VSX9 "Same as First Video Clip" stopped working

[Old Grey]

I don't know what's it called so don't even know what to search for - lol -, but from what a gather the "Same as First Video Clip" box tick doesn't render the frames but merely copies them directly to the output file, making the render very fast.
This was working 2 weeks ago, but now it seems to be rendering it to something else because the file is bigger than the original - it was always smaller after you cut stuff out -, and it's slower. I did the clean-out file and reinstall - don't know why it remembered the old clips but they're still there after the clean-out -, but it's still not working. I tried re-editing a file that was working 2 weeks ago, ie, it's output file was smaller than the original, but now that same file outputs a bigger file, ie, it can't be the original file because it's the same clip.

[Ken Berry]

I don't know what's it called so don't even know what to search for - lol -, but from what a gather the "Same as First Video Clip" box tick doesn't render the frames but merely copies them directly to the output file, making the render very fast.

That's not quite what "Same as first video clip does". VS looks at the first video clip in the project and sees its Properties. And it renders the whole project with those Properties even if the rest of the video in the project has a variety of properties, codecs etc. It certainly does NOT copy the frames of the first video; and it is unlikely to make the render go any faster, although it might conceivably do so depending on how long the project is and what is in it. In other words, it is merely a way of getting all of a project to render in a format which works for you.

I am also not surprised that what is rendered is bigger than the first clip or how big the original project seemed. As I say, "Same As" does not copy the video video itself, merely the Properties. If your project consists of Video 1, 2, 3 etc, and 2 and 3 etc are in a different format and potentially smaller in that format to Video 1, then merely counting the kilobytes or megabytes in each and adding them together might give you one figure. But when rendered, you have in fact converted Video 2, 3 etc to have the same Properties as Video 1 and they will potentially be bigger, even much bigger, than the original Video 2 and 3, and thus the overall newly rendered video will be much bigger than what you started with.

Does that make any sense to you?

[Old Grey]

I've got maybe 500 files done that way, and that's the way it has been doing it for the last 15 years.

Here is a pic of the files and you'll see the render on the 20th Sept is smaller than the orig and took about 10-15sec. The new file done today is bigger and took about 1min, ie, it's got to be altering the frames to something other than the original.
https://www.mediafire.com/view/2idbyhkf ... e.jpg/file

The file is recorded with a TV card, then because it's ABC there are no ads so I just cut the lead and tail of the file and render as "Same as First Video Clip". If it's the exact same properties, shouldn't always be shorter, ie, less frames of the same properties, yet it's now 800MB bigger.

[Ken Berry]

In VS Preferences > General, have you ticked the box beside "Show message when inserting first video clip into the Timeline"? In other words, when you start a new project and insert a clip in the timeline, do you get a message asking if you want the Project Settings to match those of the clip?

What you seem to be doing is inserting just one clip in the timeline, doing your editing of it and then rendering using Same As First Video Clip -- is this correct? I guess that should work, but it just seemed a bit illogical to me when Same As First Video Clip is meant for a project which contains a variety of clips with different properties and you want the final video of the project to have the same properties as the first video.

The other way of doing things when you only have one clip in the timeline is to get that message about matching the Project Settings to those of the clip, then do your editing, then choosing "Same As Project Properties" for rendering.

I am not sure about the difference in sizes between original and final videos. But with that ABC video, can you right click the original video in the timeline and copy all its Properties here, either writing them out or taking a screen shot and posting it as an Attachment. Then do the same with the video you got after editing and rendering. That way we may have a better idea of what is going on. Differences in size are usually not just a question of one video being longer or shorter than another. It is also highly likely, if the codec being used is the same, that the bigger video has used a significantly higher bitrate than the smaller video.

EDIT: Another possibility has just occurred to me. Do you start each and every project as a New Project i.e. when you finish one project, do you always then go to File in the top left of the VS screen and choose New Project? Or do you sometimes -- since there are probably only one video and perhaps start and end titles and transitions added, you just delete what is in the timeline so you can start a new project, and then simply insert a new video in the timeline?

A variation of this might be where you start a New Project (File > New Project), and insert a video; perhaps get the message asking if you want the Project Settings to match those of the video. But then you change your mind and delete the video and insert another.

If you do either of these things, then you won't be starting a New Project in Video Studio's eyes: it would just be a continuation of the previous project. Then selecting Same As First Video Clip would apply the Properties of the original and now deleted video in the timeline, rather than the Properties of the new video.

[Old Grey]

Damn, I should've asked you before wasting a day, restoring, uninstalling, re-installing, etc, because it's looks like changing the preferences fixed it.

The "Show message when inserting first video clip into the Timeline" was ticked, so I un-ticked it, saved and restarted VSX9, then re-ticked again, and now it's working again.
Here is a vid of it working again - https://youtu.be/awDV1_BmdPk

Around 2007 I tested 3 editors and VS was the fastest to render, and that's the reason I stick with it, ie, it saves time even with slow hardware.

Thanks for that.