Will bookmarks remain after exporting to a video file?

Lou_Palazzo

Hi,

Yesterday I completed a 1 1/2 hour project to which I carefully added bookmarks before exporting to a video file.

Today, I reloaded the resultant avi file and added additonal files after it.

Now I'm ready to export the final version of this project but I don't see the bookmarks I attached yesterday..

Are they gone? It will be a lot harder to add them now that the avi file portion is seamless.

I'm hoping you tell me that they are just hidden and not vanished.

It took 7 1/2 hours to export last night and about two hours to reload the avi file today. Yikes!

Thanks

borate

My test hints that exporting an .avi does not retain bookmarks. Verify this by burning your .avi to a (rewritable) disc, to see if chapters appear where you set the marks.

Instead, suggest that you save the bookmarked project with FILE|SAVE AS as a .vpj (project) file.

When that file is later reopened, the bookmarks will be there. Additional material and bookmarks can be added.

Be careful: when SAVE PROJECT is used, it overwrites the existing file. It's wise to always use FILE|SAVE AS and give the project an incremental name.

That way, if mistakes crop up you can return to an earlier incarnation of the project.

When all is as you want it, THEN export to DVD. The bookmarks should create chapters, according to the VP HELP file.

Lou_Palazzo

Thanks. Borate

So, a follow up question:

I intend to create a DVD from this project, but I also inend to save it to a thumb drive since this is a more durable medium.

You're saying that the chapter markers will not transfer to a video file, so they won't transfer to a thumb drive either?

Thanks

Greatly appreciated

Lou_Palazzo

So, reloading the vpj files to retain bookmarks, I'm finding that I cannot combine two .vpj files. If I open a second file attempting to add it to an existing file, the existing file goes away.

Am I missing something?

[deleted]

I am pretty certain that any bookmarks you add during editing will only produce chapters if the project (the timeline with the markers) is saved as such directly to a DVD via Videopad, when chapters will be created at your bookmarks.

If you have saved your project in the interim as an avi (or similar) to your PC then the bookmarks will not be saved. This is not the case with saving a project file however. Data concerning bookmarks ARE saved.

As Borate says, you should always save your project as a .vpj file. at regular intervals (using Save Project as...) , particularly before saving to your PC as an .avi. This will ensure that the bookmarks are retained if you wish to add further clips to the project.

And no, you can't add a .vpj file to another .vpj file like clips. They are separate data files. If you imagine the contents as being numbered, the second and subsequent .vpj files start counting at 1 again. They aren't consecutive. Sorry.

You are in a difficult position now unless you can remember where all your bookmarks were. If you have the .vpj file from your first part (with bookmarks) you can load that at least and then add the files from your second part (Add files from a project option) but you would need to re-edit these.

Nat

c_major_2

Hi Lou,

I'm sorry about the awkward situation you've got into. As far as I know, we can not store bookmark information in any of the exported format. Except use them to create DVD chapters as Nat pointed out.

I'm making a proposal to my team for a new feature which imports another .vpj file as additional sequences.

I can not grantee anything at this point though since it would be a non-trivial change. But we always looking for ideas that help us improve the product.

Best regards.

Lou_Palazzo

Thanks, Sam and All

Is it possible in Express Burn to add chapters within a completed video file, similar to bookmarks in Videopad?

...and have them appear on an opening menu screen for selection?

I finally burned a DVD from Videopad which allowed me to jump from chapter to chapter sequentially. However I'm looking to create an opening screen which allows the viewer to choose a chapter.

I downloaded DVDStyler (now deleted) -- which looked good but didn't work. General user experiences were similar.

Anyway, that's what I'm looking for.

Thanks

-lou

[deleted]

Hi Lou

The DVD generation part of videopad only writes the project to the disc in a single playable form. It will not add menus, play buttons etc. or add more than one project to the disc.

Using VP the nearest to having multiple projects is to render all your efforts to your PC first and then add them one after the other to a new sequence line with bookmarks between them. (You can also keep "projects" separate using sequences and then adding the sequences (individual projects in effect) together with bookmarks between them. This is abit like cracking an egg with a sledgehammer. The bookmarks will enable you to skip through the DVD from bookmark to bookmark or, as it were, project to project using the skip buttons on your player, but the DVD will still start with the first one. Not really very good. This is what you have apparently done.

The best way is to save your finished projects to your PC as separate avis (or similar) and then use a third party dedicated DVD creator to produce your DVD. This way you can have previews, menus and choice buttons.

If you have Windows movie maker then you will probably also have Windows DVD maker which will do the job.

I prefer DVDStyler which is a free DVD creator program and which gives you full control over nearly all aspects of the creation process. Backgrounds; menus; music and titles.

http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/downloads

However you seem to have had some difficulty in getting this to work.

Another free program is the SoThink DVD maker. This does a similar job but, if you haven't bought the software it places a green advert screen between each film (or at every bookmark if you have used these). It's not particularly annoying though, otherwise it is free to use with no time restriction apparently and the results are good otherwise.

http://www.sothinkme...ovie-dvd-maker/

Worth a try

Nat

c_major_2

Express Burn works similar to VideoPad. You can create chapters within a video file for navigation, but they can't be displayed on the DVD menu.