Extending or shortening the entire project

Gid wrote on 4/11/2025, 3:51 AM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz Hi, first - Vegas Movie Studio/Vegas Pro (VP) & Magix 'Movie Studio' (MMS) are not & never have been related in any way but I think you know that when you say 'New software', so don't try to compare between them 👍

I understand what you're saying, In VP - Select All - CTRL+drag stretches all the media on the timeline equally (video & audio), MMS does have a Stretch option but repeating these steps - Select all + Stretch only stretches the last timeline object 🤔,

At the moment I can't think of an option beyond using Select all - Speed. this does mess up the audio tho.. & doesn't affect pictures/still images

& adding a Curve (red line, envelope in VP) needs to be applied to each object individually & doesn't apply to pictures/still images.. 🤷‍♂️

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For anyone who might have a solution & needs clarification this is what happens in VP, pictures, text, video & audio all stretch.

Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz wrote on 4/11/2025, 4:26 AM

Thank you @Gid, this helps a bit. I don't use photos in this project, so it's probably easier case. I think that instead of fighting with the tool I'll render the whole project to intermediate version, as losslessly as possible, and then do the shortening and final rendering on a single clip that I will get this way. At the moment I don't think there's a better way.

Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz wrote on 4/11/2025, 5:15 AM

Interesting. I repeated your sequence but for some reason it didn't want to work the same way. I have 6 tracks, not like in the example, and additional tracks are with text objects, MMS template objects, with sound effects. After selecting all objects (tracks unlocked) the slider on the speed effect changes position, but the clips on the tracks remain untouched. After your second post I did some experiments removing and restoring elements and only when I removed the groupings did the slider start working correctly. Despite the removed groupings, after selecting only the track with video clips, the other tracks are also compressed/stretched when the slider changes. I think grouping was somehow blocking the use of speed. Anyway: solved Thank you very much!

Gid wrote on 4/11/2025, 5:18 AM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz Yep, I added pictures but - text (section titles) just like pictures don't adjust with Speed just like pictures. Someone might have a solution.

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Edit - Sorry you posted while I was typing, I deleted that comment because I realised the text didn't adjust.

Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz wrote on 4/11/2025, 5:28 AM

"I realised the text didn't adjust" - to be clear: text duration is not changed, but the text start points are moving according to the extension/shortening of the project and remain aligned with their original starting points in clips. In my case it's enough.

Gid wrote on 4/11/2025, 6:27 AM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz 👍 Glad you're sorted, yep that second post I deleted had them ungrouped, I'm not sure what difference that made.

browj2 wrote on 4/11/2025, 10:48 AM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz

Hi,

That is a rather unorthodox requirement, something most users would never do or have to do.

Your change from 54m to 50m is 8%. This does have a noticeable impact on the audio, but not too much. Me, to avoid unwanted changes in audio, I would edit the video, trimming or selectively stretching/compressing to get the desired result.

As you have found, the speed effect in MMS does not affect image and text objects, - they have a duration, not a speed. The Change photo length only changes images, not text, and there is no variable percentage change, only a length. Text objects also have their own length. with no percentage length adjustment. A video has a speed in fps, and that is what gets changed using Speed/Stretch.

Doing what you are doing or what @Gid said is going to mess up your original timeline, so you may want to make a copy of it in another Movie first. I am assuming that you know how to do this.

That said, what you said:

I think that instead of fighting with the tool I'll render the whole project to intermediate version, as losslessly as possible, and then do the shortening and final rendering on a single clip that I will get this way.

is the only easy way to do an overall speed change in MMS, and MMS has a tool for this.

To keep the original, save the project, then Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, add a movie, Ctrl+V. You may want to save again. You now have a copy in a separate Movie within your Project. Shift+M for mixdown, give it a location. This will create your intermediate using Magix' proprietary format (mxv) and your Movie Settings, and replace everything on the timeline with the result all in one shot. Now you can use the Speed/Stretch command to get the length that you want.

Stretch command is shortcut 0 (zero) and is on the toolbar to the right of the mouse mode for all tracks button. Right-click to see all possibilities. When you use this, don't forget to click back on Mouse mode for single objects afterwards.

Export this movie. Done.

BTW, the Speed/stretch feature does not have a limit like there was with Vegas Movie Studio. In the Speed interface, the limit of the slider is 4 on the high end, 0.25 on the low end, same with the stretch command. This is the limit for the audio part, beyond which the audio is unusable. However, if you want to exceed the limits, type the value into the box, Enter, and you'll get a message about this. Click on Remove audio object now, and it will be removed and you now have the speed that you typed in. This also release the limit on the Stretch command, so you can drag the end in or out as much as you want.

Comparison with Magix Video Pro X (VPX)

If you were using VPX, this would be much simpler.

Add a Movie B. Drag the first Movie A from the Project Temp Folder onto the timeline. A mixdown is automatically done. Use the Stretch command or Speed to adjust the speed/duration. Export Movie B. Done.

If you have to change something in Movie A, the object in Movie B gets automatically updated.

John CB

Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz wrote on 4/11/2025, 11:37 AM

Hi @browj2, thank you for the tips and advice. I assume that much of what I have written is not new or secret knowledge for users of this forum, so I really appreciate what you are doing by advising me.

"rather unorthodox"

😀 May be, it's my fast, practical method for:

shortening a long video, when the whole thing "doesn't fit" into the client's timeline, without cutting of the content (e.g. for case of precise matching clips from multiple suppliers to one time-driven presentation)
slightly reduced file size for long footage, when content is "applicable" for shortening
reducing stuttering problems for input files from mobile devices, where VBR is unavoidable but post-production is necessary (smart resampling does the job, when you carefully controling output fps and bitrate, to avoid artifacts)

You just need to make sure that the shortened video still looks natural, where a shortening of no more than 3-4% is practically unnoticeable to the viewer. Of course, as with any workaround - sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't - it's one of many methods, nothing more.

"change from 54m to 50m"

There is a mistake here, I wrote that I shorten from 52 to 50. This about 3,8% in this case.

"to make a copy of it in [...] To keep the original..."

Yes, I agree. Since I am still learning MMS, I am experimenting on a parallel test project. I have noticed that it works, because even for a simple, single-clip test of the speed effect I had a few surprises on the sound. For example, I found that the order of editions is important: is better to first finish editing the video (including speed) and only then edit the sound, because keys on the track generated in mastering tool are not moved when you play with the speed effect. Actually, now I have three test files of different levels of complexity, somehow it turned out like this during these tests 😁 I haven't used mxv files before. That's a cool idea and I'll work on it right away.

"Speed/stretch feature does not have a limit"

This is interesting. I'll test it to.

For everything: nice practice package, thanks a lot for that!

browj2 wrote on 4/11/2025, 12:09 PM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz

Hi,

I threw in the part about Movies in case that you are not aware of it. You can have multiple timelines in MMS in one project, each with different settings, if desired. I almost always have more than 1 Movie in a Project for many different reasons. For what you are doing, this makes it very convenient to just copy everything to another Movie, and work on it there, doing any testing that you want. Your original material is still intact.

One other thing about mixdowns, there is also a mixdown for audio (Shift+D) only that will take the audio from your video, create a wave file and put it on the timeline. Of course, the original material is still there with the video, just turned off. You can limit what gets mixed down by using a range and Soloing a track. This is an alternative to ungrouping the audio from the video, and you can edit the wave file externally, if needed. Thus, you can get the wave file, modify the speed of the video, then trim the audio, if possible, keeping the same speed/tempo. This is assuming that the audio is not someone speaking on-screen.

John CB

johnebaker wrote on 4/11/2025, 12:58 PM

@Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz

Hi

. . . . reducing stuttering problems for input files from mobile devices, where VBR is unavoidable . . . .

It is Variable Frame rate, VFR, not Variable Bit Rate, VBR, that causes stutter, depending on the action in the video the frame rates can vary for widely about the target framerate, we have seen this in the forum getting down to <15 - 20%, and as high +15 - 20%, of the 'target frame rate.

VBR should not be avoided, it allows the encoder to assign a higher bitrate to frames where the content features high detail and or action, and a lower bitrate to low detail/minimal action frames and aims to give constant 'perceived' image quality.

Constant Bit Rate should never be used for recording, high detail/action scenes can suffer badly and for low detail/minimal action/static frames is an uneccessary waste of data bits.

John EB
Forum Moderator

Andrzej-Marcinkiewicz wrote on 4/11/2025, 1:46 PM

@browj2 - this mixdown feature with isolated sound editing is really usefull. Here is only background track and environmental sounds (city sounds), so it works fine.

@johnebaker - "It is Variable Frame rate, VFR, not Variable Bit Rate, VBR" - absolutely - my mistake; I wrote something different than what I meant: my point was VFR often present in phone's material. The clou is, that sometimes I collect material from people involved in an event, to get interesting clips that I wouldn't want to miss (different points of views). So the first task I'm doing is to pre-import examine clips and decide if they "fit" together and what final project settings should be, to get a coherent film and not a patchwork. That is where vfr gets into attention. I don't touch often bitrate settings, rather rely on the standard settings of the selected codecs in MMS.