This is the window I get if I select an object in MEP 2016 and choose Effects > Extra Effects > NewBlue Titler EX

How do I then get to the KF animator window in order to proceed to prevent its being applied unceremoniously please? (I'm surprised there's no Apply or OK or Cancel option?)

NB Titler > Help gives me "The page you requested does not exist." Is there any get-started documentation for a newcomer? Not necessarily explicitly for Magix - anything for a new user would be helpful.The web site Tutorials section has many contributions, but so far I've not seen one that I could call 'newcomer friendly'.

NB Titler looks useful in its own right. But alas (as John CB suspected) I cannot use it for the 'HDR work-around'. Could you/anyone point me in the right direction for installing the other NB tool(s) you are using (which you were surprised I didn't have) that can be used for that work-around?

I do recall having plugins on my XP PC that are now AWOL, but obviously I can't have missed them all that much!

@All,

Just to confirm, I don't have the HDR problem on my desktop which was upgraded from W7 to W10 and then a W10 reinstall using the reinstall feature of the Blue Screen of Death tools (at least they have those). However, the problem persists on my Surface Pro 4 with W10 as the original OS, and Intel graphics.

On my desktop, I don't know which DX that I have other than 9 as that had to be installed for one of the programs that I reinstalled.

@Pete,

I did not reinstall MEP2014 Premium as I thought that there was nothing there that I didn't have with the more recent versions. Could be wrong. Can you or someone take a look at the screen below to see if you have more effects than I. I still have not gotten around to reinstalling Neat Video and Pixelan. Also, RG MB Looks is not there, anyone know what it came with (not that I really want it, just curious)?

@Terry,

There is no way out of the Titler after opening it, you have to use the pop-down beside it in the kf window to remove it as Peter says. I also get the unhelpful help screen. I think that I saw a link on the Pinnacle forum to the proper NB help page quite a while back. I will do a search. Also, there is a very good NB Titler tutorial in French under the Tutorials tab, done by Panagix. I learned a lot from it, must watch it again.

As for the NB effects, you should have them under the Install extra content. You have to first download and install the main one, then the second from the downloads manager screen, as shown below, and then activate it. Usually a NB screen pops up in an external window every time that you use it, but for some reason, it is not popping up today.

John

Hi John

The fact that you installed DX9 after your Clean reinstall, rather than dispel my theory, probably reinforces it. BTW I am a little surprised that you had to do that as later versions of DX should cover the requirements of earlier versions, but then I guess that may be the basis of my theory!

Peter

Hi Terry

anyone point me in the right direction for installing the other NB tool(s)

All I can suggest is installing all recent versions of MEP Premium that you have maybe back as far as MX or at least 2013, and then go to the "install extra content > download additional programs" in the Help menu, after opening each program. Because they all show up in all versions of MEP it is difficult for me to tell which NB's came with what.

John CB - you must have purchased some additional NB Essentials and Filters because I only have a total of 11 plus the Titler.

John, Peter,

Thanks both, appreciate your help on this. I've added MEP 2014 to my existing 2016 & 2017. In MEP 2016 I then downloaded 3 of the 4 offered downloads: more NewBlue, proDAD, and the MPEG-4 codec. (Thought I already had that.) The remaining one is the MEPG-2 codec, which I'm not sure I need.

I'm reluctant to add yet more old versions, just to get one or two plugins. They go straight to my 256 GB SSD, which is already 65% full. (I didn't have that limitation on my XP PC and installed 7 versions from 16 through 2014. And I could sometimes run them to discuss queries from users.)

So current status of extra effects in both MEP 2016 & MEP Premium ('2017' to me):
NewBlue Essentials
- Auto Contrast
- Lens Correction
NewBlue Filters
- Bleach Bypass
- Tint
NewBlue Stylizers
- RGB Shift
Titler EX
proDAD

I had a basic misunderstanding about the references to the 'KF animator' etc. Initially I took it to mean within NewBlue itself! And my layout wasn't showing the MEP KF line without scrolling. So it was a while before I confirmed NB Titler couldn't be used for the HDR work-around.

But pleased to see that NB Essentials > Auto Contrast cuts the mustard. What's the word on that as a 'good' work-around with no downsides apart from the small effort required?

P.S: Talking about KF reminded me that I've seen nothing from Pixelan in my plugins. (I think it was CreativEase that had a KF section.) So I'm about to go looking for that now.

Hi,

I started reinstalling from MEP2015 onwards. Below are the add-on files for each version. I did not purchase any additional NB effects, correction, I received a free one, something under NB Essential 4, but did not re-install it - it was about removing wrinkles or something and Pixelan does a much better job, as per my Tutorial.

MEP2015Premium:

NewBlueTitlerEx_140728_10-36_1_0_0_0.exe                                                  
Video_deluxe_2015_Premium_64-bit_Red_Giant_Chromatic_Glow_INT_140818_17-07_1_0_0_0.exe    
Video_deluxe_2015_Premium_64-bit_Red_Giant_Knoll_Light_Factory_INT_140818_17-09_1_0_0_0.exe
Video_deluxe_2015_Premium_64-bit_Red_Giant_Retrograde_INT_140818_17-10_1_0_0_0.exe        
 

MEP2016Premium:

NewBlueTitlerEx_150810_16-38_1_0_0_0.exe                                       
Video_deluxe_2016_Premium_NewBlue_ActionCam_Package_INT_150827_19-30_1_0_0_0.exe
Video_deluxe_2016_Premium_proDAD_Mercalli_V4_INT_150827_19-31_1_0_0_0.exe      
 

VPX6:

prodad_heroglyph_4_le.exe - says it's only licensed for VPX6 but seems to work ok in other versions
 

VPX7:

NewBlueLooks-160315.exe                                    
newbluepremiumeffects.exe                                  
Video_Pro_X7_proDAD_Mercalli_V4_INT_150323_11-11_1_0_0_0.exe
 

VPX8:

Video_Pro_X8_NewBlue_Looks_INT_160318_09-10_1_0_0_0.exe

Other Plugins:

Terry,

If you have MEP2015Premium, you may want to install just the base and then the RG plugins, then remove 2015.

For Pixelan, you need the install files that you downloaded from the email that you received and not the trial version. You cannot activate a trial version by itself.

There is also Neat Video and I found a 64bit VirtualDub plugin - Gradation which uses curves and has a good tutorial on colour (I should review it again).

I also have some Melda plugins and there are some free ones that come with the package.

Each time I look at MEP, I'm glad I have VPX. One nice little feature is quickly changing the window setup. I have 3 (the max.) in addition to F9 default - F10, F11, F12, one of which gives me the MediaPool from top to bottom of the screen so that I don't have to scroll down to find the kf window, just F10. See below; the Preview monitor is on a second 25inch screen; the scopes that you see can be switched to the Source monitor or one of several comparison monitors.

This still does not solve the original problem.

John

Great post John, thanks.

I'm mightily impressed by the number of plugins/addons you have at your disposal!

If I'm honest, my motivation to get stuff is 'just in case', but even when I had quite a few on my XP PC I didn't use them much.

However, one I really do want to recover/transfer is Pixelan. I actually developed some basic skill with that, largely from your posts and tutorials. I found the email and am about to try installing.

I do like your layout. But I've always opted for an MEP screen width that uses only 1440 pixels of my 1920, so that I can keep project and resource files in the remaining part on the right for easy access and dragging (to and from not only MEP but elsewhere). So that would make my timeline rather narrow. I access lower parts of panes like Size/Position using macros, to minimise scrolling. And at present my desk space precludes use of a second monitor.

"This still does not solve the original problem."

Do you mean the HDR problem? Doesn't Peter's NewBlue work-around do it?

Hi Terry,

My wife made me buy a new desk a couple of years ago, glad she did. I love having those two monitors.

One thing that I forgot to mention about a new computer installation is fonts. I have some that I obtained/purchased and have used in on-going projects and I forgot to add them in after the reinstallation.

Just re-installed Pixelan and noticed that I received a second email with 3 updates back in Feb. 2014. Two of the three were rejected by Norton but I managed to save the files, but when I ran them, Norton rejected them and deleted them. Most annoying. I logged in to Norton and gave my rating on Pixelan. Even Norton says the site is good, but still rejects 2 of the plugins.

I'm slowly getting to the end of this process.

John CB: "This still does not solve the original problem."

Me: "Do you mean the HDR problem? Doesn't Peter's NewBlue work-around do it?"

Peter, please correct me if I have the following summary right:

1. The 'can't use HDR' issue is confined to those like me using Intel's own graphics (530 here).

2. Short of adding a graphics card, the best work-around (thanks entirely to your forensic efforts!) is as follows:

2.1. Use NB Auto Contrast to add any of the effects offered.
2.2. Use MEP to add HDR.
2.3. Return to NB Auto Contrast and apply 'Reset to none' instead of the original.
2.4. The target object will then retain its HDR effect, the required result.
2.5. But this significantly slows down the previewing and rendering of the object.

BTW, re NB Auto Contrast, how can you tell which setting has been applied?

Hi Terry,

I mean the HDR problem permanently. Peter's workaround does it, hopefully Magix will fix it soon.

I tried a NB effect and selected "Reset to none." Then I added HDR gamma with no problem. I also tried unchecking the NB effect in the kf window and HDR gamma still worked. However, deleting the NB effect messes up the HDR gamma, but putting NB back, with or without the checkmark, brings back the HDR gamma effect. Try just turning of the checkmark on the NB effect and previewing or rendering. Does it work faster?

Just finished another 2 days of installing software, still some to go. Last one was Sonicfire Pro 6 and the plugin for Pinnacle Studio 18 which I also installed this morning. Got it all to work together, just wish that there was a Sonicfire Plugin for VPX (there is for Vegas).

I'm still looking for the Adorage starter pack that came with something a long while back. There were a couple of effects/transitions that I used and liked. I don't want to try installing MEP from 17 onwards just to find that it was none of them. I did not keep the install files for versions below 2013. If anyone knows where this (free) Adorage stuff came from, I would appreciate knowing.

John

Hi Terry

As far as we have got pending John EB's test on a new machine with new Win10 with DX12.

Point 1) Correct if you have a clean installation of Win10 i.e. not an upgrade from an earlier version of Windows or perhaps after adding an earlier version of DX11 or DX9 as in John CB's case.

Point 2) See John CB's previous post also.

2.1 to 2.4) Correct

2.5) Correct but maybe not quite as much. I would need to test again.

As far as telling which preset of NB you have applied I do not think you can other than opening the NB window and comparing the preview with the preset thumbnails.

John CB - The adorage starter pack .exe in my downloads folder shows march 2010 which is concurrent with the MEP16 Plus download date.

Peter

Hi

@johnebaker

The laptop is also a Windows 10 upgrade, however when I get back from holiday I will be testing MEP and VPX on a brand new i7 based machine with vanilla Windows 10 installation.

Have you had a chance to test on the new W10 installation?

Peter

HI Peter

Not yet I am hoping to get it done this weekend.

John EB

Hi Peter

Have tested MEP and VPX on a vanilla Windows 10 PC was an i5-6600K, not the i7 I was expecting, and had no problems with the HDR darkening the screen.

I also tested the performance against my 'aging' i5-4670K and got an unexpected result - there was only seconds difference in rendering and burning a 6 movie project to ISOimage file - I expected the gen 6 processor to be faster by a measurable margin..

DirectX 12, hard disc configuration and MEP and VPX setups identical for both computers except for the processor model.

John EB

Hi John

Well that is strange....and it has the same HD530 integrated graphics as my 6700K i7!

Re Performance- was it using all the clock cycles available in Turbo mode? I just had a look at some Userbench figures on the 6600K i5 and it says it can reach 4.95Ghz in turbo mode!! That's faster than my 6700K.

I am not surprised you see little difference to your render times to DVD though as often the performance increase in a new generation is incremental and I think when we did those comparative encodes using the demo project your machine was faster than mine on SD Mpeg2. The newer generations of CPU and GPU will probably see bigger improvements with the codecs they are optimized for like H264 and H265, and 4K.

Peter

Hi Peter

. . . . was it using all the clock cycles available in Turbo mode . . . .

The PC is actually tuned specifically for gaming and is very fast though I never saw the turbo mode kick in.

. . . . . newer generations of CPU and GPU will probably see bigger improvements . . . .

I hope so - from what little I can find it looks like the i5 7xxx series have a significantly improved GPU performance for h.265 and 4K. Claims of over 8x faster than the i5 - however if you read the small print this is compared to a 2nd gen processor to a 7th gen dual core mobile processors, I can find no data for the i5-2647M, which was used for the comparison, it does not appear to exist, I can find only the i5-2557m, .

IMHO an unfair comparison - the HD3000 was never designed for h.264 or 4K.

The HD 4600 benchmark performance rating is approx double that of the HD 3000, so on that basis I would expect the i5-7xxx to be 3 - 4 X faster than the HD4600 for h.265 and 4K, however when you compare the benchmark performance there is a decent increase of about 40% in speed.

However, I consider graphics card bench marking to be similar to the ratings for car performance, fuel consumption etc - they are carried out under ideal conditions and do not necessarily reflect actual real world performance where other factors can come into play ie bottlenecks elsewhere in the PC system.

There are a lot of 'howevers' in the above statements - I just need to find a 7th gen i5 or i7 to test on - no point in spending all that money for a new PC if the performance gain is nothing less than significant.

My next step will be to bump up the RAM in my current PC so as I can get turn off the Windows swap file and see what gain I get.

John EB

Echoing Peter's surprise, I expected to see your object plunged into darkness as soon as you applied HDR!

I think my PC spec is close to both of yours: PC: i7 6700K, 4.0 GHz, 32 GB, SSD 256 GB, 4 TB HD, Windows 10 Pro, using Intel HD5300 Graphics. Some details via Device Mgf, in case you anyone can see any clues:

Intel(R) HD Graphics 530

DRIVER
Driver Provider: Intel Corporation
Driver Date:     13/06/2016
Driver Version:  20.19.15.4474
Digital Signer:  Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

RESOURCE SETTINGS
Memory Range   00000000F6000000 - 00000000F6FFFFFF
Memory Range   00000000E0000000 - 00000000EFFFFFFF
l/O Range      F000 - F03F                               
IREQ 0xFFFFFFEF [-17]

But then Peter and I have also both had this weird transformation I reported. I still do, as you see below. And the second letter of our first name is the same...

Hi

@ Terry and Peter

Are your drivers are up to date?

The driver version 21.20.16.4590 was on the PC I tested.

HTH

John EB

John, Peter,

Using Update Drivers, after the search I get told I already have the latest. Even though as shown in my screenshot they are version 20.19.15.4474 from June 2016.

EDIT: So I used the Intel Graphics Update Utility which I found here
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

That indicated there were two more recent versions:

I installed the latest, which (despite the numbering ambiguity) now matches yours, John.

The bad news: here, it doesn't fix the HDR problem 🙁

@johnebaker

7xxx series have a significantly improved GPU performance for h.265 and 4K.

I imagine that is the difference between the 4600 and the 630 in the 7th gen CPU's but the 630 GPU has virtually identical specs. to the HD530 in my 6th gen i7. All I have been able to glean is that the 630 has support for 4K H265 over 30fps, which is the limit on the 530.

My system seems to run 4K H265 pretty well with reasonably fast encoding and smooth preview but then I am mainly using the GTX1060 for playback due to the dreaded HDR nonsense that started this thread.

As a matter of interest - if you play a 4K project and right click the preview monitor and select a resolution equivalent to the footage, it spreads the preview over both my HD monitors (and more) but still plays smoothly, with GPU-Z showing it is using 3GB of video memory and the full 6GB available on the Nvidia card, on a crossfade! Unfortunately GPU-Z does not show what memory is being used when the integrated GPU is selected for preview but the GTX1060 is smoother at all resolutions anyway.

@terrypin

Good to see I am not alone FWIW.

BTW my forum Hieroglyphics only appear when translating a page with Google.

My last driver update the 4542 back in Dec. so I should update, not that it has changed the HDR glitch ever before.

Any idea why only one of those drivers in your screenshot says Win10 and are they WHQL?

Have you updated all the drivers and Bios from your MoBo makers website? There is a raft of them they change pretty quickly and it is hard to keep up. I am already behind.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Any idea why only one of those drivers in your screenshot says Win10 and are they WHQL?

No, didn't notice that, just saw the 4590 part, matching John's, and went straight for that.

Have you updated all the drivers and Bios from your MoBo makers website? There is a raft of them they change pretty quickly and it is hard to keep up. I am already behind.

Have to admit: messing with BIOS and mobos scares me! Or is it straightforward and I'm being unduly nervous?

Just posted again about the icon stuff, which is a real PITA.

Hi

@ Peter

. . . . I am mainly using the GTX1060 for playback due to the dreaded HDR nonsense . . .

You have got me thinking about the PC I tested - it had a GTX 1070 card in, however this was pulled for testing to ensure only the HD 530 was used, the GTX drivers were left in place.

Don't see any reason why this would give the result I got however stranger things have been known to happen !!!

John EB