Hello John, thanks for your reply. I will read 'Use movie templates' as you suggest. I understand what you are saying, but I still wonder what the actual purpose of templates is. Why would one want to produce a video of very limited length if it can't be used as an intro or trailer etc. The spoof video I made using a template was a bit of fun but it goes no further than that so far as I can see.

Thanks again for your help.

William

Hi

. . . . what the actual purpose of templates is . . . .

Many people just want a quick and easy way of adding pictures, video and text to create short videos without requiring a great deal of knowledge of video editting and spending a lot of time on polished effects etc.

John EB

Hello John, I think I've come up with an answer to the question. As indicated, I was creating a template with videos etc. but couldn't see the point of it if I could not use it as an intro or trailer etc. After completing the template, I could not make use of it in a longer video. The rather obvious solution has now occurred to me and that is to SAVE it as a named video e.g. 'Adventure' and then to insert that named video into the main timeline. Now I can see that a template can be used as an intro or perhaps as a trailer. Previously, I could not insert a template in to a video timeline.

Again, thanks for your help.

William

Hi William

The purpose of the movie templates is exactly for the purpose you need them for, creating intros and trailers.

The correct procedure is: - if you want to add them to your existing movie just double click the template in the Media pool and the template will open as a new tab/movie in the arranger in storyboard mode. Add your content to the placeholders which will mute the audio of the clip if it has sound - this can be reactivated by clicking the speaker icon above the clip. When happy with the editing of the template go File>Manage Movies>Attach and it will insert the the completed intro into the movie you have open if you agree to the prompt that appears. The whole lot will then be on your original project timeline and the template tab will disappear.

Peter

Hi Peter, thanks for your reply I will print it out and follow it step by step. Just one question occurs to me before I actually use the procedure: Can I determine where the template goes within the main video? Is there a way of placing it at the beginning or the end, or even in the middle of the main video?

I very much appreciate your help.

William

Sorry Peter, I'm back again! I followed your procedure but can't get things to work. I placed a video on the timeline, then double clicked a template and compiled the template with stills etc. When I then go to File>Manage Movies, the 'Attach' option has disappeared! It seems that as soon as I open a template, then 'attach' is removed. All I then see is: 

'New, Remove from project, Renaming, and Import '

I can see 'attach' when I open the video but not when I open a template.

I have tried placing a template on the timeline first, but no luck.

Am I still doing something wrong?

Thanks, William

That is strange. Did you answer "Do not close" to the prompt that appeared after the Template was double clicked? you should see 2 movie tabs open above your timeline - one with the name of your movie and the other with the name of the template. On the next prompt you should see the file path / name of your main movie project highlighted.

I can not get the attach to not appear and although I do not have MEP2015 I cannot imagine this function would have changed from the previous version.

AFAIK the Intro sequence always inserts at the beginning so you would need to select it drag or copy it and insert it where you wanted.

Peter

Hi,

As you have seen, Magix did a number on us in 2015. Where before you could start with a template, switch to timeline and then do pretty much what you wanted, now you have to stay in the template; the timeline button no longer appears if there is a movie template.

What to do?

Here is a simple workaround.

Start off a project with a template. My example is "Icy Cubes" which is really 2014_Bright. It seems that Magix uses pseudonyms.

Bring in a couple of images, save the project with the name 2014_Bright or whatever and start a new project with the name that you want to give to your movie.

In Windows Explorer, go to the location where you store the project files. In mine, a folder was opened as follows:

B:\Documents\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium\2014_Bright

and the following files showed up:

2014_Bright.ini       
2014_Bright.MVP       
2014_Bright_HD_ani.m2v
2014_Bright_Song_1.ogg
business_refl_alpha.jpg
ph.jpg

In this case, the only files that are of use are:

2014_Bright_HD_ani.m2v
2014_Bright_Song_1.ogg

and maybe the business_refl_alpha.jpg mask, but we have lots of masks available, right?

Drag the 2 files onto the timeline, one below the other (tracks 1 and 5). The m2v is shorter than the music, so just repeat it.

Everything else is normal editing. Where the template defined length of clips, sizes, locations on the screen, title locations, effects, transitions, etc., now you can do what you want.

Of course you can change the music too, cut it, fade it, whatever. Use the BPM wizard if you want to make cuts to go with the beat of the music. The length of the music is likely not the length of your movie and now you are free to do what you want.

You can always reopen the template project that you saved to see how Magix did it, except that you can't see how they did the effects, only the result.

The above pertains to the particular template that I chose. Other templates may have more files to play with.

You want more music and sound effects and lots of flexibility? Look under:

 C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium

Do a search for *.ogg and *.wav. I have 926 and 120 files, respectively. Just don't move any of them. Copy what you want to another folder under My documents\Magix or something, sort into categories under subfolders and give yourself a link in the MEP file browser to the Music & Sounds folders that you just made. Do what you want with these. Some of them are Soundpool loops and you can combine them to fill in some gaps in your movie.

Hope this gives you some new ideas.

Hello to Peter and John. I received your replies at the same time so I'll combine my reply.

I seem to have opened a can of worms here! 

In answer to Peter, I did click the 'do not close' prompt which appeared after I double clicked the template. I then saw the template appear on the timeline with the movie tabs for the movie, and for the template, above the timeline. I'm not too sure what you mean when you say 'On  the next prompt you should see the file path/ name of your main movie highlighted'. What is the 'next prompt'? In any event there was no way I could find 'attach' under File> Manage Movies. It does seem to me, as John suggests, that Magix have altered something in 2015.

In answer to John, I have printed out your suggestions and will work my way through them. I shall return when I've done that.

Thanks again,

William

William,

"Can of worms?" I was intending to do up a tutorial on the new method implemented in 2015, I just didn't get around to it. You got the subject out into the open. Actually, this thread should be moved to the MEP Forum part.

You are quite right. In MEP2015, a movie that has a Template cannot be Exported or Attached. The options are not available in the menu. This is extremely limiting.

The best that can be done is to export and import the completed sequence into anther movie, that is if you are satisfied with the movie that you created using the template and want to insert it into another movie.

I made up a quick tutorial that shows the new Movie Template feature and limitations, and how to start off a movie using the elements from the Movie Template without actually using the real template feature.

Here is the link.

I will eventually fix this up and submit it.

Hello John, 'Opened a can of Worms' meant there is far more to the templates question than I expected when I opened it, by asking what their basic purpose is. I didn't expect to uncover problems in actually using them. I can see I'm not the first to encounter these problems. I have taken a quick look at your tutorial and it deals with the problem perfectly. Am I right in assuming that you are, in effect, constructing a template on the timeline by extracting items from the elements of the ready made timeline? Sorry about the non technical descriptions.

Thanks,

William

Whoops, I meant to say  'from the elements of the ready made TEMPLATE (not timeline)

Hi William,

Correct. The idea is to use the main elements of a template to create your own movie without the constraints imposed by the real template. The m2v files are the videos and the ogg file the audio that run in the template. There are no placeholders needed and you have to create any effects yourself.

One thing I forgot in the video was using the BPM Wizard to help place image and video cuts.

Hi John C.B.

All sounds a bit backward on Magix behalf - are you sure we are not missing something?

Also - If you go > Select all > Copy objects > then Insert objects into the main movie timeline, does it not place all the elements of the template into the movie.

This works in 2014 but interestingly only inserts if the main movie is in storyboard mode. Timeline mode says "The clipboard is empty"!

Peter

@Peter,

Magix seems to have covered all of the bases in MEP2015 to make sure that you can't edit a Movie Template outside of the template.

I opened a new project called "Test Movie Template - Icy Cubes" and switched to Storyboard mode. I added a movie which was automatically called 'Test Movie Template - Icy Cubes- 01." I double-clicked on the Icy Cubes Movie Template and it created a new movie called "Icy Cubes" with all of the placeholders. I add some text and a few clips to the placeholders.

Now I tried to select all and copy. Can't be done. Ctrl+A doesn't work. Can't select more than 1 placeholder at a time and can't do anything with it; Ctrl+click, Shift+click are both disabled. Can't right-click on an object.

Tried the Edit menu. Select and copy commands are not there. See below.

I also managed to crash the program twice. It didn't like doing the template after creating a new movie or putting the first movie in Storyboard mode after creating the template movie. However, I can't reproduce these crashes consistantly enough to be able to say that there is a bug. I was able to delete the ...-01 without causing a crash.

Below is a screen shot of the Edit menu in the first movie (not the template) for comparison. All of the normal editing features are there.

Below is a composite of the effects menus of the two modes. At the top is the Movie Template, below is the normal movie.

I believe that Magix intentionally disabled the everything so that the user could not modify anything.

Any other ideas as to how to "break" the Movie Template?

Hi John

Thanks for the further testing. Sure looks pretty well locked up.

Groping a bit here but, it is not part of some nested sequence gig, which I think VPX has.....?

Cheers

Peter

@Peter,

You may be getting close.

In VPX6, you can insert a movie, that is one of the other movies created or saved, as an object into the first movie.

So if I create a second movie, add some objects, do some editing, add effects, etc., then I can add that movie into the second movie as an object, with everything done. If I go back and edit the second movie, the first movie will update, usually properly, so long as the length has not changed.

This feature is not available in MEP2015, but may be hiding in the background.

I created Icy Cubes in MEP2015 and then opened the MVP in VPX6. There was the main movie and then there were additional movies named Insert 1, Insert 2, etc. There were objects all over the place in the main movie. Then it crashed.

Going back to MEP2015 and the template movie, what is new is the dialog box at the right of the arranger. That is where you enter the text and if the object is a video, adjust the window over the video which will be the portion that will show up in the placeholder. There is no way to modify and properties of the text that I can find. You are stuck with the font, size and colour. This is really like a new program within MEP.

See below:

I'm backing out of this problem! I tried to add a video to a template and it said 'a serious error has occurred' then asked me if I wanted to send the 'crash log' to Magix, which I did. Surely Magix would not deliberately cause these problems with templates in MEP 2015? Are they even aware of the problems? As I say, it's not worth me trying to deal with this problem especially as I'm non technical. It's a pity we can't use the templates as they are in fact very good in themselves.

William

Hi William,

Crashes are common with video and music editing software and can be a result of a myriad of things; problematic files, conflicts with other programs, virus protection, email, Mondays and gremlins. 

So that we can check what happened, try doing what you did again, this time noting what you did and to see if you can repeat the crash. So that we can also try, which template did you use, which placeholder(s) did you try to put the video on, and what kind of video clip was it - mov, avi, mts, etc., and the length of the clip? Tell us of any other steps that you did.

If some of us can repeat the problem, then we can report it to Magix as a bug.

Regards,

Hi John, I think it must have been the Sunday syndrome. I just tried it again, on Monday, fully expecting a loud bang, but it was successful!.

 I placed my original template at the beginning of the timeline (the template which I had completed as a 'spoof'' video based on the action template). I had saved this completed template as a named file.

I then dragged another video file on to the timeline, after the template file, expecting another crash, but it simply inserted on to the timeline wthout a problem. To be honest I can't say it was the same video that I had tried initially (when it crashed) but it was from the same source i.e. from a list of videos identified by a small brown rectangle with a white central part. That's the best way I can describe it. I think the video clip I used was WMV. It was a very short video. Sorry I can't be more specific but I was trying a number of things before the crash and can't properly identify the video I used. 

The situation still exists where, if I place an empty template on the timeline then try to follow it with a video, it simply won't work.

I've just had a recheck and the video I used on each occasion i.e. before and after the crash, was avi. not WMV.

Hi William,

Just to make sure, when you say "spoof" do you mean that you imported the m2v file onto the timeline? If not, what do you mean by this and how did you do it?

Here is a screen shot of my Icy Cubes m2v imported onto the timeline, with a video clip overtop that rotates in, followed by a photo and then an mp4 video clip.

Try giving us a more detailed description with screen shots of what you did. It doesn't crash for me.

BTW, for anyone else following this, Video Pro X7 that just came out also has the Movie Template part locked. Many more templates are included than in MEP2015 and they are listed by length from 30 seconds to 180s, for a total of 71. This is a big change from VPX6 which had almost none. I presume that these were developed for Fastcut.