Hi,

The version of MEP is always important information to indicate in the forum so that we can help and a detailed description helps so that we do not have to try to guess what it is you are talking about.

In MEP17, when you enter the program, you choose project name. When you save for the first time, the program actually proposes the name and presents the explorer screen. You can change the name and the location. When you save the next time, it automatically saves to the name that you saved to. When you use Save Project As, it presents once again the explorer screen and proposes the same name. I tried in Word 2010 and it does exactly the same thing, as "Save As" proposes the same filename that was previously saved.

As for help, I don't have any printed manuals. I use the electronic pdf manual and do a search in it using Acrobat, or I use the help in the program under Help, Contents and I search in there. I looked at the MEP17 manual, and I find the table of contents extensive and well-organized, as is the index at the end of the manual, well almost, as page errors do creap in. In general, the Magix manuals are organized first with a Quick Start part that is like a tutorial, and then it goes into the specific features, followed by descriptions and definitions of all of the menus and the topics under them. The Quick Start must always be read to get an overall understanding of the program and the process.

Yes, there is a steep learning curve, but the program does a lot.

Burning: I am not sure what you mean about getting all of the names associated with the project when you go to burn. To properly understand the process, read the section on Burn starting on page 237 in the manual. I will try to describe here what is happening, since this seems to be the first time that you are doing this, and this process can be a mystery to the uninitiated.

Project: You may also not understand exactly what a Project is, or is composed of. It is everything that will be under the one filename and can consist of one or more "movies." Each movie consists of all of the elements that you place on the tracks. You can identify various parts with chapter markers and names. In MEP17, unfortunately, you do not readily see if you have more than one movie (it is visible in later versions). If you click on the movies button, you will see the movies that you have in your project along with New Movie and Rename Movie options. See the image below for the button.

If you create a new movie once you have already started a movie, you will see that there is nothing in the timeline. If you go back to the first movie, everything is there. One of the reasons for creating more than one movie in a project is so that each one shows up on the DVD menu as separate movies (or topics) and possibly each with its own chapters. Let's say you have a project of 3 summer vacations and you want them all on the same DVD but with a menu for each. You would thus make 3 separate movies within the project, one for each year, and give each one its own appropriate movie name. Within each movie, you can create chapters for various days, or places visited. When you get to the menu making part, these will automatically show up with buttons for the 3 movies on the first page, and separate pages for the details (chapters) of each movie. They are all still in the same project, and when you save, you are saving all of them under the project filename.

Burn Overview: when you press on burn at the top right of the screen, here is what you have to do:

1. Create and modify DVD menu
2. Select burn media
3. Select burn optons
4. Burn

1. Create and modify DVD menu

As background, when you play a DVD on your DVD player, the first thing that you get is a menu screen. The movie does not start playing automatically. You have to press on play or select something. Thus in Magix, you have to create this menu screen, which can be one or more pages. When you click on Burn at the top of the screen, you are placed at the first step in the process, which is to create a menu for the DVD. If you have not defined any chapters in the project, the program will tell you this and ask if you want a one button menu, to make automatic markers, or more options. If you choose one button then that is all you will get on your DVD. You are now placed on the Preview page. Look at the bottom of the screen and you will see templates for menus. You either keep and use the default template menu or select one of the other ones. (I presume that you downloaded and installed all of the Free Download material under the Help menu). You can edit the template, menu, pages (if you have chapters) and buttons by switching to Edit - at the top left of the preview window.

You mention that there are various names associated with the project. In that case, you either have chapters, or have created more than one movie in your project.

If you have chapters, then you can edit these - text, image, etc. or reorder or remove them. At the top left of the window, you will see Preview and Edit. Click on Edit to edit the menus. Read the manual to see how to treat these. You can uncheck any chapters that you do not want.

If you have created more than one movie in your project, then you will have more than one button on the first menu - one for each movie. Each movie can have its own chapters. You can always go back and edit your movies by clicking on the Edit button at the upper right of your screen. Once you have set up your menus, click on Preview and review everything, then go to step 2.

2. Burn - Select burn media - the burn button shows up at the right hand side of the menu Preview screen. Press on this. Another menu shows up with selection for the type of disk, like DVD, Blu-ray, etc. Select DVD.

3. Burn options - the burn dialog screen will appear. By default, when you go to burn, the program is set up to burn only the current project, which can include more than one movie. On the Burn dialog screen, there is an option, under "Options" to add files if you wish, but for now, ignore this. The program does not add files by itself.

Here is the burn dialog screen:

Here you have more options for burning and you should review the options. Under Encode in directory, you can indicate a directory where you want the program to place all of the DVD files. This is useful for going back and burning more DVDs if need be.

4. Burn - Finally, you have to click on the burn button on this dialog screen to actually burn.

I hope this helps your understanding of the process.

zq09fesoj02,

You ask "Is there any way in using the Burn process to indicate that the only Project one wishes to burn at that point in time is the currently edited Project?". Yes you can as you can see below.

I think most of the problem is how MEP 17 deals with and documents (not very well?) 'movies' vs 'projects'. Newer versions use a much more obvious tab system like a web browser. I just got sent an offer for an generous discount on MEP 2014 Plus -- -  think about an upgrade! http://www.xara.com/us/magix/movie-edit-pro/

The dropdown menu outlines a mess I created last year -- a project with nine in some cases apparently duplicate movies! The top one on thelist was a single movie project which had been saved with default name showing the creation date. Record1 - Record4 are four movies that got added when I opened a second project (filename 'Magpies.MVP') and picked 'Add to current project'. I then added a third project (filename 'Bees.MVP') which I didn't realize contained the same four movies as 'Magpies.MVP'. I was prompted to rename the movies hence Record1-02 - Record4-02. You can individually rename movies and /or remove them from a project using 'File' >> 'Manage movies'. Note at the very top is an indication of the current project (the '*' indicates changes have been made since last saved) and, in parentheses, the name of the movie currently being edited on the timeline. I suspect that you have as part of your naming process been inadvertently adding multiple copies of your movie to the open project.

Confused yet? There's more! :-) When you go to the burn window you can see (when in Edit' mode) the situation perhaps better and you can pick and choose which movies will be part of the DVD. Again, it's movies not projects; MEP can only have one project open at at time.

This shot shows my my entire project and that currently I'm including all nine movies, some with multiple chapters, For me the confusion lies in the fact that getting to this point I had been working with three different projects (different .MVP filenames) but my choice to add them to the first opened project ('2013-12-15.MVP') really added the movies within 'Magpies.MVP and 'Bees.MVP' and those two nice meaningful project names have disappeared.

You are not alone in being critical of Magix documentation, nor in having to confront a steep learning curve -- particularly if you want to use many of the features usually associated with the more expensive editors. Stick with it -- it's well worth the effort -- and hope to see you here again soon.

Regards,

Carl

Hi,

You have it backwards. Movies are a subset of a Project, Chapters are a subset of Movies.

Here is the order:

The structure of a project is:

Project (name)

                Movie 1

                             Chapters

                Movie 2

                            Chapters

where name is the filename that will be saved.

Again, only the project name/file is saved and it contains the movies and the chapters. Please re-read my previous post.

The structure is set up with burning a DVD in mind. If you do not want to burn a DVD, make each project only one movie, no chapters. You will be exporting the result to an mpeg or wmv or avi file instead of burning, and these formats do not use menus similar to DVD's.

In the program, you can export a movie and then import it into a different project.

Further to what Carl indicated and as I indicated, when you burn, you are burning the current project by default. You do not have to indicate that you do not want to burn other projects. As per Carl, you have to understand that the file that you are in is a project, it is the top of the heap. It can contain movies. Movies can contain chapters.

If you have more than one movie in a project, I think that when you are making the menu, if you uncheck one of the movies it will not be included on the DVD. I haven't tried it to see.

Regards,

JRS,

"...to identify when one saves a movie and when one saves a project within a movie."

Sorry no, it's movie(s) within a project. Try this step by step:

• Create a new project and save it as 'project_one.MVP'. The dropdown will show a single movie called 'project_one' by default.
• Create a new project and save it as 'project_two.MVP'. The dropdown will show a single movie called 'project_two'.
• Go to 'File' >> 'Last opened disc projects' and pick 'project_one.MVP'. The title bar will show the project title is still 'project_two', but the dropdown will now show two movies called 'project_one' and  'project_two'. 

No wonder the potential for confusion as what you originally saved and named as a project is now categorized as a movie within a project! Going a step or two further for illustration:

• Do a 'Save as', but change the project name to 'project_three.MVP.
• While you have 'project_three.MVP' open, open and add to the current project 'project_two,MVP'.

If you didn't do a 'Save' of 'project_two.MVP' in its two movie form you will be adding its single movie (named project_two) and be prompted for a name change to avoid duplication. You should now have a single project (MEP can only have one open at a time) with three movies which you can choose from the dropdown. In this case two of them will be identical.

More confusion?

I see John is in there again while I type but I'll post anyway -- repeating but in a different way.

Regards,

Carl

John, Carl,

Great posts!

Would both make excellent sources for Magix in helping improve the woefully inadequate documentation on this subject for newbies - if only they ever read these threads! (A request I recall making many years ago.)

zq09fesoj02,

I echo John's advice to re-read his comprehensive explanation alongside Carl's and step through some basic examples simultaneously.

Carl,

How do you get the option to remove individual movies shown in your second screenshot? I don't see it in my MEP 17. Do you have your Dropbox account working now, to which you can post higher resolution screenshots instead of those poor magix images?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry,

With the movie in question displayed on the timeline, got to 'File' >> 'Manage movies'  and pick 'Remove from project'.

I was going to outline all  the entries but record high temps and no weather for reds said no! ;-)

Sufficient to say the the load and attach etc default to .MVD projects from older versions of MEP and VideoDeluxe -- presumably for backward compatability. You can change the file type flter to All files (*.*) and do the same actions with .MVP projects (all of a project's movies are attached). 'New' does what it says; you get a new movie with an empty timeline added to the current project. Its name defaults to that of the current project. Added note: when opening .MVP projects it seems some extra blank movies are created as well -- need to check more on this.

Dropbox... is working but so far I'm only putting up with it grabbing all screenshots. I'll do setting up share folders or whatever when I'm cooler.

Regards,

Carl

Thanks Carl, I know that, but I was asking about your second screenshot where I thought you were saying it can be done from Burn > Edit mode ("...you can pick and choose which movies will be part of the DVD.")

I now see that it's apparently done by first right clicking each movie you wish to delete from the burn and choosing Remove movie/chapter from disc

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP17-DeleteMoviesIn%20BurnMode-1.jpg

But when you do so MEP 17 reveals what seems to be a minor bug, by displaying an invalid error message:

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP17-DeleteMoviesIn%20BurnMode-2.jpg

I also note that when you return from Burn to Edit mode, the project does not have any movies removed. And it seems the burn specification can then only be changed by re-opening the original project.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi

After reading all the responses I think there is too much information (my opinion only) which may be adding to the confusion.

@ JRS

Putting it in simpler terms and using Word as an analogy (MEP equivalent terms are in brackets)

To create a new document (project) you start with a blank page (timeline) and add text (video/images/audio) to the page (timeline) when you have finished you save the document (project) - the name you give it up to you but both Word and MEP offer a default name to start with - and print (export/burn) it then close it.

When you want to create a new document (project) you start with a blank page (project) - in other words you do not start adding text (video etc) to the document (project) created previously and then save this and print (export/burn) only the bit you want.

Hope this makes it clear

John

John,

Point taken about information overload, but as the thread is now a sort of reference manual (in need of editing!) I'll keep going. 

Terry,

"...I now see that it's apparently done by first right clicking each movie...". That's a new one for me! I was refering to the tick boxes in the 'Navigation' pane at the left -- when in 'Edit' mode vs 'Preview' mode chosen by the top left buttons. [NOT timeline 'Edit' mode vs 'Burn' or 'Export' from the buttons at the top right.].

The removal is from the Disc design project, not the .MVP project as a whole. Note that the tick boxes also let you select which chapters will be visible -- you can't remove a chapter uding a right click over a chapter image in the disc preview pane. Agreed that the MEP 17 error message (removing the last movie etc) is in error but not a worry as it's OK in 2014.

All for now,

Carl