New features and old bugs in VS X8

[immerjan]

Hi there

I am currently doing a lot with VideoStudio, and I think it works really well!
For those in the forum doubting that Corel Taiwan's product managers ignore us users, I can only tell that my impression is that they do listen.
Some time ago I asked for musical audio tracks being compressed when there is a voice on the commentary track. Now guess what happened?
They inserted the new feature "audio ducking". (Yes, I'm happy)
It still has some synching problems, as I realized that the audio is "ducked" long before the voice-over starts, and is "unducked" again when the voice-over is still on.
I suppose it has got to do with either the different dime codes for 50p/60p recording, or it must still be the double frame rate issue - which also occurs on an effect I would dearly love to use but I can't:
The time counter effect. It comes with a lot of choices, counting up, down, minutes, seconds, frames etc. - however, it was obviously not programmed for "double frame rate", i.e. video clips/projects in 60p.
I found that a ten second clip that I wanted to be shown with the time counting up, always counted the seconds to 29. Strange phenomenon, yet it is reproduceable on my computer, and I cannot change it.

An old bug I almost got used to - even if it's a real heavy one - is that VS keeps crashing with large projects under the following conditions:
1. Project contains at least one over-lay video track
2. Project contains two subtitle tracks
3. Project contains an extra audio track
4. Project is set to ripple mode

When I'm somewhere in the middle of the project and I need to change a video clip's length on the first video track (should I call it "master"?), I usually drag the clip with the mouse.
The program will not let me make a change if the ripple mode is switched on and cannot move the linked objects to the new location. That's fine.
However, even if I remove all subtitles and audio tracks, so that there is no (visible) connection to the video clip, and thus no problem with the ripple feature, and I use the mouse to enlarge a clip to the left (i.e. "previous" time), the program crashes. It crashes relyably.
I found a work-around in so far as I will do as mentioned above, pull the clip to the second track (first over-lay track), make my changes and then pull it back to the master track.
Still, I am not happy with a program crashing instead of telling me that there is something I should not or cannot do.

All the rest of the program works. I like the program, I am using it since version 4 (that was in 2001 - that is for the kids in the forum). I still haven't found any program that is easier to use, and my family still thinks that I'm very close to a pro.


Cheers
Jan

[asik1]

Thank you Jan for the report.
Can you tell us what is "large project" ?
Can you show here a screen shot of one of your projects?
The time clock is NB FX so it's up to them to get fps up to... whatever.
I didn't got it to work properly either. It should have frames only count.

[Ken Berry]

I found that a ten second clip that I wanted to be shown with the time counting up, always counted the seconds to 29.

If, as asik also suggests, "it should have frames only count", it appears to be acting correctly. If your ten second clip keeps recycling a count up to 29, that would be consistent with NTSC in which every second contains 29.97 frames. If it were PAL, then it would count to 25 every second.

They inserted the new feature "audio ducking". (Yes, I'm happy) It still has some synching problems, as I realized that the audio is "ducked" long before the voice-over starts, and is "unducked" again when the voice-over is still on.

Most people seemed to regard audio ducking as a great new feature. I'm agnostic about that. But I still prefer doing my own ducking manually using the rubber band effect. That way I make sure the ducking starts just before the voiceover and ends just after it. It means I can also vary the level of the ducking.

[immerjan]

Thank you for your response.

A "large" project to me is one of about 20 minutes plus, with several video, audio and subtitle tracks.
When I am doing my vacation videos I usually have the "master" video track, at least one over-lay track, two subtitle tracks (one for the big titling, one for the the actual subtitles), one voice-over track, one audio track when I need to extract sound from a video clip and one audio track for the background music.
That's my basic set-up.

This afternoon I tried to do a screen capture of the program crash - but of course, once I try to show that effect to others, it won't happen! It's probably only after I have worked on the project for some time.

About the New Blue effect showing the clock: I can positively confirm that the problem is the frame rate. Once I created a project in "normal" (or "half"?) frame rate, the effect worked as expected.
Seems like I have to create a video clip in half the frame rate showing only the clock and then paste the clip into my full-frame project.

Has anyone connections to New Blue to tell them to fix it? I mean, this effect is really cool in certain situations, but of course it's less so when I have to do the work-around to get it done correctly.

Cheers
Jan

[asik1]

Is it more complex than that?

This my current project, running fairly OK on my humble XP.

[Ken Berry]

Has anyone connections to New Blue to tell them to fix it?

I don't think any of us here have any special relationship with NewBlue. I bought a number of their Video Essentials packages, and found them to be very responsive when I raised problems with them. However, if you look at the NewBlue website these days, you will find that they have now completely dropped any links with Corel and some other programs at the lower end of the market. So I wouldn't be holding my breath about them issuing a patch. That would probably require direct intervention by Corel since, presumably, they are still paying NB a licence fee for the various effects still included with VS...

[paulkurucz]

Last week I posted a similar set of concerns: Consistent crashes with relatively complex projects:

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57195

Today, I posted an update with some VS "hygiene" suggestions, including keeping ripple editing off as long as possible for your project to avoid crashes.

No simple answer to your concerns, but you can gently massage VS into a more happy mode of being - ie. fewer crashes.