Can entire tracks be moved?

Joom wrote on 12/17/2012, 5:46 PM

This is odd, because I move tracks in audio and video editors all the time, but today is apparently the first time I've tried to move a track in MEP Plus.

Normally, I just grab a track with the mouse and drag the entire track to the position (or order) I need it in the timeline in whatever software I'm using, but I can't seem to do that in MEP Plus.  I've checked the help and searched the forums and can't seem to find anything.  Is it not possible to move a track in MEP Plus?

Thanks...

(Movie Edit Pro MX Plus)

Comments

cpc000cpc wrote on 12/18/2012, 1:10 AM

Joom,

You need to use single track mouse mode. Search your Help file for 'mouse modes' or look here where selecting a mouse mode has been discussed in relation to a different question:

http://www.magix.info/us/moving-objects-and-chaptermarkers-together-is-it-possible.knowledge.891379.html

There have always been a few different mouse modes but only in the latest versions of MEP has the 'intelligent' mode been split into one track and all track modes. You don't really move the track -- you select and move all its contents.

Regards,

Carl

 

Joom wrote on 12/18/2012, 1:27 AM

Thanks, Carl.  That's what I was afraid of.  So if I have the top 5 tracks filled, and want what I insert on the 6th track to be above the rest, I have to move everything on all 6 tracks down a level, then move the contents of track 6 up to the first track which is now empty.

That seems odd, every other NLE I have (Sony, Serif, even AVS and some of the other less expensive ones) and every audio editor I have (Reason, Reaper, Sony Acid, and a few others) allow me to just drag a track into whatever position I need it in.

Till now I'd used MEP for a number of tasks, but hadn't run into the need to do this till yesterday.  It seems it would make it very cumbersome to work with for a product where track order matters so much.

Anyway, appreciate the reply.  I thought I was just missing something...

gandjcarr wrote on 12/18/2012, 11:32 AM

Hi Joom,

To add a few comments about the differences in the Magix workflow versus Sony and many others.  I edit video for a living, and when I first started using Movie Edit Pro, I found it very strange and different than most of the NLEs I use.  (I actually still use 3 others).  However the more I worked with it, the more I found that I got huge workflow benefits in terms of saved time and engergy.  The ability to re-arrange tracks is probably not one of the examples I would use, but trimming, cutting, and removing either entire clips or just small segments is much easier and faster than anything I have ever used before.  This application also is much easier to use if you want to stack and split video, use keyframes to move video or still images within the project, etc.

Finally, I personally find this application to be much more stable than virtually anything else on the market, and that includes Sony, Avs, Corell, Cyberlink, and Adobe products.  I have plenty of RAM and CPU horsepower to handle pretty much anything and all but Movie Edit Pro seem to crash multiple times during any editing session.

So, my advice to you would be to hang in there, work with the program, understand how the workflow works and use it to your advantage.

Good Luck

George

Joom wrote on 12/18/2012, 12:42 PM

Thanks, George.  I actually do like a lot of the feature set in MEP.  I used to use primarily Adobe products, but started finding quite a while back that I could get more bang for the buck with other products.

I do video and audio post production as part of the business, started with 8mm and really got into it when the muli-deck VCR editors came out.  Quite a few years ago I got heavy into the Sony products for both audio and video, but also kept a few others laying around.  As Serif's MoviePlus gained features and flexibility I started liking it more and more.  About 3-4 years ago I bought MEP, but have used it sparingly (you can only use so much software, I guess).

For this last project I decided to give it a real try, and that's when I found out I really liked a lot of its features and most of its workflow.  I do like MoviePlus's keyframing better than any other NLE I've used, but MEP's works very well.  It's pretty much like any other software field, one program might do this a little better, another might do that a little better, so it gets down to "does this program do everything I need, and does the worlflow let me move quickly through a project".

I'm just getting into the audio side of MEP, and like that pretty well.  I'm still doing my narrations and audio processing outside the NLE and importing, but depending on what all I find in MEP's audio system that may not be necessary.

Overall, I really like MEP so far now that I've had a chance to actually use it, but I'm seriously spoiled on the whole track movement ability I've gotten used to in other products.  That will take some time to adjust to.  I'm still not sure I understand the "mouse mode" thing for object movement.  It seems the "all tracks" mode is basically the same thing as doing a select all (or Ctrl A) to move objects.  Maybe, as you said, it's just a matter of using it for a while.

Anyway, with what I've found after putting it to a real test over the last couple days I can see I'll be using MEP more, depending on the project.  It does seem to render previews a little faster than some of the other systems, I really like that.  I haven't had crash issues with it, but I don't have on most of the software.  My video system is a multicore, multiprocessor system with 32GB of RAM.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it...