Thank you very much Terry for the response!

> If you just want to open and then close them, that's obviously simple.

Adding the closing curtains effect to the same object removes the opening curtains effect (eventhough they are not overlapping though this is not important as I want some effects happening at the same time), and all other effects too! The example I provided also contained the raining effect and it looks silly that raining only starts when the curtains opening effect is fully finished, I wanted them to happen at the same time.

Can you explain more precicely how it is possible add two balloon effects to the same object?
The effects apply only on object, they can't be placed directly on empty tracks. Adding a second effect removes the previous effect. I though that when holding down some key when dragging and dropping an effect onto the object all the previous effects remain, which doesn't seem to be the case? 

As explained in the first post I managed to overcome it by using a pseudo object removed later, but it just doesn't feel like a proper way of dealing with the multiple effects on the same object.

The idea is to find a proper way when adding an effect to an object whether the action should be replace or add.

In the past I have shortly used Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe Premiere - and by default the effects are always added. The existing effects must be removed manually to get rid of them.

Thanks a lot!

Ivar

P.S. the example shows the end result I wanted and managed to achieve, the yellow circle points to the pseudo object I used to solve the inability to apply all the effect directly to the intended object.

Ivar,

Though the intros and outros are listed under 'Effects' some are rather special as they contain multiple elements and no doubt behind the scenes code for applying them. Regular effects like zooms and distortions and color shifts can be added and removed individually.

You've done well to find a workaround. I tried and came up with a variation the may be better as you don't have to do the manual shifting. I inserted my clip and did a copy and paste onto another track. The intro (the curtains) is attached to the clip in track one and the outro is attached to the clip in track two. I don't know if it make any difference to rendering speed etc, but I muted one of the background clips.

Next I tried the same approach three balloon effects using three copies of my clip:

Having done that I realised there is a better way! Do a right click on a balloon object and go to 'Object properties...' to find that it is a real object, eg Balloons_bundle_centre_3.tga in the Magix program data folder. With this information you can simply go to the folder and add as many balloon tga images you like and position them or animate them as you wish. I suspect you can de-construct many of the other composite effects eg:

The objects to the left are those applied using the curtain 'intro' (title / audio / mask / curtain) while the 'curtains.m2v' is the real object i added. An alpha mask is used as applying a black chroma key effect would show the background through the dark folds.

Regards,

Carl

Hi Ivar,

I'm afraid there is no magic hotkey that will allow you to add (or subtract) effects as a universal method. But you'll probably quickly adapt to the other techniques used in MEP. With the upside that, after some experience, greater flexibility is possible.

Carl has already answered your Balloon question. For your Curtain and Rain, here's the approach I took:

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Landscape%2BRain%231.jpg

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Landscape%2BRain%232.jpg

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Landscape%2BRain%233.jpg

Finished result on YouTube:

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks all for the tips and explaining!

It is at least assuring to know that the underlying engine itself is quite capable though to achieve certain things require tricks.

As to the effects now I see that some of them are "scripted" and they tend to clean previously applied effects. Adding them manually won't trigger any cleaning.
 

Ivar said "...the underlying engine itself is quite capable though to achieve certain things require tricks." That is an understatement! You might not believe this trick:

• Apply rain effect to the background clip.
• Un-group and copy the rain object to a track below.
• Give the upper rain track the 'Alpha' chroma key effect
• Increase the brightness of the lower rain track to the max
• Select the lower rain track and apply the curtain intro to it, not to the background clip.

I made further adjustment to the thresholds of the alpha track to match the look of the rain.

I can hear Terry making up a macro to do the job. :-)

Regards,

Carl

ADDED: Re: the capable engine...Some may remeber way back to considerable discussion about collages and the clue that they were controlled by a .ctf file which could be opened like any MEP .mvp project if one set the file finder to All files (*.*). This opened to door to user designed collages. Seems the same may be true for intro/outros and other composite effects as they are controlled by a .cfx file which can similarly be opened as a MEP project.