Batch Conversion: Bug, deliberate design, or user error?

terrypin wrote on 7/23/2015, 8:14 AM

I suppose I've only used this feature a few time in the last couple of years. So I'm not confident of the following and would appreciate others trying to replicate it please.

It only seems to work if there's just a single movie (tab) in the project. With two or more I don't get the all-important initial dialogue:

Without that I found it impossible to perform my simple task, namely to export a dozen or so clips automatically. They happen to be in the second of two movies in my project.

As soon as a second movie tab is opened, even if empty, with either movie active, File > Batch conversion fails to ask which of those two distinct tasks you require.

I've done this same operation before several times over the years, but presumably always when working on a project not containing multiple movies.

As a work-around I had to first export that movie and re-import into a new project, before proceeding.

This is MEP 2014 Premium, but the same happens here with other recent vesions and I don't think MEP 2015 woulld differ.

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 7/23/2015, 11:19 AM

Hi Terry

. . . . It only seems to work if there's just a single movie (tab) in the project. With two or more I don't get the all-important initial dialogue: . . . .

Looking in the manual (p 216) I would say that is by design and depends on the scenario as described in the manual.

HTH

John EB

terrypin wrote on 7/23/2015, 4:15 PM

Thanks John, I agree after studying that more carefully. But it's a shame it's not flexible enough to suport the task I described. Not a particularly unusual requirement, I'd have thought?

However, that work-around I described was simple enough.

terrypin wrote on 8/9/2015, 1:47 AM

Responding yesterday to the identical query I made at the time, Ralf seems to share my initial view that it's a design flaw, or at least a feature that needs adding:

I agree - I see no reason you shouldn't get the dialogue to choose between the two different workflows when several movie tabs are in the project. The underlying logic is probably not intuitive and/or based on some older generation of the software. I will raise the question to our developers and ask them to explain it or consider changing it. I would expect that you could always get the option to batch convert the individual timeline objects, and for this function to e.g. always pertain to the currently selected movie tab. So, we will see what they have to say.