Hi,

No, not that I have found, however, I am a bit puzzled about what you are doing.

The length of a clip and the location on the timeline is given in hh:mm:ss:frames, so in your example, you put a decimal when it is a colon, meaning 08 seconds : 10 frames. Thus 8 x 24 + 10 = 202. Make yourself a reference table of the number of frames for 1, 2, 3,.....10 seconds, and then when you look at properties, just add the 2 numbers together, i.e. number of frames from your reference table for the number of seconds shown, plus the number of additional frames.

You say that you are adding in "stills from the story boards." What do you mean by this? The stills would be in the Media Pool. If you have stills already in StoryBoard mode, then that is something else. A still in the MediaPool has no length. It gets its length only when you put it on the timeline. When you do this, it takes the default length that you selected in the Program settings. Take a look and change it to what you want.

On an image object (not a video clip), that is a "still," on the timeline, if you look at the properties (Ctrl+E) you will see the object playing time as seconds and milliseconds, which won't help you. However, if you right-click on the image object and select Change Photo Length, you will see the length that the object will play on the timeline in hh:mm:ss:frames. Here again, you can quickly determine the total number of frames. And here you can quickly change the length to what you want; no need to cut or stretch, just change the numbers.

If you look at the properties of a video clip, you will actually get the original length in hh:mm:ss:frames and the playing time on the timeline, which is important in case you shortened it. And on a video clip, there is no right-click Change photo length on the list, because it is not an image.

If you want to see the "stills" in StoryBoard mode, switch to it. However, you will not see the audio.Thus timeline is the way to work.

Hi, thanks for taking the time to answer. Sorry if there was any confusion. I forgot that movie magix has a "Storyboard" mode for editing. By Story board I mean literally a physical story board.
I'm working on a game cinematic test. My process is this.

I will first lay down the audio and any sound effects I have on my time line.Then I make a quick sketch on a 4x5 card of what each shot should look like.I scan that in and make it a still image and place it in the edit. The length is determined by the audio. I may rearrange or lengthen or trim a shot to fit the audio. 

That's the first rough pass.

Then I will go into a 3d program like Maya or 3ds max and flesh out each specific shot in 3d. That includes character blocking, camera moves etc.
That's where I need the frame count information because 3d programs all look at things as frames.
They usually don't have a provision for displaying time code.
Once I have the shot set up I will usually do a quick low resolution render to an .avi. Then I will replace the storyboard frame in the edit with the .avi file.

I have a work around at the moment by just moving the time slider and marking the in and out point. The will at least give me the number of seconds and frames for a shot.
Thanks for pointing that out to me.

It would be a really nice feature though if I could just right click on a clip and see that it is 215 frames.
Or even better select all the clips in a time line a get the total number of frames and see a report on how many frames each individual clip is.  It may take a several hours to render a single frame of a 3d animation so I really try not to render any more than I have to.
Thanks,
Michael

Lord of the Rings storyboards

Hi Michael,

Wow! Quite ambitious. Now I understand better. There is a way to do what you want and the frame counter will show up in the export.

I am using VPX and I think that MEP has the Timecode feature as well. Select the first object, go to Title, Timecode, Presets, and select Frame counter. This should put a title object on the Timeline. Under Presets is Settings, and you can change these, like change Counter to Frame or whatever.

The timecode object will normally cover the entire timeline, i.e. all of the objects that are there. It can be stretched or reduced.

Copy it to another track below and trim it to the length of the first object. You now have a counter for the object and one for the entire timeline, except that they are superimposed. Change the wording in the settings to Object or something.

Click on this new one, go to Effects, View/Animation, Size/Position and drag it upwards on the screen so that you now see both counters separately. Copy this object using Ctrl + left mouse button and drag to the right to the start of the next object. Trim the length to be the same as the second object. Repeat.

You can change the colour of the text - do it at the beginning.

You will now have an overall counter and an object counter on the screen when you export.

Michael,

My current projects would be easier with a frame counter function too!

John C.B. said "I am using VPX and I think that MEP has the Timecode feature as well." but I couldn't find any in MEP 2016 Premium with only seven choices. The function is certainly in my VPX7 and I took the bold step of copying two small files from the VPX installation to the corresponding folder for MEP:

Reload MEP and I've got a frame counter!

I don't know if the 30 day free trial  version of VPX has all the title presets but it would be worth a try to see.

Regards,

Carl