Video Studio X2 Wish List for Future Versions

[Black Lab]

1. More sound tracks are a must.

2. Chapter marker names that come over to the DVD creation process with those names intact.

3. Ability to save in the DVD creation process wthout having to exit out of it.

4. Ability to use transitions on both ends of an object in the overlay tracks.
You can. But transitions need something to transition from or to, so you would have to put a color clip before and after the object.

5. More overlay tracks.
You need more than 6?

6. Ability to use alternative pictures/movies for thumbnails in the disk creation process.

7. Ability to use alternate movie as transition from one menu to another in the disk creation process.

8. Ability to lock a text box on the title track so that when entering multiples of text in different areas you are assured that they will always be positioned at the same place on the video. It is a pain to have to reposition text everytime it is entered.
Are you using Ripple Editing?

9. Ability to take a snap shot of the current frame of all tracks on the time line.
Try Tools>Save Current Frame As Image.

[babyleon]

I haven't seen anything in this thread about the date/time code absence when using HD files in VS and the problem that poses for splitting scenes. Is that addressed in X2?

I currently am using VS 11.5+. I know about using the HDVSplit application and am playing with that but I am not sure that is the best fix for my use (many short duration clips on every MiniDV tape). I just started using a Canon Vixia HV30.

I seem to be able to split scenes adequately in VS 11.5+ by using the scene change function but that seems to take more than a minute for every minute file scanned, i.e. more than an hour for every hour tape captured, and it becomes a huge time suck.

If X2 or any other upgrade addressed this, I would get it in a heartbeat.

Or maybe this problem is not addressable in VS?

Thanks.

[nzhikozaemon]

I use VS 12 Plus (Japanese version uses that name, I think it is the same as Pro X2) primarily for making videos for my YouTube channel, and like the nice hi-res YouTube friendly output settings.

As of a month ago, YouTube now allows 720P videos to be shown in HD, but only if they are uploaded and encoded in AVC format 720P. Current VS WMV and PMG 720P output settings are not detected by YouTube and shown as 720P.

There seems to be no way around it - I have turned custom settings upside down, and recently invested in PowerDirector which has a custom setting that allows you to create AVC 720P files. It's frustrating because I have used VS for years and want to stay with it, but I also want my vids to look as sharp as possible.

Hopefully the good folks at Corel will recognize that YouTube friendliness is a key feature of this software for many users, and make a patch available that will enable users to output videos in AVC 720P format. Unless someone knows a good workaround?

Peace

[Black Lab]

and recently invested in PowerDirector which has a custom setting that allows you to create AVC 720P files.

Unless someone knows a good workaround?

Sounds like you already found it.

[nzhikozaemon]

I guess I did - the thing is that I am not keen to relearn editing with new software if that can be avoided. For now, I am saving 1440 AVC files and hoping not to lose too much quality resaving it a second time in PowerDirector. If VS could allow me to output from a project directly to 720P AVC, that would be the best solution for me. However, you're right, giving up and learning PowerDirector might be the best way out of this (I've used it a few times now and find that when I try out some editing features, it seems prone to crashing, however...)

Cheers

[Ken Berry]

If you have a 720p clip with the properties you want to use for all your other clips, you can make a template with it in VS12 (or VS11/11.5+). Open Tools > Make Movie Template Manager, and select the Add button. A dialogue box appears. The top line has a button to its right with just 3 dots (...) on it. Press that and navigate to where you have your 720p clip located on the computer, and select it. Then, in the next line down in the dialogue box, give it a name e.g. AVCHD 720p. Then simply hit the OK button to close the dialogue box and Close to close the the Make Movie Template Manager box.

Then you should be able to select that as your template the next time you want to convert your existing files to 720p.

Note that you must NOT try to edit the properties of this new template in any way. If you do, it will revert to one of the presets -- though you can create it again by using the process described above.

[nzhikozaemon]

Thanks for the suggestion... but no joy.

I tried two approaches to this - saving a 720P AVC (.m2ts) file as a template, and making the first clip in an edited video the 720P AVC file and saving to the format of the first clip.... However, in each case it seems to have simply reverted to

MPEG File
24Bit, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Framespace
(MPEG-2), 4:3
Video Data Rate: 2000 kbps
Audio Data Rate: 128 Kbps
MPEG Audio Layer 2, 44.1 kHz, Stereo

It seems that it just can't be tricked into encoding in H.264 270P

It seems strange for them to have this gap in output settings (you can do 720x480, and 1440 vids) but there seems no way around it.

[Ken Berry]

Can you try emailing me a very brief 720p clip (just a couple of seconds will do) so that I can try making a template out of it -- use my email button below. The method I described certainly works with other formats of AVCHD, but I confess I have not tested it with 720p as I had no reason to do so...

[nzhikozaemon]

Ken, thank you for the kind offer - I just mailed you a 5 second long 720P AVC clip.

I think YouTube chose the format as it seems popular with a lot of recent low-cost digital HD video cameras like the th Flip Camera and Kodak - not that I use one of those, but it looks like a format they are going to push forward with. Certainly, AVC is a nice compact way to show HD files and with Google/YouTube now choosing this format, the Corel people had probably best come out with a patch for this ASAP.

Cheers

[Mike West]

Share step - Create Disc - DVD
- check whether video clip sources/projects are current and ask whether to update them. If you change a source, you have to remove it and re-add it to get the current clip, destroying all your menu settings in the process.
- copy chapter names from Chapter Point Manager.
- allow additional text on a menu to be created.
- allow text for navigation buttons to be created.
- retain output settings when project saved.
- enable transitions between video source clips.
- option to copy menu title to all menus and chapter menus, or copy & paste ability.
- disable, not just hide, menu options.
- when editing text on a menu item, select all characters by default so you don't have to delete it character by character before typing something new.
- remove or allow delete of chapter point at start of clip.

Edit step
- paste a copied item on the timeline, eg a color(with duration).
- edit title text - allow copy & paste; default to last used font setting.

Open files - defaults to folder location of last operation; would like to create favorites and be able to jump to them, eg video sources folder, projects folder, output folder.

[nzhikozaemon]

An interesting development today - utube now seems to accept 1440x810 and 1920x1080 AVC files and recognize them as HD.

Plus, it shows the higher res HD videos across the width of the page in a new wider player.

I'm trying to confirm that it is cool with MPG files outputted from VS, but it looks like it is now recognizing higher than 720P resolution files, so VS is back to being YouTube friendly now.

Peace

[wizard]

Moving paths. My hand is going up. I had bantered about this elsewhere. . Hopefully corel will work this out when they post a new patch for VS12

My hand also goes up for moving paths - I am rather new to this but it seems like that is what I am looking for. Moving Paths with keyframe.

[Zippy]

How about the ability to hide a video clip / group of clips / section between 2 markers...

For example:

I am working on a project at present that I hope will have an interview with someone near the end. But I will likely need to render two versions - one that includes the interview for audience 'a' and one that doesn't, for audience 'b'.

So to have the interview in my composition, but to be able to turn it on & off would save me a load of hassle.

Compare it, if you will, to being able to show/hide a layer in photoshop.

Zippy!

[Black Lab]

You mean PhotoImpact, right Zippy?

[Zippy]

...errr, the Corel Photo Editing application of your choice

Actually, I tend to use Corel Photopaint quite extensively, in which the ability to show/hide objects (aka layers) is an invaluable tool.

I appreciate that to "hide" a chunk of timeline potentially presents timeline/ripple issues, but it also has great benefits. When I'm putting material together, I often start with a rough edit to get the "story" right, and then tweak and change it. In this "mode" I often want to show/hide bits, move groups of clips (hence my earlier request of grouping), etc.

In fact, re. the "grouping", I was struggling to define the difference between that and ripple editing, but have since come up with a good real-life example... where I have a clip that's been chopped about a bit, and has a couple of overlays, blah, blah making a short sequence. I needed to keep it edittable, but move the entire sequence about in the time line. If the clips/overlays were grouped/locked together, this would have been far easier!

...and in COREL Photopaint ( ), you can of course group objects together, so as you move them about the canvas/transform them/etc/ they all act as one, but you can ungroup and edit the individual items also... very useful.