Hi John,

Thanks, understood, I suppose that would explain it. But am I right that there is nothing about this in the PDF Manual? It just says:

Add emotion: This button inserts the selected mood at the current position.
No qualifications or footnotes about detecting '1/3 bars' etc...

Automatic cut adjustment: This option re-arranges the video and photo objects in your project to match the music. Make sure this option is deactivated in case this function is unwanted.
Is 'match the music' meant to include the clever functionality you describe about detecting bars etc? If so, with it unchecked, shouldn't I get the mood inserted at exactly the 'current position'?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

Quote -

This option re-arranges the video and photo objects in your project to match the music.

and my response

Then I tweak the video and still image objects so that  transitions I want to synchronise to, occur with soundtrack style changes.

As you can see what I do manually - MEP should do automatically if the option is checked.

By inference the manual states that the music will not change exactly at the points you specifiy - but can adjust the video to match.

The 'bars' term in music are complete units of time defined by a given number of beats. Changing style mid bar can produce some odd timng effects think of a waltz 1-2-3   1-2-3    2-3

John

Hi John,

Thanks, but as mentioned in my first post in my tests here that option doesn't work. Does it for you?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

It does work, however I got an odd result as shown:

  High res here

This is what I get with a 3 min  (3:00:00) movie, 4 emotions and Automatic Cut Adjustment turned off - as I would expect the changes of style do not line up with where I wanted them to be and the movie remains as 3 mins (3:00:00)

   High res here

The same movie with Automatic Cut Adjustment turned on but before clicking Apply - identical to the one above.

Now click Apply and 

   High res here

It adjusts the movie length to 2:48:22 , the sound track length to 2:55:00 and introduces the gap at the first emotion change and crossfades for the 2nd and 3rd change in emotion.

Clearly this not correct.

John

Hi John,

Yes, that's the sort of thing I found. Nothing looking like MEP had adusted things to match my change points, plus Inexplicable silent gaps. Ralf had similar results and is looking into it.

Do you think it's worth using? I'm inclined to continue my manual approach. I need to get my music to match up exactly with at least some of my specified points, such as at the end of a chapter (such as at the end of each day's holiday), and it appears the wizard can't do that.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

The Soundtrack maker - definitely, but without the automatic set, and then as I do - manually tweak the movie.

John

Hi John,

It doesn't seem to work properly even with that option unused. For example:

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/SoundtrackWiz-3.jpg

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

I have applied the Son=undtrack Maker to a 16m50s long movie with 14 changes of emotion and the music finished 15 frames (0.6 sec) after the end of the movie.

I suspect that the shorter the movie the greater the error will be.

I allowed the Soundtrack maker to chose when the next emotion change would be and I noticed that the change of emotion coincided with object changes in the movie - it appeared that it was synching the emotion change to the nearest appropriate change in the movie. 

Can you confirm this by not setting where you want the change to be, but just allow the emotion changes to be placed where it wants them to be.

John

Hi John,

I'll experiment more later along those lines, but surely my test was the simplest possible? It's the sort of thing I do manually in a few seconds. I place the ends together and trim the start of the music accordingly. If it can't get that right how can it possibly cope with more complex work?

Can you spell out the steps to "...allow the emotion changes to be placed where it wants them to be" please? Presumably this doesn't include checkmarking the 'Auto..' option, which we concluded earlier was buggy?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

This is the way I did it:

1.   Set the timeline marker at the beginning of the movie.

2.   Open Soundtrack Maker - make sure the Automatic cut adjustment is checked

3.   Select and add the styles you want - do not touch the timeline marker

4.   Uncheck Automatic cut adjustment

5.   Create the sound track and apply

John

Hi John,

Thanks, but as before that just left the wizard free to place the change from say Suspenseful to Playful wherever it wanted, in this case in the middle of a clip I'd already carefully edited. And anyway a longway from the appropriate place for such a change.

For my kind of work and work style I don't really see any practical use for this in its present form.

On the other hand the music itself is great. So I've just added every track to my music manager (MediaMonkey). A total of 741 files. I'll simply search and select from that section of my library like any other, and add it manually. In exactly the place I want it!

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry & John

Don't you need to set beat markers  with Magix "Beat Recognition Assistant" first before using the automatic cut adjustment feature?

Also which folders did you find 741 files in? I presume these are not all complete compositions and many would be loops that the slide show music maker draws on? Like you say some of these tracks are quite nice so I might crank up Muffin Music finder and see if it can root them out. I guess Microsoft Media player would track them down also.

Peter

Hi Peter,

The 741 files were within
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2013 Premium

in the following 3 subfolders (and their subfolders). The number of files is shown on the right of each.

\DVD\Media\BgAudio 18
\Slideshow music 162
\Soundtrack Maker Styles 561

But note that 453 of them were under 10 seconds long.

BTW, MediaMonkey is a great tool but one weakness became apparent when I came to search for a few Magix tracks. For example, I wanted 'Happy', but my search gave no hits. Turns out there are tracks titled 'BRhappy' and 'BBhappy', but my search tool won't find strings in the middle.

--------------------

Re your first question, I haven't a clue, but John will know. As you've probably gathered, I've personally given up on that wizard!

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Peter, Terry

Re your first question, I haven't a clue, but John will know. As you've probably gathered, I've personally given up on that wizard!

What a load on my shoulders !!!

Don't you need to set beat markers  with Magix "Beat Recognition Assistant" first before using the automatic cut adjustment feature?

Not in this case - when using the Sound track maker you have nothing to analyse for the beat as you have not created the sound track yet.

The Beat Recognition Assistant   ( BRA !!   )   is for use with the Slideshow Maker wizard - however I found it does not cut in automatically as the manual says it should.

Here is an example of what the happens with and without beat recognition (this is a composite image of the tracks before and after) - the videos were put on track with hard cuts only, my music on track 5

  hi res here

1.  Is the result of applying the Slideshowmaker - Chillout template - without any beat recognition on the music on track 5

2.  Is the same track reset, beat recognition run on the music track, then the Slideshow Maker wizard - Chillout template - was run.

Note:  Slideshow Maker can use your own music, but it must be on track 5 to be included/used  by SSM

John