@Eric-Elliott

I say the time line only shows one photo and then the blank space. It has everything to do with the length of time it shows.

Still images only display the very start of the object, since every following "frame" is exactly the same. The critical issue, the "yellow blank space", isn't blank at all; it's the continuation of your image. The length of your image is shown by the yellow, which is the image "object". In your screenshot, it goes almost to 25sec, and is butted up nicely against the next image, "Diane Ackenstone.JPG". There is no blank space; drag the Play marker along the timeline in the yellow area and you will see the image being displayed.

Images can also be any length you like; you can change it by right-clicking as you are doing, but it is much easier to simply drag the end (either end) so that it fits the soundtrack. You can shorten or lengthen either image so the combination matches the length of your audio object. Example:

As a general rule, I always try to match the video or still images to the soundtrack, not the other way round.

 

Yes, I call it "blank space" because I do not know the term for it. Yes, to see the next image I drag the scroll slider thingy at the bottom. When I go to put in transitions, I am going to experiment in a test first to see if that may be easier to do in storybook mode. I tried doing that in timeline mode and it is not easy, I can't really see what I am doing even though I have the images enlarged. I liked the way Video Easy worked in that regard, I could just click on the little two-color square thingy and choose my transition and it would be placed correctly.

I first set the length of the image by right clicking making sure I over shoot. For example: My narration maybe say a minute and a half so I'll set the image length to 2 minutes. Then I do my narration and then drag the image to fit that length, always requiring me to shorten it so that it matches. So I am matching the video or image in this case to the "soundtrack" or narration in this case.

@Eric-Elliott

 I wonder if I can make the timeline itself just a little bigger? Maybe there is something in settings?

I agree, the 20-something nerds with good eyes don't have a problem but us oldies have to peer at the screen closely to see anything.

One thing you can try which will increase the font size of the timeline numbers is to increase the scale of your Windows display setting. Go to: Windows Settings>System>Display and choose the next highest Scale. If it's currently on 100%, change it to 125%. That will increase the size of the program text eg timeline numbers and easier to read.

Yes, I have played with that before, it doesn't work well. It makes it so I can see it ok, but then I have to scroll to see the next section and the next and so on. Windows doesn't allow finite adjustment. it is fixed at 25% intervals. It also doesn't always work with every program.

I will try it this time though to see if it works and I don't have to scroll to get to the load in area (where ones stuff they want to use is) and such.

@Eric-Elliott Hi, your injury & poor eyesight are understood & respected by everyone but can I ask, your comments on here are articulate & your grammar is hard to fault, so if your eyesight is that bad how do you write on this forum & you've also mentioned printing out the manual, how then do you read that?

I'm just curious as it may help us understand your situation more.

@Eric-Elliott Hi, your injury & poor eyesight are understood & respected by everyone but can I ask, your comments on here are articulate & your grammar is hard to fault, so if your eyesight is that bad how do you write on this forum & you've also mentioned printing out the manual, how then do you read that?

I'm just curious as it may help us understand your situation more.

Well, it's not injury, it is a combination of unfortunate genes, age and a changed language from what I learned.

I wear very strong Rx glasses, the lenses are at least 1/4 inch thick, I have one more Rx before coke-bottles. They had to slightly down-grade my last Rx in an effort to give me room for possibly two more Rx. After that the only thing is surgery which is not going to happen (can't afford it on any level). Part of the main issue it contrast, my lenses try to correct for that. I can see black letters on a white background provided the font is at least 12. However, some things such as Movie Studio think grey lettering or medium blue or even white at font size 9 or less on a black background is a great idea. I struggle to see the icons at the bottom of the screens and the numbering on the timeline. The sides of the tracks and objects in the tracks I just enlarge and they are fine. I can see the icons at the bottom of the preview window. Now when you add the mess that is the screen of the program, it makes things worse.
White screen background also gets fatiguing to me rather quick though. Printed paper is subtly off-white and is easiest for me. I actually print out the comments here I get. Not only does it make it easier to see and find, but is invaluable for reference.

As for English language. I learned a different English compared to modern English spoken in the US today. I get a lot of complaints about my English even from some in my own age group, including at my job! They complain that they do not understand me and I sure don't understand them because they speak in fragments and in some kind of code. They also use familiar words that mean something other than what I learned and what is in the average dictionary.
I think the "not understanding" may be merely a cheap excuse for not wanting to understand what is perfectly understandable, I don't know. So I just go by what everybody says, that I am not understandable or my English is lacking. Perhaps it is lacking compared to the "American" English spoken today, but it is far too late for me to relearn it even if I take some ESL courses. I did not learn my ethnic language (Russian) well enough when I was little sadly, everything was focused on English and I struggled with writing. I wish I had paid more attention to my grandparents when they were trying to teach me Russian. (They spoke four languages! Russian, English, Yiddish and Spanish). All my friends and acquaintances are Russian and I even have family there as well. Fortunately, I think sometimes they understand English better than I do. They understand me perfectly, even those who do not speak English. Don't ask me how.

Back when I had my on-line audio magazine (2014-2018), the majority of my subscribers and readers were from all over the world, literally. It started as a common blog and morphed. It was all volunteer of course, not monetized or anything like that. It was meant to help others and it did. The only way I was paid was by comments from readers and meeting some of them, but I will tell you that you can't put a price on that. I left all that in 2018. Now, well back in 2022 actually, I felt I wanted to do something similar, but a little different focus and thought about writing again, but discovered that most people now prefer video.

As for Movie Studio or I should say Video editing and the like, that is a whole other language unto itself! There should be classes for it or something.

@Eric-Elliott Thanks for sharing that, It sounds more like it's your vision that is the problem not that MMS is hard, honestly MMS is really easy to learn, everything you've been told about how to edit breaks down to maybe a dozen things, for the editing that you want to do you'd use just a few,

• Drag your media to the timeline,
• Press play & press pause or drag the timeline marker to where you want to cut the media.
• Click on to highlight the media on the track. it'll turn yellow.
• Press T to cut it or use the Split button option at the bottom of the screen.
• Click on the media you want to remove & press delete or click on the trash can.
• Click & drag the two remaining pieces together to close the gap,
• Or split it using T then drag the end to make it shorter like in the vids shown.
• This is the same for audio & pictures.
• Once it's all cut & positioned, press play & watch it, then - Export.

There's no option to change the colour of the UI so even if you could find an editor that you can see better you will still have to be doing these basic operations of cutting, trimming & positioning. They are the baby steps for any editor.

There should be classes for it or something.

You've had lessons, the videos shared by others in your post are about as basic as they can be, I suggest you read your own posts & watch all the videos again. (& the Tutorials at the top of the page)

@Eric-Elliott Thanks for sharing that, It sounds more like it's your vision that is the problem not that MMS is hard, honestly MMS is really easy to learn, everything you've been told about how to edit breaks down to maybe a dozen things, for the editing that you want to do you'd use just a few,

• Drag your media to the timeline,
• Press play & press pause or drag the timeline marker to where you want to cut the media.
• Click on to highlight the media on the track. it'll turn yellow.
• Press T to cut it or use the Split button option at the bottom of the screen.
• Click on the media you want to remove & press delete or click on the trash can.
• Click & drag the two remaining pieces together to close the gap,
• Or split it using T then drag the end to make it shorter like in the vids shown.
• This is the same for audio & pictures.
• Once it's all cut & positioned, press play & watch it, then - Export.

There's no option to change the colour of the UI so even if you could find an editor that you can see better you will still have to be doing these basic operations of cutting, trimming & positioning. They are the baby steps for any editor.

There should be classes for it or something.

You've had lessons, the videos shared by others in your post are about as basic as they can be, I suggest you read your own posts & watch all the videos again. (& the Tutorials at the top of the page)

Even some of those steps you listed I don't use as there is no need.

Yes, I have printed out the comments and I go through and highlight the instructions and I am watching most of the videos over again a few times. The tutorials are not helpful (I have watched them) as they do not cover what I need. They go straight into advanced stuff or assume one already has even some slight experience. They are not geared towards those who can barely spell Video Edit, let alone know what it is.

I do however, need to:
1) Keep in mind that any cutting is done to the right of the marker, not the left or highlighted section like I am used to in audio software. That is why trimming anything at the beginning is nearly impossible for me.
2) I need to learn the language

MMS is hard when you can't speak the language and have only a vague idea what the icons do. It won't help with language, but practicing as John suggests may help with learning the behavior of the program and becoming familiar with the icons. which is what I started to do this past weekend.

I know I can't change the UI (that is true for any program), but I will live with what it is using the tricks I now know (enlarge the tracks or whatever they are called or switch to storybook mode as needed, which would only be for putting in transitions).

When I start on actual filming, I may end up with other questions. That will be a little while yet. I figure if I can get what I am doing now going, the filming videos real time may be easier to edit? I don't think they will be harder because that is pretty straight forward and most of the editing is done on the fly.

@Eric-Elliott

Hi Eric,

I do however, need to:
1) Keep in mind that any cutting is done to the right of the marker, not the left or highlighted section like I am used to in audio software. That is why trimming anything at the beginning is nearly impossible for me.

When you split a clip, audio or video, what is preventing you from selecting and deleting the left part?

John CB

"When you split a clip, audio or video, what is preventing you from selecting and deleting the left part"?

John CB

First, I'm not thinking "split" when I want to delete, but it seems to me that is step one to cutting/deleting, that's on me and I'm not sure I will ever get that straight. I probably will if I look at it as a whole procedure perhaps.

Second, the program as far as I can tell when I tried it, defaults to deleting/cutting anything to the right of the split marker. I don't see a way to change that. I'm obviously missing something?

@Eric-Elliott

Hi Eric,

Second, the program as far as I can tell when I tried it, defaults to deleting/cutting anything to the right of the split marker.

No, it does not. You decide which part you want to delete, not the program. You have to select the part that you want to delete, then delete it.

We gave you several options for trimming an object. The simplest to understand is to just split the object using the scissors or the shortcut T, then select the left or the right part, then delete or click on the garbage can. That is all!

Option 2. Put the playback marker where you want the split to be. Click on the object. Press on Z to delete the part to left, or click on U to delete the part to the right. You do this - the program does not do it by itself. That is all! It cannot be simpler than this.

Option 3. Well, that's enough for now.

John CB

@Eric-Elliott

Hi Eric,

Second, the program as far as I can tell when I tried it, defaults to deleting/cutting anything to the right of the split marker.

No, it does not. You decide which part you want to delete, not the program. You have to select the part that you want to delete, then delete it.

We gave you several options for trimming an object. The simplest to understand is to just split the object using the scissors or the shortcut T, then select the left or the right part, then delete or click on the garbage can. That is all!

Option 2. Put the playback marker where you want the split to be. Click on the object. Press on Z to delete the part to left, or click on U to delete the part to the right. You do this - the program does not do it by itself. That is all! It cannot be simpler than this.

Option 3. Well, that's enough for now.

John CB

Ah, that is the part I did not understand or did not do correctly. I tried to select the part I wanted to delete first and it doesn't allow that. I then used the split with the scissors and tried to highlight the part I wanted to delete and that did not work, so I just went back to the scissors and selected delete thinking it would delete the left side of the split and it deleted the right side.
My mistake was going in reverse and assuming I could highlight what I want. What I should have done is put the split marker where I wanted AND THEN clicked on the left side and hit the garbage can.

I also like option 2. I'll try that as well.

@Eric-Elliott

Eric, I showed you how to delete/remove/get-rid-of the end of an object in one of my short videos earlier. Watch my video in my first post on page one again.

tried to highlight the part I wanted to delete and that did not work

Of course it works. Just click it and it will become highlighted, as shown in my video. Then you can delete it with the DEL key.

@Eric-Elliott

Hi Eric,

I then used the split with the scissors and tried to highlight the part I wanted to delete and that did not work

You cannot highlight a part. You can select an object and it gets highlighted.

What I should have done is put the split marker where I wanted AND THEN clicked on the left side and hit the garbage can.

Yes - as we have told you many times.

1. Again, move the playback marker to where you want to cut.
2. Select the object that you want to cut by clicking on it with the left mouse button.
3. Click on the Scissor button or press T on your keyboard - it does the same thing. It splits the object at the point of the playback marker. You now have 2 objects.
4. Select the left object or the right object by clicking on it with the left mouse button.
5. Click on the garbage can or press the delete key on your keyboard. That object will disappear from the timeline.

Do not do anything else other than what I said.

Another thing:

I should have done is put the split marker

There is no split marker. Please do not invent things like this. You put the playback marker where you want to cut. You click on the scissors. That splits the object into 2 parts. The split is not a marker. There are markers but this is not one of them.

Note that if you put the playback marker where you want to split an object but do not select an object at that point, then you press on the scissors button, all objects on all tracks at that point will be split at the location of the playback marker.

John CB

 

There is no split marker. Please do not invent things like this. You put the playback marker where you want to cut. You click on the scissors. That splits the object into 2 parts. The split is not a marker. There are markers but this is not one of them.

Note that if you put the playback marker where you want to split an object but do not select an object at that point, then you press on the scissors button, all objects on all tracks at that point will be split at the location of the playback marker.

John CB

I am not inventing things! I do not know the language so I do not know the correct words to call things. I was just responding in agreement as to what I did incorrectly.

I think at this point, I need to stop and just put everything away for a while and go sign up for some ESL classes to learn English better for a few years first.

I'll come back in a couple of years or so after learning English better and once I have a few years experience with videos so I can ask questions where I am stuck if I am around and want to make videos.

I'm beyond flustered at this point. I said I only have limited time to work on videos and am going to do so as promised, but that doesn't mean right that second. I need to get the time first, then try everything you and others told me and then clear up anything left I do not understand.

@Eric-Elliott

Your English is fine.

What you are learning here is limited to only a few terms, with definitions and illustrations. It can't get better than that.

John CB

@Eric-Elliott

Your English is fine.

What you are learning here is limited to only a few terms, with definitions and illustrations. It can't get better than that.

John CB

Well, if that were only the case. I'm sure you are right about this subject in particular obviously. However the problem is not limited to here. The problem has been going on for a few years everywhere, even at work. People do not or claim to not understand me and I sure don't understand them. So it sure doesn't help this situation either. Frankly, I have grown tired of people telling me they do not understand me or that I do not know the definition of words because the definition has changed from what I learned, so that part may be on me.

I have just applied for ELL (English Language Learning) courses at one of my local colleges. The first course description is vague, but gives a hint that it may be the correct first course for me. I also thought it a good idea since the goal of my videos was public consumption. No good if people do not understand you.

@Eric-Elliott Hi, your injury & poor eyesight are understood & respected by everyone but can I ask, your comments on here are articulate & your grammar is hard to fault, so if your eyesight is that bad how do you write on this forum & you've also mentioned printing out the manual, how then do you read that?

I'm just curious as it may help us understand your situation more.

Well, it's not injury, it is a combination of unfortunate genes, age and a changed language from what I learned.

I wear very strong Rx glasses, the lenses are at least 1/4 inch thick, I have one more Rx before coke-bottles. They had to slightly down-grade my last Rx in an effort to give me room for possibly two more Rx. After that the only thing is surgery which is not going to happen (can't afford it on any level). Part of the main issue it contrast, my lenses try to correct for that. I can see black letters on a white background provided the font is at least 12. However, some things such as Movie Studio think grey lettering or medium blue or even white at font size 9 or less on a black background is a great idea. I struggle to see the icons at the bottom of the screens and the numbering on the timeline. The sides of the tracks and objects in the tracks I just enlarge and they are fine. I can see the icons at the bottom of the preview window. Now when you add the mess that is the screen of the program, it makes things worse.
White screen background also gets fatiguing to me rather quick though. Printed paper is subtly off-white and is easiest for me. I actually print out the comments here I get. Not only does it make it easier to see and find, but is invaluable for reference.

As for English language. I learned a different English compared to modern English spoken in the US today. I get a lot of complaints about my English even from some in my own age group, including at my job! They complain that they do not understand me and I sure don't understand them because they speak in fragments and in some kind of code. They also use familiar words that mean something other than what I learned and what is in the average dictionary.
I think the "not understanding" may be merely a cheap excuse for not wanting to understand what is perfectly understandable, I don't know. So I just go by what everybody says, that I am not understandable or my English is lacking. Perhaps it is lacking compared to the "American" English spoken today, but it is far too late for me to relearn it even if I take some ESL courses. I did not learn my ethnic language (Russian) well enough when I was little sadly, everything was focused on English and I struggled with writing. I wish I had paid more attention to my grandparents when they were trying to teach me Russian. (They spoke four languages! Russian, English, Yiddish and Spanish). All my friends and acquaintances are Russian and I even have family there as well. Fortunately, I think sometimes they understand English better than I do. They understand me perfectly, even those who do not speak English. Don't ask me how.

Back when I had my on-line audio magazine (2014-2018), the majority of my subscribers and readers were from all over the world, literally. It started as a common blog and morphed. It was all volunteer of course, not monetized or anything like that. It was meant to help others and it did. The only way I was paid was by comments from readers and meeting some of them, but I will tell you that you can't put a price on that. I left all that in 2018. Now, well back in 2022 actually, I felt I wanted to do something similar, but a little different focus and thought about writing again, but discovered that most people now prefer video.

As for Movie Studio or I should say Video editing and the like, that is a whole other language unto itself! There should be classes for it or something.

@Eric-Elliott I don't understand, this is your comment from earlier, what part of that didn't you write, is there any of it you didn't write?

No, I wrote all of it, but my English problems seemed to have started around 2019/2020. I don't know what it is exactly. It is hard for me to tell when people say they do not understand me if it is because they really do not understand me or if it is a cheap excuse to willingly not understand me. Part of the reason it is hard for me to tell is because I do not understand others frequently. They speak a different English than I learned.
Also so many definitions of words have changed and don't mean the same as what I learned. The sentences many speak either have no subject or some other key word to understanding is missing. Then there are the endless acronyms.
It is strange because I helped teach English in Russia for two years back in 2020 thru 2021 and they had no trouble understanding me. I had little to no trouble understanding them after translation either.

So, I decided I had better do something for the reasons I stated in the previous post. I have applied for English classes hoping to learn the modern English, which will likely be very difficult because I have to unlearn what I know. I don't fancy my chances, but it cost nothing to try outside of time and homework, which I am no stranger to. Like I said, it may or may not help, those are the only ways it can go and it won't hurt to try. If I find it no help after a semester, I can stop.