New user - Library question

[John-T-Smith]

While I wait for my Video Studio 9 to arrive from Amazon, I am reading the PDF that I downloaded... first thing is the quick start and discussion of the Library

I have all of my video and picture files in a folder on one of my hard drives

The PDF instructions say to type in a new folder name... so can I just enter my existing video folder so the program will "see" all of my files and not make a 2nd copy?

Or, does VS9 only create pointers to the files where I have them stored, rather than actually copying from point A to point B... point B being the new Library folder?

Note... while I am completely new to VS9, I have done home video for several years with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6... which does not work properly now that I have upgraded to Windows 10, so I looked around for a replacement

[BrianCee]

When the user guide says to type in a new folder name it is referring to a library folder - you can have up to about 30 of those - visible in the top right corner of the interface - I usually have one per project and name them as per the project -- "China holiday" or whatever - you can call them whatever you want - they do not necessarily have to match the Windows folder that the videos are in - in fact you can populate each library folder with videos/photos from any number of windows folders - I tend to create Windows folders for each project but you don't have to - as long as they are permanently available to Videostudio they can be any where on your computer

having created a library folder you "import" clips to it using a folder icon in the library which opens a 'browse' window which allows you to select clips all over your computer using standard windows selection methods - to select from different Windows folders you will need to import from each windows folder and then repeat the process for each Windows folder - you can do that at any time while editing - doesn't all have to be done at once .

AND - yes you are correct in summarising that nothing is actually "IN" Videostudio - everything you see in the programme is just a small visual representation (thumbnail) of your video which is a just a link to the actual photo/video/music clip / graphic - so all the cutting and deleting you may do while editing will not affect your videos at all and you can use them over and over in different videos

as a insight your interface may look like this after a while

click on the image to see it bigger

..

[John-T-Smith]

Thanks... as I read the PDF, and more so when the program arrives, I will figure out what goes where

My home built has 4 SSD drives (as I said, I was using Premiere Pro CS6 until Win10 caused problems) as follows
256Gig for Windows and all programs
256Gig for project (Library, for VS9) and temporary files (and misc other "stuff" like personal pictures)
512Gig for all video and picture input, one folder per subject
128Gig for all output, be that edited video or ISO to write a DVD with Imgburn

Anyway, since VS9 is written to work with Win10, I'm looking forward to organizing me recent vacation pics/video to make a DVD