Hi John,

Hope you had a good holiday.

This is a general issue, unrelated to the project. And applies to all versions of MEP. Doesn't it frustrate everyone else too?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

This old thing again!

Let's get the terminology correct - you are referring to Track Curves not Volume curves.

You can move the nodes along the timeline independently or as groups by using (Shift) Left click (nodes turn purple) and dragging in the same motion. Not ideal but better than redoing them.

This topic: http://www.magix.info/us/mixer-cannot-get-volume-change-to-stick.forum.890929.html had a link to the old forum (which sadly does not seem to work for me) where there was much discussion on track curves.

Hope your holiday in the States went / is going well!

All the best for 2014.

Peter

Hi Terry,

I think that this is what you are looking for. Use the volume keyframes. Select the audio track, go to Effects, Audio effects, General, and click on volume if it is not already selected, and you will see the kf's. Just grab them and move them. In the image below, I grabbed 4 using shift+click and they turn blue, let go of shift, clicked on the first or the last kf (or any of the blue ones), and dragged them together to where I wanted. I could have done all 8. You cannot do this on the timeline.

There is an interesting feature that can probably be used in certain instances and which I am still trying to figure out how to make it do what I want. See page 174 of the manual for Automatic track damping (Alt+L). You can dampen the sound of the music on another track, for example, wherever there is sound on the selected track. Have you or has anyone else mastered this feature?

Regards,

Terry,

I may have misunderstood your initial question. I was assuming that you made the volume reductions manually. If so, then the kf's will be there. If you made them using the automatic volume damping method, then the method indicated by Peter is the way to go. Just make sure that you keep holding down the shift key when you drag the points.

I played around a bit more with the Automatic volume damping and it is quite interesting and convenient. I understand it much better now. I documented how it works for my own use.

Regards,

Hi Peter,

Thanks a bunch, that's exactly what I need!

I'd selected them all successfully by shift-clicking, but then before attempting to move them I'd released Shift. The purple nodes remained reassuringly selected and I thought I could then just  grab anywhere on the green curve and bodily move them. But the nodes then instantly became deselected. The crucial step that had eluded me was to keep the Shift key depressed after the second selection.

BTW, I find it difficult to select a node when it coincides with the edge of the object. For all other nodes the hovered cursor becomes a hand, but for these 'edge nodes' there's instead a single arrow over a smaller capture area. The answer is to temporarily drag the object out of the track.

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Trip was good thanks but <wimp> marred by an hour long wisdom tooth extraction as soon as I got back 29th Dec and I'm now nursing a very painful 'dry socket' </wimp>.

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Those invaluable archives from our old forum were removed by MAGIX nearly a year ago, to my great disappointment. Here's an extract from an email to me 12th Feb 2013 attempting to justify it.

As a by-product of the recent changes and maintenance work on our servers, my colleagues used the opportunity to get rid of it for good. The board software was outdated and thus also constituted a security risk. They figured this was a good point in time to close that chapter for good. Sorry.  :(

I expect you'll be able to predict the gist of my reply. Such a waste of all that creative effort by several prolific contributors. And a particular handicap for old gits like me who are beginning to forget what little they once knew and even published!

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi John,

Yes, the Volume Reduction feature I mentioned is indeed handy. But as Peter reminded me it generates what Magix calls a Track Curve as distinct from the Volume Curve you can create manually. (I've always been foggy about the distinction!)

With a project like the one I illustrated, with scores of audio clips (either from the original video or added as narrative) damping an added music track is then a matter of selecting the clip and using the hotkey shortcut to apply it. (Or a simpler macro in my case.)

One point to watch is that this then applies the damping  to all other audio at that section of the timeline, not just your intended target. So if say I've added a few bleats to a landscape shot, when the real sheep didn't oblige, then I have to take care I restore that clip. (I'd have thought that temporarily locking or Muting would handle this, but unfortunately not.)

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry,

Thanks for posing the question in the first place as it allowed me also to learn about automatic track damping, play more with both object volume handling and the combination of both, and document them for my own understanding.

I was wondering why I couldn't find more older information about solutions in the forum. Now I know that the old information was removed. I have been clicking on add to notepad many of these informative threads and solutions, but I imagine that they could disappear in the future. I have been documenting some of my problems and solutions in Word and OneNote, and I think I had better clean them up and add to them for future reference, just in case the important solutions disappear from this site again.

Sorry to hear about your wisdom tooth problem at Christmas. There should be a joke here about wisemen. My Christmas was less painful. We rented a chalet for 10 nights in in-law territory and they all invited themselves, so we had the first and last nights alone, went skiing only once, caught a bad cold, but at least it was beautiful in the snow. We went snowshoeing in the forest and I took along the video camera. It was magical. I managed to spend 3 full days putting together a video of last summer's holidays with friends (in-laws), sorting through hundreds of photos taken by the 4 of us, and 2 weeks of video clips. Still not finished, but was viewed and commented upon. I still have to fix the sound where the wind was very strong at the beach. This was part of the reason for my complaint to Magix about Video Sound Cleaning Lab problems (the main problem is now with the programmers). The big video hit was the Christmas cartoon that I did of the 4 of us, using JibJab. Take a look at the site if you've never seen it. I filmed the reaction of our friends when they watched it - almost as funny as the cartoon. So now I have to get back to cleaning up the sound and completing the music, which is why I appreciated this posting so much.

Regards,

Hi John,

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds a great holiday - and very fruiful for video projects!

The big video hit was the Christmas cartoon that I did of the 4 of us, using JibJab. Take a look at the site if you've never seen it. I filmed the reaction of our friends when they watched it - almost as funny as the cartoon. So now I have to get back to cleaning up the sound and completing the music, which is why I appreciated this posting so much.

I'd love to hear more about your cartoon project. Was it based on one of the templates? So presumably fixed in duration (unless you skilfully duplicated and stitched sections)? Just four faces, or can you change them for the same person (e.g. smiling/ frowning)? What sort of customising did you do?

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry,

The cartoon was the "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" template. You can use up to 5 faces in this one, but you cannot change them in the video. Your query made me think about the similing/frowning possibilities. One could do 2 or more videos using different faces/expressions and then edit the videos in MEP - at 2$ per video, it's not expensive. I should have thought of that because in one of the 2 videos with friends that I did, the photo of one friend has him frowning, like he doesn't want to do this. It was very a propos. But, I would like to have used the smiling expression for part of the video. I may go back and do another version and mix them.

I had to do another version with the other friends as the lady did not like the photo that I used. I just now tried putting the 2 videos on separate tracks and cutting out the parts where I want to change the photos. Works great. Just keep one soundtrack.

Important points about setting up the heads:

1. Don't leave any blank spaces around the sides or bottom of the head, as that little bit of background shows up in all of the images in the video. The other people didn't notice it, but I did.
2. Try to use photos of people smiling so that their teeth are showing, unless you want them frowning.
3. You can adjust the size and rotation of the image within the program setup to get the head properly within the template.
4. When setting up the mouth, keep to the inside of the lips at each side, and just below the upper teeth, otherwise the black mouth opening/closing will not look right.
5. Preview the video before purchasing it to make sure that you are happy with the result. If not, change the heads. Or change the heads on the characters. In each video I wanted one particular person to do the ending, so I had to do some switching.
6. There was a bug in the system and the first time I uploaded the heads, the video produced was not mine which is another reason to preview the result. Strange. JibJab refunded my 2$.

I did not do any customizing but I did add the Christmas Intro and Outro in Magix and I removed the opening JibJab scene. I did not try to remove the logo that appears throughout.

Regards,

Hi Terry

Yes, that shift click hold is not quite what you would expect to need to do.

That node selection at the margin is tricky and I do what you do, but it is sometimes hard to even get hold of the node to drag it across.  

Impressed that you still have your Wisdom teeth! I got rid of mine at an early age - bad decision - ended up with a permanently numb bottom lip after they damaged the facial nerve....!

Thanks for making representations (in no uncertain terms) to Magix about the deletion of the old forum archive. You spoke for all of us I would imagine. A definite sense of loss here!

Best

Peter