be preserved but at least you'll get rid of the duplicates.

Sorry Tony, I didn't see your reply until just now. The problem has by now solved itself, as I've upgraded the video card in my computer, turned off Shadow Edit Files and deleted all the ShadowEditFiles folder and *_0.MPG files. Now of course they're no longer being created. But there WERE *_0.MPG files in BOTH the project's folder and the ShadowEditFiles sub-folder, with different dates.

As everyone pointed out, life is easier if you have a fast enough computer and don't need to futz with them.

Cheers!

Quote: Hi Eldor -

If those *_0.MPG files aren't needed, what are they used for in the project directory? I suspect they are not the shadow files, because in the project directory there are sub-directories for shadow and preview cache files.

I'm a little intrigued about those *_0.MPG that you didn't put there! These would typically be shadow files and be stored in the ShadowEditFiles folder (as you've noted)

Do you have shadow files enabled?
If so, are the .MPG files landing in that ShadowEditFiles folder?
Are the *_0.MPG files low res versions of your original .MP4s?

Could you please attach a screenshot of your output folder contents?

I can understand your slight confusion if those files are generating themselves and not being stored correctly.

When you pack project materials, the shadow files are NOT included in the packed folder because they're unnecessary. They're only used to make your editing easier... less stressful on the PC.

Cheers - Tony

Fabbian, thanks very much for your comments.

Besides using Pack Project Materials (which I don't think is all that great a tool) it also works to simply COPY the project folder and everything in it, to somewhere else. That way you not only get the project and what's on the timeline, but everything else you've dumped into that folder. And PDR doesn't seem to have any problem at all in opening the result if it's copied/moved to another computer. At least that's what my testing is showing me.

(Helps that I've got oodles of disk space, both on the local machine and on a 7.5TB RAID NAS.)

Cheers!

Quote: Eldor: When you use Pack Project Materials everything that is on your projects time line--and nothing else--is saved to the directory you specify. That's enough to reconstitute your project later. There are parts of your project that aren't saved. For example, if you produced (rendered) a movie it will appear in your media library but it won't be saved in the Pack Project Materials directory because it isn't on the time line. So you might lose a little time when you revisit your project and have to render the movie again.

Original clips that you imported into your media library but didn't use in your video won't be saved, either. That means if you want to revisit your project and modify it you may need to import the original clips again.

That implies that you need to keep your original clips in one folder which you will archive separately from your completed projects. Pack Project Materials is useful for archiving completed projects. It's a little more tricky to use for moving projects between computers before they are finished. One thing I learned the hard way: never pack project materials into the same folder you used to pack them before. Everything on the time line will be written anew to the folder, resulting in duplicate files. A sequence number will be added to give you unique file names but the files will now take twice the space they did before. If this happens to you, reload the project from the pack folder, select Pack Project Materials, and make a new folder. Only the copies of the files on the time line will be saved. The sequence numbers will be preserved but at least you'll get rid of the duplicates.

If you create a separate folder for each project and set it as your output folder then the only penalty to saving the project's folder is you may be saving unused assets. If you have plenty of disk space that won't have much impact.

If you are switching back and forth between projects and you forget to update the output folder you might wind up with some assets in the wrong folder. Pack Project Materials will insure those assets don't get left out of your archive (provided they were used on the time line).

A new user who hasn't thought much about project management is likely to let Power Director accumulate assets in the same media library. Pack Project Materials will help him a lot by archiving only the assets needed for the project. It's less important for the user who works out a good project management strategy ahead of time.

Thank you for your comments, Fabbian.

What you call a "penalty" (the possibility of saving unused assets) others may call a "benefit".

I do think I understand it all now and am comfortable with it.

Would be nice though, if PDR would store WITH THE PROJECT .PDS file the import/export folders used by that project. Then all we'd have to do is open a particular project file and not have to worry about setting/resetting the import/export folders. In other words, those should NOT be global settings, but rather local per project settings.

Cheers!

Quote: If you create a separate folder for each project and set it as your output folder then the only penalty to saving the project's folder is you may be saving unused assets. If you have plenty of disk space that won't have much impact.

If you are switching back and forth between projects and you forget to update the output folder you might wind up with some assets in the wrong folder. Pack Project Materials will insure those assets don't get left out of your archive (provided they were used on the time line).

A new user who hasn't thought much about project management is likely to let Power Director accumulate assets in the same media library. Pack Project Materials will help him a lot by archiving only the assets needed for the project. It's less important for the user who works out a good project management strategy ahead of time.

Quote: Besides using Pack Project Materials (which I don't think is all that great a tool) it also works to simply COPY the project folder and everything in it, to somewhere else. That way you not only get the project and what's on the timeline, but everything else you've dumped into that folder. And PDR doesn't seem to have any problem at all in opening the result if it's copied/moved to another computer. At least that's what my testing is showing me.

I think you might be misunderstanding the PD pds file, just mentioning so you don't get burned later.

The PDS file stores reference to source content as fixed locations, open a pds file with notepad and look for text SRC=. You will see a line like this for each source file in your project:

SRC="D:\100G_BS\BS\More_BS\Final_BS\00000.m2ts" NAME="00000.m2ts"

No matter where one puts the pds file, it will always load timeline content from the fixed address that is saved in the pds file. It does not matter what import/export folder you have defined when loading a pds file. It looks for the files at that fixed address, if that address changes or the file is not there, you will get the warning shown in the attached pic. Here I moved the 00000.m2ts video file shown above so now when the pds project file is loaded, PD will have issues as it can’t find the source files at the fixed address that was saved in the pds file. I need to manually navigate to the new spot I put them.

If for some reason you select any version of "Ignore" and then save the project, you better have a backup as you just damaged your entire project, you will have black boxes for any content in the timeline that PD could not find at the fixed address.

The "Pack Project Materials" rewrites the pds file fixed file references to just the current pack folder, so the new location in the packed pds file would be SRC="00000.m2ts" so when the pds file is loaded it simply pulls content from the local folder.

Jeff

Thank you very much for the clarification, Jeff. Fantastic stuff!

I understand everything you said, and since I maintain the exact same directory structure on my home and office computer (and on the external transport drive I use), the fixed locations that are stored in the .PDS file work for me. But I didn't know that Pack Project Materials removed the fixed location info, making it work with whatever local folder it's re-placed into. That's good info!

(There's a lot of BS in your directory structures there, Jeff! )

Anyway, what I was wishing for would be an enhancement to what is contained within the .PDS file so that the import/export folder names FOR THAT PROJECT could be stored with the project. Having them as a global setting has already gotten me in trouble when I'd forgotten to change them to match the project I was opening and working on.

Your post is making me change (slightly) my method of working with projects. Until the project is FINISHED, I'm going to continue as I was, by copying the entire project directory from one computer to my transport drive and then from the transport drive to the second computer. Reversing the process when I want to bring the work back to my office. (I use a comparison program called Vice-Versa Pro to compare and copy files... works terrifically!) And once the project is completely finished and the final video rendered, THEN I'll use Pack Project Materials to produce something I'll archive on my NAS drives. And now that you've told me what PPM does, I'll be able to restore the project to ANY folder name or structure I want and have it work.

Cheers!

Quote: I think you might be misunderstanding the PD pds file, just mentioning so you don't get burned later.

The PDS file stores reference to source content as fixed locations, open a pds file with notepad and look for text SRC=. You will see a line like this for each source file in your project:

SRC="D:\100G_BS\BS\More_BS\Final_BS\00000.m2ts" NAME="00000.m2ts"

No matter where one puts the pds file, it will always load timeline content from the fixed address that is saved in the pds file. It does not matter what import/export folder you have defined when loading a pds file. It looks for the files at that fixed address, if that address changes or the file is not there, you will get the warning shown in the attached pic. Here I moved the 00000.m2ts video file shown above so now when the pds project file is loaded, PD will have issues as it can’t find the source files at the fixed address that was saved in the pds file. I need to manually navigate to the new spot I put them.

If for some reason you select any version of "Ignore" and then save the project, you better have a backup as you just damaged your entire project, you will have black boxes for any content in the timeline that PD could not find at the fixed address.

The "Pack Project Materials" rewrites the pds file fixed file references to just the current pack folder, so the new location in the packed pds file would be SRC="00000.m2ts" so when the pds file is loaded it simply pulls content from the local folder.

Jeff

Eldor,

The Project managment we are taking about is well explained in these two tutorials.

Project Management I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAOnn8g0C_o

Project Management II. This one explains about Pack Project Materials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2CYLYIynB0 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.