Is Timeline the ONLY view available?

OCVQ wrote on 1/9/2004, 12:50 PM
I've just moved over from Pinnacle's Studio 8 (what a buggy piece of junk) and am trying to learn this new program quickly. Is "timeline" the only way to view your project?

If so, is there any way to get around the hassle of working with a large clip from the media pool, which I know I want to trim down to just a few select seconds? I have some large captures that I want to use sections from, but when I drag the whole clip on the timeline it extends FOREVER, overlapping anything already there and making it difficult to drag/trim down.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/9/2004, 2:32 PM
The good news is that that is what the trimmer is designed to let you do. The bad news is, for some reason, you have to turn the trimmer on before you know it's there!

Hold down your shift key and open your Options palette. If you hold down the shift key when you do this, you'll see a set of advanced settings called "Internal." Search through these for the Trimmer and change FALSE to TRUE. Now it's on.

You can access the trimmer two ways. One is by opening it directly. It's down in the lower half of your screen, with the Media Pool, Transitions, etc. It may be off to the right and you'll need to scroll over to it.

You can also simply right-click on a clip in the Media Pool and select Open in Trimmer.

In the trimmer, you poke around in your clip, select only a portion and, by right-clicking, choose to add only video, only audio or both.

A great tool!
Chienworks wrote on 1/9/2004, 6:46 PM
Another very simple technique i use often, assuming you have a free pair of audio/video tracks you haven't used yet, is to drag the long clip into an empty track. This way it doesn't interfere with anything on the other tracks. You can slice & dice all you want and drag the pieces into the other tracks, then delete the leftover you haven't used.
mmreed wrote on 1/9/2004, 7:05 PM
grisetti -

where did you find out about that options area? I didnt see it in the manual anywhere.

Thats good info! Why wouldnt they make it more predominant?

they outline a different method on page 69.
tdmalek wrote on 1/9/2004, 7:38 PM
No kidding, how did you find out about these hidden options??!! And where are the rest of them documented?
OCVQ wrote on 1/10/2004, 12:47 AM
Great info. Thanks for the help.
GerryLeacock wrote on 1/10/2004, 7:38 AM
The Intenal Settings is an undocumented feature that goes back to Video Factory. Careful what you touch in there, you might really mess things up!
Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2004, 7:51 AM
And if you do mess something up ... quit Movie Studio / VideoFactory, then hold down the Shift & Ctrl keys while starting it again. This will reset everything back to the original default installation state. Of course, this means that you'll also lose all the changes that you wanted to keep.

Another very handy setting in the internal preferences is ntDefVideoStillLength (type in "still" in the box labelled "Show only prefs containing:"). This controls the length of still images placed on the timeline. It's in 1/10,000,000 second intervals, so multiply the length you want in seconds by 10,000,000 and enter that as the new value.
ADinelt wrote on 1/10/2004, 1:36 PM
Thanks for the info. Some of the "Internal" preferences should really be made available to the end user in another tab.

I play around with animation a bit and capture an image single frame by single frame. When you then drop the single frame on the timeline, it defaults to something like 3 or 5 seconds. It was through this forum that I first found about accessing the "Internal" preferences and changing the default time down to one frame instead of the 3 or 5 seconds.

Thanks...
Al
Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2004, 2:24 PM
Yep. I did that a lot when i was still using VideoFactory. The correct value to use for 29.97fps is 333667 (well, actually 333666.66666666...), for 30fps it's 333333, for 25fps 400000, for 24fps 416667, for 23.97fps 417188, and for 15fps 666667.
rrogan wrote on 1/10/2004, 3:32 PM
Is that option only in the registered version?
I can't seem to find it
ADinelt wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:13 AM
I found the 'Show Trimmer' option was about 8 items from the bottom of the Internal Preferences list. Scroll to the bottom of the list, then in reverse order they should be:

- Removable Drive for SONY media
- Last Video Preview Window Height
- Last Video Preview WIndow Width
- Video Preview Project Size Mode
- Red Eye Dialog Height
- Red Eye Dialog Width
- Video Plug-In Path
- Show Trimmer (change this one to TRUE from FALSE)

Al
Chienworks wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:30 AM
Or use the search field to search for trimmer
ADinelt wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:55 AM
D'OH!! The 'Show only prefs containg:' field is much easier!!!

Learn something every day.

Thanks...
Al
kgresko wrote on 1/27/2004, 9:37 AM
(grisetti

Unless I do not have the most recent version of MF, I have 3.0a. I am unable to find this "trimmer" option you speak about. I have options at the top of my window and when I hold down shift and then click on options, the selections drop down, and I do not see "trimmer" in there.

Can you straighten me out on this.
GerryLeacock wrote on 1/27/2004, 9:44 AM
Click on [Options], then [Shift][Preferences]. Click on the [Internal] tab, scroll down to "show Trimmer" and change the "False" to "True". Remember to hit [Shift] and Preferences at the same time to access the internal settings.

A fast way to find the trimmer in the internal prefs instead of scrolling down, is to enter the word "Trimmer" in the "Show only prefs containing:[........]" box, and it will then only list any pref with the word "Trimmer" in it.

Now that you have the Trimmer activated, it will show up as a tab along with Media Pool, Transitions, Video FX....etc...
kgresko wrote on 1/27/2004, 10:24 AM
Thanks so much GerryLeacock.

That is a good tool for quick editing of long clips to just get the part that you want, then drag it up to the video timeline. I will have a lot of these, as I am doing my daughters conversion of all her video tapes of the her kids, our grandkids.

Thanks again