Adjust Video Start time

Just a little bump for this.   As it looks, importing video into Sonar X3 is only possible if the video is right at the start, Bar 1, Beat 1.  Can that really be?  Has anyone experience of this?

Yes, that's the help file I mentioned in my post, so I had been there and done exactly that. But the video engine is still not changing.   Its not possible to move the video clip either by dragging it.
Are others doing this and getting it to work?
 

Thanks for that - interesting video.

I need the video to start after beat 1 bar 1 becuase the music I have made is longer than the film it should fit too, so I need to edit the first section. Even in that video link you gave, the user there adds a 10 second buffer from the start of the Sonar file to the start of the film, for various reasons. The fact that with this upgrade I'm struggling to do that basic thing is ... well .. frustrating.

OK...got it.  Nope,  I can not get that to happen either.  I can get Sonar to start later in the video,  But I can not get the video to start later in Sonar.   I tried tricking the program by putting in a One hour offset in Sonar and then starting at :00:59:50:00,  but it did not change the start time of the video.  
 
So I suggest grabbing a video editing program and add time on the front of your video.  QuickTime Pro, Vegas, Windows Movie Maker all can do this....
 
If you are going to do any audio for video, you will want to have one of these programs around anyway.  This situation is just one of many you might encounter.  Having a video editing program to fix simple problems is a must-have.   

ULTRABRA...What I still don't get is why the change in the aud.ini file as instructed on the Sonar Help file, did not work (its supposed to revert the video engine to the old version so I can drag the video on the timeline) ... and also why its not possible to move the video in a supposedly upgraded version of the video engine.  

This is a total bummer.  X3 is still new enough to me (recently upgraded from 8.5) that I hadn't tried video yet.  It's a mess!  WHY isn't the time offset available with this supposedly better video engine?
 
I did the simple ini file edit to revert to the old video engine.  OK, that made the offset available again - but for me, Sonar can't handle it after testing the offset.  I could see that the vid was indeed being delayed for the one second I typed into the pop-up - but two issues:
 
--Sonar crashes - over and over in each test I've tried this morning.  Can't make it work.  Straight video with no offset is playing fine, but not with the offset.
 
--Briefly, before Sonar crashes, the video would play for a few seconds, and the video and audio were totally out of sync, like only the video had been offset and not the audio.   But instantly after seeing that, I get the white screen of doom and Sonar tanks.
 
NOTE TO ULTRABRA:  You never could "drag the video in the timeline" - But you could offset the start time.
 
This all worked PERFECTLY in Sonar 8.5. -- Damnit but my list of "reasons to go back to 8.5" is growing instead of shrinking like I'd hoped it would.
 
RB

ULTRABRA
thanks for the reply. the link above from jackdied shows that video is supposed to be draggable to a new start point (in the new video engine as I understand it) - but it doesn't work for me.
but you got the aud.ini file change to work? i didn't. how did you do it, maybe I missed something?

I just used the same code as you posted in the first post of this thread - That code is confirmed in the "read me" Sonar file.  But post #3 here indicates changing the start time is only available with the old DirectShow engine.  Hmmm.  I can't run more tests at the moment, but I will later.
 
And remember, I got the offset to work with that code, except for the major factor that Sonar crashed, making it unusable.
 
Randy B.

Just want to throw my 2 cents in. After using Sonar for years I finally needed to use it for video. I spent a *lot* of time scratching my head with this problem until I realized, duh, Sonar is just broken. It makes zero sense to invest programming hours in a new video engine when the most basic operation is impossible.

rbowser
 
Roger, did you try going back to the old video engine, as in my last post?  If so, did Sonar remain stable after you'd dragged the start time of the video, or did it crash like in my experiment?
 
Randy B.

fyi, it works as expected here with no crashing. I tested with an uncompressed avi, though, so it's possible it may be more touchy with certain codecs.

For me it's pointless if the start time cannot be adjusted. Maybe there is a valid reason, hopefully one of the bakers will stop by to comment.

Thanks Scook!
This quote from Noel answers the questions posed

Hi folks,
 
To clarify it isn't that we don't know what your requirements are. Its a complex scenario since we have to work around some of the inherent limitations/bugs in the platform (Windows). There are a lot of moving parts to video streaming technology and a lot of it resides in OS components. Most of the issues listed above have been reported to Microsoft and we're working on addressing some of them, hopefully for the next update if they are solvable in time. The first goal with this release was to get the new engine in place and handle the newer formats. We'll improve it as we go along.
 
>>5.  You can't undo if you cut too much from the front.   You have to reload.
You can reset the video to defaults by going into the video properties page and clicking the reset button.
 
>>4.  Video only starts at bar 1
Limitation in Media foundation that we are working on trying to eliminate. 
 
>>2.  you cannot select audio(ie dialogue/sfx) and video and move them together
That would be useful obviously but requires a mechanism to lock/group video and audio. Its really a full feature. Well consider it for a future version.
 
>>7.  Known bug in media foundation with trimming videos. We will try and work with Microsoft on resolving this.

djoni
;-(

But you understand if you go back to the pre-X3 video engine, you can adjust the start time.  Usually, though, adjusting the start time isn't needed, since you're wanting to score to how the video exists without being offset.
RB

Not all the time RB.
Main  reason: I like to have at least one empty bar before anything begins...
or I might want the video to start later in the music...
 

rbowser

djoni
;-(

But you understand if you go back to the pre-X3 video engine, you can adjust the start time.  Usually, though, adjusting the start time isn't needed, since you're wanting to score to how the video exists without being offset.
RB

Is this fixed in the new Sonar??  I just went to change the start time of my video which is something I used to do ALL THE TIME and it's greyed out, I really need this feature right now. 

You can change the start time, depending on format and which video engine you're using. Currently, this works with formats that are native to Windows, but not MP4. The videos I use in SONAR are scratch videos because it's all I need to compose to picture; if I'm given an MP4, I just convert to a Windows format and concentrate on writing the soundtrack.

Yes... i found converting to wmv before impirting seems to have everything working.

I just finished a dozen videos with little effort.

Biggest problem for me is understanding and adjusting to get the output file i want...