trakAx.com

Hi,

Love Trakax, and have used it for heaps of music vids etc - combining stills, several cams of video, crossfading etc. Brilliant the way it works like a multi-track audio editor, but for video too.

However, I’m wondering if I can also use it for more mundane video editing tasks, and despite looking in forums and watching video tutorials I haven’t found a reasonable way to do it.

Most home video cams these days drop many small video files onto an SD card, which can then be drag-and-dropped to the hard drive. There’s often a lot of “chaff” in there that needs to be trimmed out. For many people the desired process is to bring these small files in with multi-select (one at a time would be very cumbersome) onto what effectively would be a single track, then specify which bits to delete. A crucial part of this is that with each cut/trim, all video/audio to the right of the deleted bit automatically “shuffles left”, so that no gap is left. It’s a massive job to manually select all stuff to the right and move it to close the gap because one would have to zoom out to select it all.

After all the rubbish has been removed a single, much smaller and more interesting video can be written for archive/storage. Usually, many many trim operations are required so a cumbersome procedure won’t work.

Windows Movie Maker makes this easy enough, as does Nerovision express and I’m sure others , but I’d like to be able to use Trackax so as to use other features too, plus I really love the way it never crashes - a great new feature that not many software writers have thought of!

The using trakcutter as each file is loaded isn’t the answer I don’t think - at that time the decisions about what should be in and what should be out still aren’t made - overall assessment is required first.

Any clues about how Trakax can be used for this process?

Also, second question - the still image zoom effect is great but results are sometimes unpredictable. A pan effect to go with that was talked about (Ken Burns effect?) but I don’t think it made it into version 4 - any update on that? I think it would open a lot of new possibilities for the app.

Thanks for your help, and congratulations on a great product!

Hi Hagmanay

Thanks for your mail and feedback we really appreciate it.

Are you using version 3 or 4?

In version 4 we have added the ability to add whole folders or multiple files directly into the mixing screen using either media browser or our new tool the Media Manager - http://www.trakax.com/software/wiki/Category:Media_Browser::New_-_Media_Manager_Window/ .

We have also added the ability to add these files onto a single track or alternative tracks.
Please see our wiki on this topic with a video included:

http://www.trakax.com/software/wiki/Category:Media_Browser::New_-_Media_Manager_Window::Dragging_files_multiple_files_and_folders_to_mix_from_the/

Once all the files are now placed on a single/alternative tracks you can delete the tracks you do not need.

We do not have the ability for the all the tracks to shuffle left of right (good idea to give the option though and I will pass this onto the developers) but we have added new selection tools in the right click menu so you can move the whole mix extremely quickly without having to Zoom to select the entire mix. With this option you can select all objects left or right of the playbar and move them in any direction you like.

Please see our wiki on this topic - http://www.trakax.com/software/wiki/Category:Auto-Selection_Tool::New_-_Accessing_Selection_Options_through_Menu/

Just to note V4 is a free upgrade to all users who purchased V3. Just download the version on our site and the application will recognise the licence on your computer.

I hope this helps your workflow and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions about this.

Best regards
Cormac

Excellent, thanks for the prompt reply Cormac.

I’m a paid user and have already upgraded to version 4 - process was absolutely seamless in the end but I must say it took a short while to work out which version to download to do it - on the front page there are instructions for how to download the trial version and how to buy, but not for what to do (and which file to download) if you’ve already bought and just want to upgrade.

I didn’t know about the “select everything to the right” option so that will be a big help. A “cut and close gap” option would be somewhat better and would seem to fit easily on the right-click menu but I’m sure you have more urgent tasks to attend to.

One other suggestion - on the “export to” page, shouldn’t the default resolution/framerate be that of the input videos (especially if they’re all the same)? It’s great to have the option to change these settings, but many times the input videos will be all from the same source, and as often it makes no sense to export at a higher res or framerate than the input video (can’t get better quality on output than the input) it would save the less techno-savvy user from a deal of confusion and uncertainty to have the defaults set logically. Likewise a sensible bitrate/quality default/pre-selection based on input video quality might be helpful?

Finally, and sorry to nag, but you didn’t comment on the image pan / Ken Burns effect question - any news on progress on that effect?

Thanks again for talking to us users - yet another very refreshing idea from Trakax!!

Cheers from Australia

Harry

Hi Harry

Thanks for the post! I have been talking to the developers about “the move to left delete option”. This would not be that difficult to add and we hope to have it in a future update. It is a great idea and something we would like to implement in the future.

In regards to your question about aspect ratio. A lot of people use videos that are different aspect ratios in a single mix also so it would be quite difficult to choose between many files with different frame rates and aspect ratios. With the slideshow creator and new paste options it could be thousands of files all with different sizes and frame rates. We made the decision that most people will be editing 1280x720 or 1980x1080 full hd videos. Therefore we set the default at the lower 1280x720 HD for quicker exporting and uploading with the option to select 1080full HD as the preset above. I hope this makes sense.

In regards to your last question. The pan and zoom effect option is something we are going to look into once this next update is out.

I hope this helps and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Best regards
Cormac