Thanks John.

If you're right then that's daft, yes? How can you edit it without making such a change! Or are you implying that it's not meant to be edited?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Good day, gentlemen. 

Just a few thoughts on this: Editing the program's INI file manually is by no means an officially supported workflow. You won't find anything in the official documentation of the program that will encourage you to edit the INI, and, for most intents and purposes, there will never be a need to do so.

That said, externally manipulating the INI file is technically possible. There's no special mechanism or elaborate time-stamping scheme that will keep you from doing so. For most things, it won't be necessary, as relevant program options have a suitable switch within the program, of course. However, in the context of tech support, the need to edit the INI manually might arise from time to time, e.g. if you locked yourself out of the program by choosing a video mode that your graphics card can't support and then have to manually change the INI to a compatible video mode again. So, what Terry is experiencing is something I simply cannot reproduce here.

Terry - what exactly do you mean when you say the program acts like a new installation? Is everything basically just returned to the default settings? If so, this would be the same effect as manually deleting the INI file. In this case, I'm wondering whether this is possibly some tricky Windows file access rights scenario. When you're writing the INI back to the disc from your text editor, maybe the file gets some funny rights settings or special flags that prevent Movie Edit Pro from opening it again. So, it returns to the default settings...just speculating. Or maybe it's some setting in the text editor you're using, that will change something about the file's formatting, preventing Movie Edit Pro from handling it correctly. Once again, generally this shouldn't be a problem. Has always worked fine for me, e.g. just using Windows notepad. So, this remains a bit of a mystery.

cheers, Ralf

Thanks Ralf.

I'm pleased at least to hear that it can be edited! (Which squares with my vague recollection that I've done so before, although probably with an earlier version.)

In this case I want to change the default for Record. When I record a narrative I hardly ever want MEP to play the video at the same time. So I need to change the line
PlayWhileRecord=1
to
PlayWhileRecord=0

Is there any way to do that without editing the INI?

It's a mystery why it's reverting to 'new installation' status. (I get the 'What do you want to do now?' wizard, lost all my settings, folder paths, etc.) I can't see anything amiss along the lines you suggest but I'll continue investigating now that I know it's down to my setup or PC

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK
 

Hi Ralf

Many thanks for clearing that up.  As Terry has said we used to make subtle changes to the ini file with no problems.  With MEP17 I have not had to do this so it has not been necessary to modify the ini file.

John

This puzzle has now been replaced with TWO puzzles!

First, a recap. My videodeluxe.ini file starts like this:

--- Start paste ---
[

[Special]
AlwaysSnapToFrames=1
PlayWhileRecord=1
NormalAbort=1
RecordDevice=1
MemCpyIndex=1
RemoveTimerMessages=1

[Video]
UseMultiMediaTimerForVideoPlayback=0
etc
etc
--- End paste ---

(Note: I don't know why it starts with that open square bracket. There isn't a corresponding close bracket at the end. But experimentally deleting it makes MEP17 act as if the whole file was deleted. Possible clue?)

With MEP closed I changed a single line in this 48 KB file using my text editor, TextPad, which I've been using for many years. I saved it, and restarted MEP17. It behaved exactly as if the file had been deleted and treated it as a new installation, losing all my settings. On closing MEP17, the new videodeluxe.ini was now 13 KB, the 'basic' file.

I backup nightly so was able to restore my 48 KB file.

Ralf confirmed that this behaviour was apparently unique to my PC. It's exactly what I'd get if I deleted videodeluxe.ini.

OK, now for the new information. I tried making the edit with Notepad instead of TextPad. To my great surprise, THAT edit did work. MEP uses the edited file. (But see Puzzle #2 below.)

I've rebooted the PC, closed and re-opened Textpad, and repeated the exercise several times, with identical results.

So Puzzle #1 is: why should TextPad give such a dramatically different result? I'm still investigating, and have emailed the author too.

But the new Puzzle #2 is: the change doesn't stick! The change
PlayWhileRecord=0
at first seems to do exactly what I want. When the Record dialog appears (press R in MEP), that option is no longer checkmarked as the default.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-PlayWhileRecord.jpg

But if I record something, close the dialog and then re-open it later to make another recording, the option is checkmarked again! Yet the file still shows
PlayWhileRecord=0

So it looks as if some other factor is at work here. Anyone know what please?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I see. I'm pretty positive that text editor you've been using writes back the information in some different character encoding or something. Maybe you can find out more from the maker of that application. Even that should be an option that you can modify in a decent editor, though. So, maybe there's some other setting.

As far as this particular program option is concerned, I will need to look into it. It seems to be true that the checkbox in the program will not consistently respond to the change in the INI file. I think the right way to go here doesn't involve further tinkering with the INI, though. I'll make this a feature request for the program to memorise the status of that checkbox in the audio recording dialogue. That should be the best solution in the end.   :-)

Thanks Ralf. That sounds very plausible. Some distinction like ANSI v Unicode or whatever.

I'll let you know what the author says.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK