some requests

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fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

some requests

Post by fw0rd »

Hi,

VideoMeld is just about my favorite program these days.

As I work with it I am sometimes running into things that perturb / frustrate and I'll share them here in the hopes they show up in an update.

I'll go ahead and document them here in case people are listening and hopefully be pleasantly surprised later if these thoughts are useful and included in an update. If not, I really like the program, and these are just things I'd hope to see, thanks for your effort on this excellent and affordable product.

I also don't know everything about the program and figure out new things as I need them, so I might just need to be told where something is.

Anyway, here's my list, may come back to this thread later with some more...

1. Scroll wheel - I am accustomed to using the scroll wheel on my mouse to go up and down in a webbrowser. In VideoMeld this works differently, where it zooms in and out of the timeline, showing more or less of the project. It would be very useful if there was a checkbox in options that would alter this, allowing me to override the default behavior so that the right hand scrollbar moves up and down when using the scrollwheel instead. My mouse has a third button under the scrollwheel... if, when the checkbox was selected in options, the scrollwheel would allow me to zoom when that button is pressed, and move up and down when not pressed, it would feel more natural to me, and cause me fewer problems. ( i lose my place alot).

Also, when I use the scrollwheel, and decrease / increase the timeline, the behavior is a bit strange, sometimes the lower scrollbar sticks to the right, so I am expanding the end of the timeline, other times it sticks to the left so I am stuck at the beginning. Perhaps a button of 'go to beginning' and 'go to end' on the top toolbar would be useful, as well as behavior that doesn't make me have to go down to the bottom to get undiscombobulated. Seems to happen when you reach the point where the bottom scrollbar disappears that it doesn't meet my expectations.

2. Preview window - it would be fantastic if there was an option to make the preview window 'always on top'. That one should be easy to do by modifying it's context menu when right clicking it's title bar. To go a step further, it would be useful if it was possible to dock it to the right hand side or something. Also, I run multiple monitors, minimize maximize and restore on the window itself would actually be useful, but they are disabled.

3. right hand volume display - I am uncertain what this does exactly. I also would like to be able to turn this on / off so I can get a little extra screen space for the timeline.

4. view fullscreen - it would be nice to have the option to go fullscreen with the application so I can get more vertical space in the timeline.

5. track height - it would be very useful if there was a track height option in between small and medium, and in between medium and large. when i go to small, i get the vertical space i could use, but don't see what i am looking at. also on small track height, it doesn't seem to be as responsive when dragging the elements around. and the large size is useful for seeing what's what, but it's just gigantic. Add this to my scrollwheel frustration and the workflow is just odd.

6. copy effects - it's sometimes painstaking to set up effects and effect timing on a media object here, and then to need to do it manually over and over is tedious. it would be great if i could copy the effects and timing from one media object to another. I've noted that i could do this by exiting videomeld and perhaps editing the xml file of the project, but not really sure how well that would work and of course whatever I can do in the UI is better for me.

7, toolbar - vertical space is the premium for me so showing and hiding the toolbar as an option would be good, or being able to turn off the labels, or being able to say align it to the left hand side, or all of the above.

8. download decoders for ffmpeg / libav - not sure what this is supposed to do. I clicked download, and it downloaded, and then it failed or something... it wasn't quite clear to me what had happened. I was able to do this successfully later.

9. text layers - it seems there's no way to modify the vertical spacing between rows when there is a line feed in the text, meaning if i want my text to be closer together, i have to make one object in the timeline for each text layer.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for right now. I really enjoy this program and would just like to see a few things happen that make it a little more usable to me. I am working on a project with it that makes fairly intensive use of it, so I'll probably have some more feedback to add later.

Thanks.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

oh, yeah... animated gif... it doesn't treat it like a video, it only shows the first frame. would be useful to be able to import / export animated gif. probably a more challenging feature to implement than UI tweaks.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

ok, it's possible to configure an audio editor, but not a video editor... i use some external programs to mess with video files so it would be useful to be able to pop out to say, shotcut, or even more than one tool here..
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

I have a lot of apps, and my taskbar is somewhat tall. The OK Cancel and help on the Video Effects window is always too far down (1366 x 768) resolution, even with only one row. I can resize it, but it does not save this setting, and so I wind up having to resize it alot.

also... under video effects... i have a square image. i am resizing it over 10 seconds, to basically double it's size, with a few minor fluctuations... there doesn't seem to be a way for me to resize both width and height exactly the same, basically means i have to go through and adjust points to make them identical at each keyframe. it would be nice if there was a way to set all points to the same value, if that makes sense. in this case, preserving the aspect ratio of the image as it 'grows'.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

some form of tutorial on the usefulness of the Graph Generator f(x) button in the Video Effects window would be nice. it looks like it can make a nice waveform for doing weird stuff to the image i'm scaling, but I don't totally get it.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

it also would be nice to get a little more horizontal space by perhaps having the ability to turn off the volume meters for each track. 99% of the time it seems I only need the labels for the track and the ability to move them up and down, but I will always need more screen space.

the same thought goes for the 'status bar'. if that 'status bar' could be hidden / shown and get me more vertical space, it would be useful. the modified / marker / playhead times could easily fit on the top, within the ruler, or somewhere else.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

another thought that i had that would be useful is the ability to put a variable or variables into text objects. for instance, some of the videos i work on are time based and could use a (%timestamp%) macro, where putting that into the text always puts in the current time. obviously that could get somewhat complex with different date and time formats, but it's something i am looking for.

beyond this, if it was possible to say, initiate the output component by command line... that would be useful. basically, some batch file calls videomeld.exe -nowindow -format youtube720 -file myvideo.videomeld -saveas myvideo-youtube-720.mp4 ... I am sure you see what I am getting at... if it did that silently... this would increase the usefulness of the application. because i do a few things where i generate graphics for presentations.
fw0rd
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:01 am

Re: some requests

Post by fw0rd »

ok. i discovered that the copy and paste effects is there, just not in the right click menu. i've been using this program here and there for over a year and i am just going through it from top to bottom because there are some tricks I need to learn to achieve the results needed for this project.

I was impressed to discover the ability to add text to speech right into it and I am curious where I could get more voices. On windows 10 it seems that I only have two male voices.
GoldWave Inc.
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Location: St. John's, NL
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Re: some requests

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

Thanks for all the suggestions. Several of those will be added to the next update.

When using the wheel to zoom, the center of the zoom is at the mouse position. So if the mouse is near the beginning of the track or end of the track, that is where it zooms.

The right hand volume is the master volume. It controls the overall volume of the project when melded to a file.

The ffmpeg allows VideoMeld to handle more file formats. Usually it isn't required for common formats already supported by Windows.

Animated GIFs are not supported and probably won't be. There are other programs better suited for those.

Rather than use the "Size" effect, it may be easier to use the "Rotate/Scale" effect. That allows you to set the size with a single value.
ckaye
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2016 2:04 pm

Re: some requests

Post by ckaye »

fw0rd wrote:another thought that i had that would be useful is the ability to put a variable or variables into text objects. for instance, some of the videos i work on are time based and could use a (%timestamp%) macro, where putting that into the text always puts in the current time. obviously that could get somewhat complex with different date and time formats, but it's something i am looking for.

beyond this, if it was possible to say, initiate the output component by command line... that would be useful. basically, some batch file calls videomeld.exe -nowindow -format youtube720 -file myvideo.videomeld -saveas myvideo-youtube-720.mp4 ... I am sure you see what I am getting at... if it did that silently... this would increase the usefulness of the application. because i do a few things where i generate graphics for presentations.
My thoughts exactly. Thanks for posting.
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