Vsdc Manual
Gunilla
After opening it in Shotcut, I usually export this backup file and play the resulting video in a media player to make sure everything is in order. Then I save the file in my current project folder. You can choose to replace the original, but I prefer to keep it (just in case) and give a different name to the recovered file. Usually the same as the original, but I add something like _V2 or _02 at the end.
I always edit by opening file 1, and I save (save as) both files at the end of an editing session.
In the case that during an edition, the file gets corrupted, I could open file 2, which in the best case, would allow me to continue with the edition from the last manual saving.
VSDC looks really powerful and simply curious why a particular company (who builds such an amazing video-editor) would bundle it with "Conduit" ? Conduit is very subjective as to whether it is a virus or just a passive software tracker.
Does anyone know if VSDC will continue to install "Conduit" if I UN-CHECK the toolbar boxes during the install process? I really don't want to have to go through the painful process of searching how to thoroughly delete "Conduit" if it does install to my system.
You can load this software without any extras, just Save it to a pre-prepared folder and then open it to the same folder. Read every step and don't load any other things offered. At one point there seems to only be an accept button. "Skip" is top right..sneaky.
However, I have to say, having just given it a cursory look, that this program is not as intuative as Videopad which you can pretty well use almost without reading anything, and I have spent some time trying to create even a short clip! No success and I'm still stumped. If in doubt I shall read the instructions.but haven't found them yet either
Same here. Spent awhile with the program yesterday and basically got nowhere. As far as a user-manual, you won't find it. I searched and searched but came up with nothing. I like the interface and began to become familiar with some tasks but as far as completing a video, well.... I just didn't get that far.. Hopefully VSDC will expand on their concept and provide support. I haven't given up on this software yet. Just need to find the time to work with it.
If you need to edit videos but don't want to spend $100 or more on software, you might consider VSDC Video Editor Pro from Flash-Integro. The program includes some fairly advanced tools, including AI object removal, and is available in a free version with a decent amount of functionality. That said, VSDC still trails more expensive video editing software in its interface and usability. VSDC's low price is hard to beat, but it has such a complex, nonstandard interface that it's hard to recommend, especially for novices or those just starting with video editing. Our Editors' Choice winner for nonprofessional video enthusiasts is CyberLink PowerDirector. For professionals, it's Adobe Premiere Pro.
VSDC is available at two levels: free and the $29.99 Pro edition. The Pro edition is far cheaper than most capable video editing software. This paid version adds support for more media types, advanced settings, hardware acceleration, sub-pixel resolution, and audio waveform editing. It also adds premium support, plus extra masking and green-screen capabilities. You can upgrade anytime by purchasing a license key, entering it into the program, and restarting the application. If you're going to use VSDC, it's worth upgrading because you get far more polished interfaces and more cutting-edge tools.
VSDC Video Editor runs on Windows XP SP3 through Windows 11 (though no one should run old, unsupported operating systems because of security concerns). There are both 64-bit and 32-bit Windows versions, but no macOS version. The installer weighs in at 70MB. That's svelte compared with most video editors, which often tip the scales at over a gigabyte. After installation, the program takes up 284MB on the hard drive.
When you first run the program, a dialog box offers help with getting started. The choices include Open a New Project, Start Editing, and Export a Project. These are links to web help pages, similar to the way Adobe Premiere Elements handles documentation. I prefer having a complete offline user guide, and you can only get that with a paid account. By contrast, DaVinci Resolve gives free users a huge and thorough PDF manual.
VSDC includes separate tools for screen recording, video capture, voice recording, and disc burning, as well as a converter tool with a large selection of output options for popular devices and online uses.
The center of the program's startup interface shows five buttons under the Start Project Now group and eight under Get to Know Top Features, including a 360-degree/3D Editor, Motion Tracking, and an AI Art Generator.
The top menu switches the toolbar ribbon among Projects, Scenes, Edit, View, Editor, Export, Tools, and Activation modes. You can minimize the ribbon to show just the smaller editing toolbars. As in Microsoft 365 apps, you can customize the small Quick Access toolbar at the very top, with the standard New, Open, and Save options, as well as a Preview button.
In Editor mode, the Add Object button lets you add any type of media the timeline supports, though I wish Video and Photo were closer to the top instead of buried under Sprites, Shapes, and other common items. Small square green buttons for adding more common media types are to the left of the video preview window. The program supports most formats, including MP4, H.265, WebM, MKV, VP9, and (a new addition) Blackmagic RAW.
VSDC sports a standard video preview window above the timeline, which it hasn't always had. You can start playback with the space bar. As you preview, the insertion point on the timeline now keeps in sync with what you're watching. But playback isn't as smooth as in competing programs, especially with high-resolution content, because it doesn't use proxy files. Most apps use proxies in editing in place of the full-size video to speed up working in the timeline.
The separate Cutting and Splitting window lets you preview a clip while cutting marked regions, which is handy and not offered by all video editing apps. Making the interface even more cluttered are Photoshop-like toolbars for adding and aligning shapes and text, located along the immediate left side and top of the preview window.
VSDC now has a convenient way to add cross-dissolve transitions between video clips: Simply drag one clip over the other while holding down the Alt key. If you right-click on a clip in the timeline, you can also apply a choice of 11 transitions from the context menu. Confusingly, the Flow transition doesn't resemble the similarly named one in Final Cut Pro or the Morph Cut transition in Premiere Pro. Instead, it's a fractal distortion and thus is not useful for smoothing out interview cuts.
Another more difficult thing than in other applications is closing up gaps created by moving clips. Many apps have a simple right-click Ripple Delete choice, but it took quite a bit of figuring out to do this in VSDC. I had to select multiple clips and move them to the cursor position. The timeline track heads are still less clear than those in most other programs, with a spreadsheet-like design and unusual choices in very tall menus. You're helped along by hover-over tooltips that indicate their function, but it's still not the most intuitive interface.
Cropping, rotating, transparency, and picture-in-picture video effects are quite easy in VSDC. You simply drag the borders where you want for cropping and PiP, and a rotate button is handy for when your video is on its side. There's also a button for fitting different-size media to your canvas, called Same Size and Position, which is very handy for building projects with media of different resolutions.
VSDC's Instagram-style filters and old-film styles are also welcome effects, as is the workable chroma-keying. The latter did let me remove a green background, but the results weren't as impressive as with other software like Corel VideoStudio or CyberLink PowerDirector.
A newer way to jazz up your viral video is with the AI Art Generator. It applies effects similar to those made popular by the Prisma app for still photos a few years ago. It uses machine learning to make an image resemble work by other artists, like Van Gogh or Picasso, or to be in a particular style, like Japanese woodblock prints. CyberLink PowerDirector has had a similar tool for a few years, and the effective is making its way into a lot of creative software, even from Adobe.
VSDC lets you edit 360 VR content, 4K, and HEVC video content without any complaints. It also lets you create shape masks, which you can even use to pixelate areas in the video and follow motion paths.
Once you have a track, back in the Editor mode you attach a mask effect or object by choosing Add Object > Movement > Movement Map. You have to pick the map from a list. I think this should happen automatically after you create the track. Anyway, the process did work quite well in testing, and there are plenty of options for perfecting results.
Chroma keying (aka green-screen background removing) boasts an HSL (hue saturation lightness) option in addition to the YUV color space and chroma key mask options. The HSL flavor is only available in Pro, and it offers many detailed settings like hue, lightness, and saturation deltas. It lets you create a more accurate mask, but a dropper gets you off to a good start. Other software like those from Adobe have more automatic chroma key tools that produce more accurate masks around fine details like hair. The hue delta adjustment produced a good result in such cases, however.
VSDC's new AI Segmentation tool lets you select objects in a video to remove them or perform local effects on them. Using these tools is fairly tricky. You choose Video Effects > Special Effects > Segmentation from the Editor button bar. Then, you need to download an AI model, unzip its files, and then import them into the program. There are four choices with varying degrees of accuracy and performance. I chose the SAM-HQ model, which VSDC's site described as precise though demanding of system resources. After all this, you choose Add Region from the Properties panel, draw a box around the object you want to select, and, well, in my case, the program crashes at this point. After starting the process again, choosing Add region and then Include region actually found the skateboarder in my video and created a mask, as shown below.