Wow, Ok ! Yeah it is definitely sneaky to promote it as an UPGRADE when it isn't. I couldn't afford the Vegas Pro at the time but I may have to work it into my budget. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I guess I'll download my MS 17 on my desktop because I know I can edit a longer video with it.

@Jennifer-Wilson Yep, If you need help with your Vegas Movie Studio Platinum post on the Vegas forum 👍

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/vegas-pro-forum/

Thank you very much

Greetings @Jennifer-Wilson

I'm wondering if this could be the 4Gb limit on a Fat32 formatted USB (thumb) drive. Is the 42 minute file about 4gb?

Try checking the drive in Windows Explorer by right clicking on it and selecting properties. If it's Fat32 then you'll need to format it to NTFS on exFAT - make sure there's nothing important on the drive first though!.

AndyW

Thank you, it's a 32gb thumb drive but I did reformat to the exFAT. I will try it again.

I couldn't afford the Vegas Pro at the time but I may have to work it into my budget.

@Jennifer-Wilson As a VMS17 owner you should qualify for the VP Upgrade price.

@ericlnz Thank you. I'll check it out. I'm so frustrated with it all today. I'm taking a break till tomorrow

@Jennifer-Wilson

Greetings Jennifer, what format are you saving to?

Is it possible to post the Mediainfo data of the split files? (details how to do this are here https://www.magix.info/us/forum/please-do-the-following-before-posting-your-question--621831/)

Hopefully that data will give an insight into the problem.

AndyW

I was able to fix the issue by reformatting my 32gb thumb drive. For some reason it wouldn't save it as one video even though it was a brand new thumb drive. Once I formatted to the exFAT it saved as one video. It was stressful even though it was a super easy fix.

All thumb drives come with that 4GB file size limit not matter what. Compatibility with everything then. In order to put files larger than 4GB, you have to reformat them as you've found out.

I never knew that. I have some big editing projects coming up so that information really helps a lot. I'll be editing 8 hours of family vacation video and making 10 copies for different family members

@Jennifer-Wilson

Hi

On a side note:

If you are intending to play the video on TV direct from the thumb drive, you may find that some makes/models of TV do not support the exFAT format. AFAIK Sony TVs do support exFAT, some Samsung models do not.

John EB
Forum Moderator

Ok, Good to know. If I saved it to the thumb drive after it's finished editing and then transfer it to a DVD would it be okay that way. I've never edited something that big before. I wanted to have it as one continuous video but I know 8 hours of video would make a super long video. I've only been editing for about year so I'm not sure how that would all work.

@Jennifer-Wilson

Hi,

I see that no one has answered.

Let's start with 8 hours of video. Here is an excerpt from a web site with a lot of good information about video editing:

"You can begin by first deciding what your video is all about and what is the story or message is that you are trying to communicate to the audience.

From this you can then ADD a shot list that you feel will convey that story then ADD those shots to the timeline.

The key here is to remember that your video of the seven hours that you and the family spent at the zoo cannot be reproduced as it happened.

By applying the “cut out the garbage” method all you can possibly end up with is probably two hours of reasonably well shot footage of you and the family at the zoo.

Your audience will be restless by the five minute mark and suicidal by about the 30 minute mark!

Hopefully they won’t go through the homicidal stage while you are still in the room!

By keeping in mind that your epic video production of the day at the zoo is a representation of that day and not the whole day itself you can get started."

So, I would suggest that you target about an hour to an hour 15 overall and break up the video into many short videos.

As for the output, there was a thread recently about output formats and I'll try to find it. You need to understand video formats, in particular, resolutions like fullHD (1920x1080) and 4K, and output formats. If you want to play your production on a DVD player, you need to create a DVD properly, not just burn an MP4 onto a DVD - that is a data disk, not one that will play in many DVD players. DVD is Standard quality and you probably don't want that. Next is BluRay (BD), which is fullHD. Movie Studio has the tools to create DVDs/BDs and I suggest that you read about this in the manual.

Alternatively, just output to MP4 using File, Export Movie, Video as MPEG-4, check Display all if you want to see all formats. Normally, you will have created your project/movie using the same settings as your desired output format.

For a vacation video, I suggest that you consider breaking it up into several Movies. I presume that you know how to create/add Movies in Movie Studio. If not, read the first part of the manual where they define Projects, Movies and Objects. I break my vacation videos up into days (or themes), with 1 Movie per day. Some days nothing happened, so no Movie. I also have one overall short movie summarizing the vacation. This way, I can export each Movie as it's done. And, when all is done, I can create a BD containing multiple Movies, each having 1 or more chapters.

The advantage of having multiple Movies in one Project is that you can copy and paste between Movie, for things like titles and credits and, at the end, batch export and/or create a BD from all of them. And you can export 1 or more Movies and open them in a separate project.

In the image below, you can see my multiple movies - I should have used shorter Movie Titles, like Day 1, Day 2...

Start each Movie, that is day or theme with a title to give it context. I suggest that you create credits at the end with still images of each main person and their name.

And so on.

One last point. You exported directly to a USB stick. I don't recommend that for a couple of reasons including the file size limitation that you encountered. Export to a selected location on a hard drive. Review, go back and fix your errors, export, review...repeat until done. Then, copy the final file onto your USB stick for watching on a TV or sending to someone. Keep your export on your hard drive or back it up somewhere secure. USB sticks can get lost or destroyed or overwritten.

John CB

Thank you for taking the time to explain all of that. I truly appreciate it. I think I will have to break up the long video into several videos but won't be removing anything from it. It's a continuous recording of a family visit where 1 of them has passed away now and one has severe dementia. It's one of those types of videos that you want to keep all the memories that you can. I re-estimated the time frame of what the total video clips added up to and it's approximately 5 hours. I'm going to sit down and go through all the 15 minute segments my video camera records in and find out were they can be separated and or combined into a one hour movie.

It's one of those things I volunteered for at the time to preserve those memories and now is causing a little bit of stress to get it right.

@Jennifer-Wilson

Hi,

I understand and I'll probably add to your stress. Remember, you are going to keep the original videos for posterity, but you should make something that people would actually watch and want to keep for posterity.

Try to find stories in all of that material and separate them out and put them together to make a coherent stories. When you go through the material, cut out the dead and dull parts, and there will probably be many. Example, nothing is happening, people are just sitting there; nothing is being said or nothing of any interest is being said; something stupid was said or going on, etc. Long shots of someone doing nothing - here's grandma in the rocking chair for 5 minutes - use 5 seconds.

You are the editor, so, as per the article that I gave you, you can change the sequence to suit any story that you can get.

If someone is reminiscing at various times, group these together. Then go and find some photos that can be used to go with the dialogue. You did scan all of the photo albums and loose photos for the last 100 years, right?

Do you have any other material that can be thrown in, like old VHS, 8mm, Super8, cassette recordings, etc?

If something needs to be said to add context, add narration and titles (text).

I have hours of recordings of my late mother to still go through. Sometimes her stories were repeated, sometimes a story was not worth keeping, disjointed. There were interruptions - cut.

I was looking at a video of my son at 1+ in a petting zoo. 5 minutes with goats - boring. 10-15 seconds of two or three views are enough. Otherwise, it's like putting up a single photo on the screen for 5 minutes. Unless there's a good story, like narration behind it, cut.

And so on.

I know that it's hard to cut, but that is what you need to do.

Don't ignore the audio. You may need to do some cleaning up and editing.

Take notes as you're reviewing the material. Note down subjects for other videos that you should make, like of some of the family members and their stories before they pass on. This is the start of the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill. Someone may say something that can be used in another video. Copy that range, put it in another Movie, and change the name of the object appropriately, and add in comments for future use. Going back later to try to find this material is very time-consuming.

Question: How long do you think that this is going to take you? As a start, 8 hours to review the material - then cut ....edit, assemble, review, ....review the final product.

I edited a video of a family (my wife's side) picnic/triple birthday party of 3 age groups - from 3 to 80 years - taken on VHS in the 80's. Several of those in attendance are now gone. This is the only video material of most of the players. I cut out about half of the material and showed it to a few people. Too long. I cut more and showed it to another aunt. Still too long. Back again to the editor for another cut - I still haven't finished the job. To take my own advice, I need to add in credits at the end with still shots of the people with their names. Even those in attendance had trouble identifying some of the family members - which child was which.

Sounds good. I should take my own advice.

John CB

I won't actually be doing editing or cutting anything out. That's what my sister-in-law wants. She just wants them all in a movie so she can watch them. The job is pretty easy because we're just all sitting around a table talking and telling family stories and eating.

The only problem I was having is how to put them all on one thumb drive or a DVD. I think you answered that part of my question though. I am going to definitely have to split them up into shorter videos instead of just one long video

@Jennifer-Wilson

Hi.

If the result is to play the file onto a TV via a thumb drive then make sure the file is exported to a format the TV can accept. I say this because our older lounge TV can only accept mov. files while our kitchen TV only accepts MP4 or MEP2 files. More modern TVs may accept more but it may be worth checking for. Alternatively you could upload your video complete to YouTube and make it private. Then give relatives the download address to view at their leisure on their phone or possibly a TV set. That way there are no compatibility issues although the upload may take some time. Maximum duration for a YouTube video is 12 hours or a 256GB file size.

We are on cable so can watch YouTube via the app on the TV box.

Ray.

Thank you, I didn't consider it doing that way. It is definitely a possibility though and it would save me from having to put them all on to thumb drives. I need to make 10 copies

@Jennifer-Wilson

Also a thumb drive is easily lost. Just ask my sister when I gave a thumb drive of her wedding to her 🤣.

You can always resend a link to the video if someone loses that and they get the choice of how and when to view it.

Just make sure that if any music that may be in the background it may cause copyright strikes for each piece. That in itself is not a problem in this case and normally nothing to worry about. It just means if it ever got monetised you would not receive the cash. Highly unlikely. You may be asked to replace that section of the videos sound track if it is serious but I have never encountered that problem and I have had a few copyright strikes in my time.

Ray.

Very true. I am monetized on my YouTube channel so I do know the guidelines they have. I'm going to suggest that to them and see which way they prefer. It's all up to them

@Jennifer-Wilson

Hi

I am of the same opinion as @browj2 regarding splitting up the video into shorter 'chunks' and the 'story telling'.

. . . . how to put them all on one thumb drive or a DVD . . . .

I would never recommend using thumb drives for long term storage which I think is what is going to be a requirement here for 2 reasons:.

• Thumb drives are easily misplaced/lost.
   
• Failure of a thumb drive tends to be absolute, as is accidental erasure followed by using the thumb drive for other 'files'.

For DVD's :-

• Add chapter markers to the video on the timeline to break up the video into shorter selectable 'episodes'. Movie Studio will create the appropriate menus and buttons using the Burn feature.
   
• I would suggest you get 1 or 2 rewriteable discs, DVD-RW, for initial test burns, you often spot an error or see something that could be improved on the 'big screen', and re-use the discs as needed.
   
• I would not recommend using dual layer discs, I have had too many issues with them, both in creation and player compatability.
   
• Single layer discs have a maximum runtime of approx 2 hrs, so multiple discs are going to be needed
   
• I would recommend DVD-R, and advise against DVD+R and DVD-ROM discs, and use black DVD case(s) for better protection of the disc, especially if you are going to create a 'master disc' for retention in case of loss by the recipients, or requests for more copies.
   
• Once you have the movie as required then burn that to permanent disc - if the final rewritable test is OK this can be copied to permanent disc.

HTH

John EB