Merging projects

rtrindt · Post by **rtrindt** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 9:43 pm

I'm a middle school tech teacher and have been producing a weekly video with student pics, birthdays, etc. Now that I'm comfortable with VS9 and have a system down for doing this under 4 hours, I need to train some students to help produce the project.

I have three copies of VS9 loaded on three machines and envison students creating seperate parts of the production and then merging them together so I can do any final editing before creating the final dvd.

I used to use Studio 9 (pinnacle) and you could copy a series of clips and copy it into another project pretty easily, but I haven't figured out how to do it with VS9 if it is possible at all.

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:09 pm

rtrindt,

If you're going to produce a DVD, I suggest that each student render their portion as an AVI. In other words go to Share -> Create Video File and create an NTSC DVD file. Then just bring them into the timeline like you would any other video. If you have the three computers networked, sharing the files will be easy, otherwise you'll have to burn the portion onto CD/DVD.

Hope this helps,
Ron G.

rtrindt · Post by **rtrindt** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:23 pm

Yeah, I thought that might be one way to do it, but it limits my ability to go into the video clip and edit the misspelled word or add somethign they might have forgotten before I send them home. I guess I'll just need to proof them before merging them.

Just thought it would be nice to be able to open a project and then insert the other students project behind it and so forth.

Even Windows Movie Maker allows you to select a string of clips, copy them, open an exhisting project, and paste the selected clips into the other project and that's a free program

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:37 pm

rtrindt,

Well, I did a little more digging and I have good news and not so good news. You can bring a project file into another project. That's the good news. The not so good news, is that it bring it in as a complete video onto the Video Track, so you won't be able to do any editing on the titling in impoted project. But you can get a sense of the flow and catch any mistakes tha your students, or you, need to clean up. Here's how to bring in a project:

Go to File->Insert Media File to Timeline->Insert Video

Next in Files of Type select Ulead Video Studio Project Files (*vsp)

That's it!

Hope this helps, again,
Ron G.

rtrindt · Post by **rtrindt** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:50 pm

Thanks for your effort and time on this Ron....

I tried to insert the project to see how it would work and the other project goes through an opening project process, but when I click on open again to finish the insert process I get a File format mismatch error message.

No dice.

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:58 pm

rtindt,

You said

I tried to insert the project to see how it would work and the other project goes through an opening project process, but when I click on open again to finish the insert process I get a File format mismatch error message.

What do you mean by "to finish the insert process"? Do you mean to add more project files? Or to finish adding the first project file?

Ron G.

rtrindt · Post by **rtrindt** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:02 pm

After I selected my project to insert, the processing bar shows it is opening the project......then nothing. It doesn't show up in my first project anywhere, so I assumed I had to hit the open button again to insert. That is when I get the error message

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:18 pm

rtrindt,

Hmm. Maybe you can wait longer and see if it finally "kicks in". I don't know how complex your project is but in my quick tests it worked great. I haven't used this before, but I sure am now. There are some creative shortcuts that I'm going to try out. Another thing is you may want to check is see that both projects are set to the same settings.

Ron G.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:08 am

rguthrie wrote:If you're going to produce a DVD, I suggest that each student render their portion as an AVI.

I've found that if you have used any titles, rendering to an AVI file and then on to MPEG-2 results in a noticeable quality drop in the titling text compared with rendering the AVI and added titles straight to MPEG-2.

I'll definitely try the inserted project workflow, however - I like the sound of that!

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:35 am

2Dogs,

If you add titles to the MPEG (after already rendering an AVI) doesn't that require another render to burn to disk? Also, what AVI settings do you use? I haven't noticed a drop in text quality on my end so that's why I ask.

Ron G.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 4:57 pm

Hi Ron,

I compared the normal AVI workflow whereby you add your effects and titles etc, then render to an MPEG-2 project file - to rendering first to an AVI file, and then rendering that to MPEG-2.

The latter is not proposed as any kind of sensible workflow for most usage, but I noticed that the title text quality was significantly worse than the normal approach. In these tests, my AVI settings matched my captured AVI properties - i.e. 720x480 DV Type 1.

It's a while since I did the tests, so maybe I'll repeat them to confirm the effect. It's possible I used it when combining output from different editing programs, so I'll double check video property settings.

Adding titles to MPEG-2 source files and rendering to an MPEG-2 file will produce decent quality title text, even though there has to be at least some degradation of the source material.

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 5:55 pm

2Dogs,

I was just wondering. I take my captured DV (captured in DV), edit, add titles, etc. then I render the final project to a MPEG2 for burning. As far as I know this is the same as the Recommended Procedures.

Happy New Year!
Ron G.