Hello, I am trying the demo for movie edit pro plus, and I am looking for an alignment grid. I have seen this in other programs, just a simple grid on the preview monitor to make things easier to position on the screen. If not I can always google for a video clip, but this adds an extra step, never a good thing for editing. Thanks!
Hi
Movie Edit Pro (MEP) does not have an alignment grid for the monitor when editing on the timeline, however it does in the Disc menu editing.
Aligning by eye is not very accurate a one pixel gap becomes very obvious when the exported video is played on a TV or full screen.
I use the Effects, Animation effects, Size/position dialogs for accurate sizing and placement of videos objects on the screen - a calculator helps.
If you want a grid for initial placement then use an image of the same resolution as the project, you can create this yourself in an image editing program, saving as a png image with a transparent background, instead of a video clip, this puts less load on the CPU when playing back in the Preview monitor.
HTH
John EB
Ok, thanks! I just grabbed a calibration image with a grid from google, should work.
Hi,
you can make your own grill simply draw on page size 1920 x 1080 px and lines to every 50 pixelx taking in account safe area about 10% bottom top and sides safe in png format with transparent background. You can use on any top video track. The faster way is align by eye or using position function.becuse we cannot snap on the grid.
Regards,
YR
Hi, sorry I didnt see the question @browj2
I searched google for 'calibration image' and chose one that had a grid type deal on it.
I am new to this software, so workflow may differ. But basically, I recorded browser (aka flash) game play with OBS. I adjusted the bounds to only capture the game. However it is off center, since the game is much smaller than the screen and to the right because of side bar elements on the website. So, I use either a luma key (I think its called, not 100% sure) or garbage matte to remove the black. For some reason chroma keys don't remove black. They remove literally ANYTHING else but not black. At least I never could get them to.
Anyway once the black is removed, and all the clips are edited together, I group them ('glue' them in other software). Or actually I group them and then remove the black. Once grouped, I can adjust the position of all clips at the same time (or, alternately, just save the adjustment in the plugin as a preset and apply it to all clips. More legwork though). I put the image on a higher track so that the video clip is in front, and then adjust the position. Then, I remove the grid image and put a stock clip from DJ to fill in the blank space. That way I get a nice 1080 video that should play nice on most screens. Hope that makes sense.
The end result looks something like this: 
Be kind, it is just a hobby for me.
Hi,
I am quite lost there. Chromakey Black does remove the black. The problem is that is removes all of the black in the image, not just sidebars.
You could probably import each of your video clips, crop them with Section, and then resize and position with Size/Position parameters. This would seem to be much easier than what you described, even though I'm not really sure of what you have done.
Here is an example of what happens with Chromakey black applied to a photo on track 2 with a blue background on track 1. You see the blue in the trees where there was black.
When you place each of your resized objects, use the position values - left, top and size to size and place each element. I really can't see any value in the grid that you wanted to use; it would never be accurate as nothing snaps to it.
John CB
Hi, thanks. I noticed that you can do black, other chroma keys I used in the past didn't do black for some reason.
I was just attempting to crop with Section, but the program crashed. So I am guessing that it was a bug? There is also 'Cookie Cutter', but the shapes available are limited and not useful to me in this instance. Square is close, but what I really need is a rectangle. I will try again with section, maybe it wont crash this time. The manual unfortunately does not describe all of the options for section, so I will have to use trial and error, and hope it doesnt crash again. So far all I am able to do with section is make the image bigger or small, rather than actually crop it.
The video I recorded is off center after cropping, so it must be centered. Software I used in the past did not automatically align things the way I wanted so I had to eyeball it. Thanks for the tip on positioning.
The manual describes something called 'Stamp Forms', and claims that it can be used to crop, but I find nothing called by this name in the program. I think it is a misprint in the manual, and they mean 'Cookie Cutter' but I am not sure.
Thanks for your help John! There is a bit of a learning curve here, and the manual seems to be outdated in some cases so I really appreciate you taking the time to point these things out.
Edit: It seems that when I attempt to apply section to grouped clips the plugin behaves badly. It appears to work if I ungroup the clips.
Hi,
On the section screen, open the pop down and you will see things like: "Like movie," "Keep proportions," "Free proportions." Select the latter so that you can shape the box however you want. Then go to Size/Position. There, your cropped section will fill the screen, depending on your proportions for whichever comes first, height or width. Then you change the zoom factor (zoom out) and move the image to wherever you want. You cannot use Section on more than one clip at a time, as you found out.
For Cookie Cutter, when I pop down the Shape parameter, I see all kinds of shapes, including Rectangle. Do you not see these? The only problem is that you cannot change the proportions. That is one reason why we use masks.
I'm travelling, so my access to internet is very infrequent.
HTH
John CB