Drop zones don't seem to respect in/out...

I'm trying to get started using iMovie HD for some of my simpler projects, but I can't seem to understand the edit model of the application. It seems like a hybrid of the old iMovie and Final Cut in ways that completely confuse me.
I've imported a 5 minute clip. I then use Cmd-T to split it up into usable and un-needed pieces. Then I try to use some of the clips in the theme's dropzones. In all cases it plays from the beginning of the orginal clip and not from the beginning of the split. So it seems like Cmd-T only sets in/out point on the duplicated clip and the drop zones don't respect that. I don't seem to see any option to crop to only the non-hidden frames, nor a way to easily even see the hidden frames to delete them manually.
I would have expected this to still be one of the easy operations, and not a "power user" feature, so I must be overlooking something. Is there any good way to extra subclips from a master clip for use in drop zones? Or do I need to just reimport the master clip as subclips to begin with?
MPB Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2GB RAM

Welcome to the forum!
No, you're not overlooking something. You've stumbled across an iMovie HD bug, where the drop zone plays the entire SOURCE FILE of the clip, not the split clip that's just part of the file.
The workaround is to export your split clip to a Full Quality movie — use the "Share selected clips only" checkbox in the export dialog to export just that clip — then import THAT movie back into the project. Drop the new movie into the drop zone and it should play correctly.
Karl

Similar Messages

Video drop zone?

does any1 know how to make a master template with a video drop zone?

In the library/contents pull out a drop zone object.
Then FILE/Save project as template.
Make sure to add a new theme.
Relaunch FCP
In the viewer at the bottom select master templates and look for your theme. The template will be in there.

Why all pictures don't play in drop zones?

I have asked this question before, but still my pictures don't play in all the drop zones. Very simply I drop 4 pictures in 4 drop zones (Theme 5.0, Wedding White). Only three pictures show up in the loop. I change the length of the loop but nothing change. Basically, what is the reason of having 4 drop zones if only 3 play?
Frank Secco

G'day Frank
My 'Wedding White' also plays only three pictures, but there is a fourth possibility for the heart shaped button.
This button normally links to and plays the first few seconds of the main movie, but you can play any video clip you like in the button by option-dragging a clip over the button and dropping it. I prepare special clips for this using Quicktime Pro.
Be careful! If you simply drop it without the option key, the button will 'see' the drop as a new movie to link to, instead of the main movie.
Regards
Santa

Panels - I don't want "drop zones" or stucked zones or nothing (CS4)

Morning all,
All I want is to move a panel without it auto stuck auto drop to any existing panel or group.
I am so exhausted from it.
I searched and searched for a solution, could not find any.
I tried to move them with command pressed but they still go to the drop zone.
(I have drop zone)
can't i cancel drop zones?
I just want to move them without paying attention to that all the time.
Help :(
OSX 10.5.6
CS4

Dave, that's exactly what I don't like about them. I want my panels at my fingertips, coming and going at the press of an f-key, neatly arrayed at the edges of my screens.
Buko, I have a second monitor so I can see the photo I am retouching at print size, so I can see how the paragraph style options I am changing affect the density of the page and the legibility of the paragraph, not so I can turn it over to interface clutter.
Thanks for trying guys :)
Dave, your control-drag tip wins the thread.
I continue to be frustrated.
One of the worst things an interface can do is take control away from the user by attempting to guess what the user intends and getting it wrong. Panels used to work great, but now, to me, they're badly broken.

Why all pictures don't show up in the drop zones?

If I import, for example, 4 pictures in a theme that has three drop zones, only one or two pictures will show up when the loop plays and not in the order I have arranged them in the drop zones. Is there a way to sequence through all 4 pictures in each drop zone? Can for instance the loop be made longer than, in my case 0.28 min (5.0 "Memories" theme)?
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.
Frank Secco
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5) PowerMac G4

Len,
What you mean by "You can only load the same number of images into the number of drop zones and expect the theme to function properly."?
Do you mean that I must have the same number of images, (for example 4) for each drop zone? Or,maybe, one image in drop zone 1, 2 images in drop zone 2 etc. for the drop zones to work properly?
Frank

I don't understand how the drop zone works in Title effects.

I am having trouble understanding how the drop zone in the "Keynote" title effect works. I added the title effect to my storyline. In the inspector, Title tab, I selected the clip in the Event library, in this case a tiff photo. The thumbnail and clip title display in the inspector, but the clip does not display in the Viewer when I play the storyline even after FCPX has rendered.
Am I missing something in my understanding of this title effect or is there a problem in FCPX (10.0.6)? Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
iMac, 3.4GHz Core i7, 16GB ram, OSX 10.8.2,

There are two ways in which drop zones are available in the Keynote title template. What Luis has shown you is the normal way in which a title placed over a clip shows you the original clip with the title text. That is called a Final Cut placeholder type of drop zone. Keynote also offers a drop zone to be used as a background choice instead of a gradient or solid as you see in Luis's post. This makes a very nice title effect as you can use any clip for that background. That is what I thought you were refering to when you you said drop zone. Keynote is one of the nicer titles we have available in FCP because of this feature. Glad you got it sorted out.

Resize photo in Drop Zone

I have just completed my first non-PC DVD creation!!! I have run into a problem that I can't figure out, I have checked the discussion groups and I don;t believe anyone other than me has run into this: I grabbed some photos (3) from my iPhoto collection, dropped them into the "Drop Zone editor", and they are displayed on my menu, very nice, etc. However the photo is displayed so large that all you can see is my child's left eye and left forehead (for example). How can you re-adjust the photos that iDVD uses (either before pulling into iDVD or once in iDVD) so that that they are vaguely right size? I have tried left- and right-clicking eveywhere, no luck. I have tried taking one of the photos, amking a copy form iPhoto onto my desktop, resizing it down to 3 by 2 inches, adn then trying to use that "shrunk" photo - no change! Any ideas anyone..........

I used Photoshop to try different sizes until I could fit our logo just the way I wanted. The final image size that seems to work fine is 693w x 520h in pixels. Your image can be 693w but not all 520h will make it on. I had to position our logo which is roughly 260h about 1/3 of the way down from the top as the bottom part gets cut off. You need the extra white space on the bottom but not width wise.

MOTION 4 - I can't locate correct drop zones for template

I'm working in MOTION 4 and a template I purchased online.
I'm not deeply experienced with MOTION (one of the reasons I prefer
templates), but I have used built-in MOTION templates and those from 3rd parites
and other sources on many prior occassions. I'm familiar with dragging
the elements you want to customice into the drop zones.
The problem I'm having is with a Calendar template. I've been
playing for hours now trying to get
the video or image into the drop zone. For instance this template is
made of of a bottom part
that shows a January calendar, and the top of the calendar is the drop
zone where you drop in
the picture you want to customize to represent January. And there is a
counterpart for all 12 months and it flips through all 12 months.
No matter how hard I try, I can't drag my images into the right area of
MOTION Canvas or layers area to get it into the right
drop zone corresponding to the month I'm shooting for.
This seems straight forward, but the template is confusing. I've tried
trial and error for hours now, but they're not
ending up where I need.
Is there someway to see ONLY the drop zones in MOTION? I keep replacing things
I don't intend.
Any quick assistance would be appreciated. I've contacted the 3rd party I purchased the template
from but haven't heard back yet and on deadline. Help!

ichbinesderelch wrote:have you tried using xrandr? xrandr -q shows available outputs, xrandr --output outputadapter(like VGA) --mode 1280x1024, as far as i can see, virtual monitor is set high enough that this should kinda work!
Yes, I tried xrandr:
$ xrandr --newmode "1280x1024" 65.0 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -vsync -hsync
$ xrandr --addmode VGA 1280x1024
$ xrandr --output VGA --mode 1280x1024
$ xrandr --output VGA --right-of LVDS
At first this didn't work at all, so I tried to mess with screen resolution applet and got output on the second monitor, but not at the desired resolution.
I tried running these commands again and got output on the second monitor, but at the wrong resolution. The strange part is that the resolution I want is listed by xrandr:
$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2304 x 800, maximum 2560 x 2048
VGA connected 1024x768+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1280x800@60 60.0 +
1360x768 59.8
1024x768 60.0*
800x600 60.3 56.2
640x480 59.9
1280x1024 60.0
LVDS connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1280x800 60.0*+
1024x768 85.0 75.0 70.1 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 85.1 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640x480 85.0 72.8 75.0 59.9
720x400 85.0
640x400 85.1
640x350 85.1
TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Motion 5 / FCP X - Frustrating Drop Zones

I've been (trying) to use Drop Zones lately on a number of projects and while I've been able to kludge things here and there to get them to work properly, they sure have frustrated me. The projects I'm working on need snippets of properly timed video floating around the screen, usually within the opening sequence for the video. The trouble is I've never been able to really figure out the timing for these things.
1) Initially, the logical thought was (for me, at least) to set at least an in point for the video before dropping it into the Drop Zone in FCP X. That certainly didn't work because it appeared as though FCP X totally ignored my clip's in point. I wanted that clip video to start exactly at the beginning of that drop zone.
2) Since that didn't work I did some Internet research and someone posted that Drop Zones ignore clip in points. They said that when selecting the clip for the drop zone to place the cursor on the exact frame where you want the video to start before applying it to the Drop Zone. Well, that works to an extent.
Here's what I found after doing some experimentation in both Motion 5 and FCP X (latest versions of each). First, I created a video with timecode in it so that I could accurately track where the video really started on the first frame of the individual Drop Zone. The video starts with 10 seconds of color bars followed by 5 minutes of burned in timecode, then another 10 seconds of color bars. I created a simple Motion Generator with four Drop Zones - upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. Each Drop Zone was placed exactly 10 seconds apart. So, for example:
For the first test I placed each Drop Zone within one Group in Motion. Drop Zones start at the following timecode for each location as follows:
UL: 00:00:00:00
LL: 00:00:10:00
UR: 00:00:20:00
LR: 00:00:30:00
After publishing the project, I loaded it into FCP X. I used the same timecode video for each Drop Zone starting it at timecode value 00:01:00:00. Now, one would think that each drop zone window, having been placed exactly 10 seconds apart, would show timecode values for the inserted videos also each 10 seconds apart. But they don't! All four Drop Zones show exactly the same timecode value. They are acting as if all four were placed within the Motion 5 timeline starting at 00:00:00:00. But they weren't.
So, I thought, what would happen if I placed each Drop Zone in Motion in a separate Group? I created four Groups, each one holding only one Drop Zone. It didn't make a difference. The timecode videos in each window were still in sync with one another.
The only way I can get this to work properly is to offset the beginning of each clip by -10 seconds. Unfortunately, if there's not enough "preroll" in the clip to do that, I'm out of luck.
But it gets stranger! Further experimentation leads me to believe that all of the Drop Zones within a project reference themselves to the very first Drop Zone within the project. I picked a new point within the timecode video - in this case, the 2 minute point (00:02:00:00) and dropped it into the UL drop zone. I did the same then for the other three and now they all track based on that 00:02:00:00 point within the video!
But it gets even stranger!!! I tried one more experiment, this time loading the Drop Zones in reverse order. That seemed to work. But still, why should I have to mess around like this trying to sync drop zones in some of weird order?
The question is, why do Drop Zones work this way and what can be done to fix this problem? However I select the first frame of video for a particular drop zone should be what that drop zone references when rendering. Ideally it would be great to be able to use an in point on the clip, but I'm also happy with just moving the clip's cursor to the first frame. It's easy enough to do. Hopefully the software team working on these apps can come up with a solution that makes sense. Thanks.
John

I've had this too and the fix then was to delete my project render files (FCP that is).
Russ

Video in drop zone breaking menu transition...

this seemed simple.
i have a drop zone on my main menu with a quicktime in it. no interactivity. also on the main menu is a text button. that button triggers a custom transition/wipe that i built in motion. eveything worked fine, until i placed the drop zone with the quicktime: what happens is that when the menu button is selected, the drop zone clip jumps to a different point, then applies the transition and goes to the track. but that's not all. when going back to the menu, the drop zone clip will go to somewhere in the middle of that clip, then go to the head...
the menu length is set to the length of the qt in the drop zone.
if i delete the drop zone, the trans works fine.
any ideas?

Hi:
The transition in your final disc will be a MPEG-2 video file, it will not be created on the fly while playing. That means that DVDSP will use a frame from your menu as starting point to create the transition "to the movie" video file and another one to create the "from the movie" transition. The same happens when you use a movie as background in your menu.
I don't know what rule uses DVDSP to select what frame to choose to build the transition, but you cannot expect that your transition will start in the frame that you are seeing in any moment. Do you know what I mean?
Alberto

Resizing photos for drop zones

When I drop a photo into a drop zone in iDVD '08 it stays huge and only a small part of the photo can be seen. I have resized to 768x576 as the HELP suggested but it made no difference. No matter how small I made the photo, it got blown up to a large size. I know you can move the photo a little using the command button and the mouse, but unfortunately that doesn't help much when the image is so big.
Any ideas? I'm just about ready to pull the last couple of hairs out of my head! This has never been a problem in iDVD '06
Many thanks

Changing the dpi won't help - iDVD and iMovie don't care about it. The theme displays the entire image from top to bottom (more or less), but since the window is portrait mode on a landscape image, you loose about 1/4 of the image on each side. There doesn't seem to be much you can do with it (other than not use it).
What I would do is create a 640 x480 image with a 120 pixel wide black band on either side and insert a 400 pixel wide by 480 pixel high image in the middle between the black bands. The theme should show you just about all of the image you have inserted when you place the 640x480 image in the drop zone window. I wish there were an easier way, but I've had to use such trial and error methods since I started working with iDVD back in iDVD 2 days.
F Shippey

RANT! : still no resize option when using drop zones!

Picture this: you drop a photo into a drop zone. But it's a little too big, and doesn't fit well. So, in a perfect world, you right-mouse-click, say resize, and some handles come up and you can resize on the fly.
I really don't understand why this option isn't in yet. It seems so obvious and usefull.
Really... sometimes the software is too simple for it's own good!!! grrr...

There is a way around this.
In iPhoto, crop the image to a more suitable width, but make the crop higher than it is wider (keep the full height).
Now, when you drop the cropped photo on a drop zone you can at least move it up or down.
I do it all the time, or I deliberately take and/or use vertical photos.
Regards
Santa

What is the reason for so many Drop Zones in iDVD?

Thank you Tboake and Terry for helping with my project. Now I am convinced that to create my show which mixes pictures, Text, movie clips and music, as well all the other effects, iDVD is the right way to start.
However I have a question regarding the significance of "Drop Zones". For example if I select as a theme "Reflection White" there are 8 drop zones. What exactly are we supposed to do with these drop zones?
• Do we drop all pictures of a show in one zone?
• Do we drop only one picture in each zone?
• Do we drop the movie clip in the next zone?
• Does each zone represents a different chapter in my show?
• For example if my trip involves 8 cities and I want to make a show for each city do I drop the pictures taken in one city in one zone, the second city in the next zone and so on.
It was very helpful reading "Authoring iDVD 6" by Ken Stone as suggested by you, but even though if he works out all the details he really never explains what these zones are about.
Frank Secco

Frank
Ditto everyone's comments. The menus make for a flashy introduction to the movie itself. If you are planning to give a talk/verbal introduction, for instance, when you "show" the movie, it can help to entertain and tantalize your viewers while they wait for you to finish.
Otherwise, they seem to add a lot of rendering time if the main event is the film itself.
I usually use pretty basic ones for projects that we will not spend a long time waiting to ask to play. My kids use more interesting ones to impress their teachers at school and get better grades! For those we often add a short audio clip/song, to make it less silent as well as animated.
Also, some themes are better than others at providing you with appropriate spacing for your chapter markers. I usually experiment with few different themes to be sure that my chapter markers all fit and don't overlap, etc.
Terri

Drop Zone referencing time code 00:00:00:00

FCPX drop zone is referencing timecode 00:00:00:00 in my Motion template. How can I use drop zone footage with a different timecode?

I appreciate the post Fox and the link to your fine video on using the Comparator Generator; however, what I'm finding is that when multiple drop zones appear in a project clip they seem to reference the first drop zone. (Your example uses only one drop zone. I've never had a problem syncing video with only one drop zone.) My post, that I referenced above, didn't specify using this procedure, but that is exactly what I did. Just to review a portion of that post:
For the first test I placed each Drop Zone within one Group in Motion. Drop Zones start at the following timecode for each location as follows:
UL: 00:00:00:00
LL: 00:00:10:00
UR: 00:00:20:00
LR: 00:00:30:00
After publishing the project, I loaded it into FCP X. I used the same timecode video for each Drop Zone starting it at timecode value 00:01:00:00. Now, one would think that each drop zone window, having been placed exactly 10 seconds apart, would show timecode values for the inserted videos also each 10 seconds apart. But they don't! All four Drop Zones show exactly the same timecode value. They are acting as if all four were placed within the Motion 5 timeline starting at 00:00:00:00. But they weren't.
I perfectly aligned the start point for each timecode clip segment for it's appropriate drop zone, (first one at 00:00:00:00; second at 00:00:10:00; third at 00:00:20:00 and fourth at 00:00:30:00) but found that FCP X ignored the clip's cursor location for all but the first drop zone. Each of the other three referenced that first drop zone and when playing the project back, the timecode readout in each window precisely matched when they should have been 10 seconds apart.
However, I also found that if I loaded the drop zones in reverse, starting with the last and moving to the first, using the exact same procedure, then all four drop zones synced perfectly. Honestly, it's got me scratching my head. I'm now working on a project that uses 12 drop zones and I'm seriously considering creating each drop zone video clip separately, exporting them from FCP X, importing them into Motion directly, then export the Motion project as a video which I can then import into FCP X. I shouldn't have to do that, but at least that seems to work.
John

What is the best resolution for pics in the drop zones of idvd?

What is the best resolution for pics in the drop zones of iDVD?
Also: iDVD always seems to align a pic to the left, can I change this anywhere?
thanks

Hello, Hans.
Re: drop zone pic resolution - I generally don't go below 1000 pixels wide (iDVD will resize these images to a slightly smaller format, but I've controlled the largest part of the downsizing in Photoshop Elements).
The alignment in iDVD is goofy. The best I've achieved is trial and error -- adding blank background or cropping my image in the downsizing process (see above) to position my image.
John

Drop zones don't seem to respect in/out...

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