trakAx

First, I think this is really great free software. Nothing else like it. There are a “few” cool free and open source programs out there, but they are on a slow development track, or too complicated for anyone but a NASA scientist to operate. (Have you ever looked at zwei-stein? It will make you go blind.) This software is definitely a winner. Looking forward to updates and additions to the video areas, like a titler, and maybe a regular scrubber.

Anyway, I’m having some problems pasting large selections together.
Here’s what’s going on.

I’m making some video with many small bits and pieces.
I want to maintain the order and ratio of all segments,
and insert new material at the beginning or middle of the mix.

The only solution I could find seemed to be to make a selection of multiple
file segments, and move them right, making room for new pieces to the left.
But there were problems with this.
1.a multi-track selection only seems to copy/paste properly when it is moved
all the way to the bottom of the mix, to a completely blank area
(Not to an existing but empty track. If it is moved to an empty track,
the file segments seem to get jumbled.)
This is often really inconvenient for aligning and editing.
2. A selection like this will only move to the right if you
copy, paste, and move it “right” and “down” going to a completely blank area.
There doesn’t seem to be any keyboard control for this, or any way to measure
it by “timeline”, “frame”, or anything else… you have to move it way down, and over,
and blindly drop it in. And when you do the paste, maybe right-clicking with the cursor
is actually very precise, but it certainly doesn’t feel precise, ss you have no
actual measure of where the click is ocurring. You’re just clicking, and hoping you
have the exact precise spot down to the 30th of a second. (There is the timeline at
the top, but it seems hard to align with the video, as it’s really there to help
align audio to the grid. But for video, you really aren’t using the grid, and you’re
using 25-30 frames a second… so you need a precise measurement)

If there are some tricks, or things I’m missing, please let me know.

Ideass:
Here are a couple of other ways video segments could be slipped in the mix,
making everything adjust to the right, without losing alignment. Please let me
know if your sofware will do anything similar.
1. If the “split” file segment button also had a “combine” button, then
bits and pieces could be dropped into a single timeline, joined together, and then
the whole thing could be moved right when needed. But, there is no way to combine
segments in a single channel. Also, although you can split files,
you don’t seem to be able to drop other file segments into that same channel.
So, you can neither drop files from other channels into the current channel,
nor combine segments on a channel into a single file.

So, there is no option of creating a single timeline channel, as a work-around to
other issues.

Again, if there are ways to do this I’m missing, please let me know.

2. The coolest thing ever would be to allow segments to “dock” or “link” to each other,
Like they do in some art and animation programs,
and then clicking and dragging one would move all of the docked files over.
Well, it’s wishful thinking.

Thanks for the cool software.
Please let me know if you have any tips or ideas for me.
Johnny

Hi Jonny

Thank you for mail and for your kind words.

I think the problem you are having is that when you copy and paste your multiple tracks into a new area, there could be media placed there already. When this occurs, the multiple tracks are placed in a completely new blank area to stop media overlapping.

We actually have a nice tool which you might find helpful that allows you to highlight large areas in the mixing screen and paste them into other areas in the mixing screen. We call it the selection box.

To create a selection box - hold down the shift and in the mixing screen and move the mouse - you will see a grey box appear. While you hold down the shift key highlight the area that you wish cut/copy.
See screenshot.

You may wish to turn off the snap to grid option to get a perfect cut. To do this right click anywhere in the mixing screen and turn off snap to grid - see screenshot.

Once you have highlighted the area you wish to copy/cut/move, right click on the selection box and select cut or copy and go to area you wish it to be moved to and select paste. The whole area that you highlighted will be moved to that area. Be careful not to place it into an area that already has media there or it will be placed into a blank area to stop overlapping of media.

Another nice function is that you can have multiple mixing screens open at the same time. This can be a great function in conjunction with the selection box.

To do this click on File and select new mix. A new tab will appear above the mixing screen. You can now tab between the 2 mixes (see screenshot) and using the selection box tool you can move large areas of the mix into a new mixing screen. Creating a new mix very quickly.

Thank you for the other suggestions, we particularly like the combine function and it is something that we will look at and has been put into the feature wishlist.

I hope this helps and if it does not meet your needs, please do not hesitate to contact me and we can look into it further.

best regards
Cormac

Cormac,
I think your fast reply was absolutely awesome…
a lot of companies could take a lesson from this.
The response in this forum couldn’t possibly be any better.

But the problem I mentioned still isn’t fixed. 

This sofware, though doing great things for audio, simply isn’t doing all the necessary things for video yet.

I’ll send a private message, and we can continue there.

Thanks,
Johnny

Cheers Johnny

You can get me

Thanks and best regards

Cormac