Monitor Panel No Longer Resizing?

[Margthecar]

This is probably a Doh! moment, but I cannot think what I am doing wrong. My Monitor Panel no longer is resizing as I make the timeline taller and shorter. Instead, the Monitor Panel is cropped to where I have to use scroll bars to see parts of the frame. It used to be that as I made the timeline taller and shorter, the Monitor Panel would resize smaller and bigger accordingly so I could always see the full frame. I tried Window--> Restore Workspace, made sure I had the most current Flash, and also exited and reopened both new and old projects. All now have the same cropping behavior. What am I missing here? I always like to see the whole frame in the Monitor Panel, even if it small.

[Margthecar]

Well isn't this just typical? After a half hour of head scratching, forum searching and posting, just after I posted my question here, I went back to my project and it came to me what I had done. Earlier in the evening I was doing some Motion keyframing with a 16-point garbage matte and there was so much junk on the screen I wanted to get a better look. I tried right-clicking on the Monitor Panel and saw the magnification setting. I set it to 100% but I guess I happened to be close to 100% at the time and it did not do much so I just went on to other things. But I see now for the Monitor Panel to resize I needed to reset the Magnification to "Fit", not 100%. At 100% it is a fixed size and hence the scroll bars. Yep, a definite Doh! moment.

BTW--one of the reasons I was right clicking on the Monitor Panel is because I was Motion keyframing a 16-point garbage matte changing virtually every frame and the problem is my Monitor panel fills up with all these extraneous little dots and trajectories that after a couple dozen frames makes the actual points hard to see. Is there any way to get rid of the little dots and lines that accumulate during Motion keyframing so that the points of the matte are easier to see? Or are all these dots and lines actually useful for something? Please enlighten me.

[Steve Grisetti]

Don't you just love these do-it-yourself advice forums, Marg?

Glad you're up and running again.

Those dots, by the way, represent the motion paths of your keyframed motion. As you probably know, the motion between two keyframed points can be a straight line or it can be curved, swirled or S-shaped. Those lines are just representing the shape of that motion.

[Margthecar]

Steve,
Actually, the Motion keyframing I have been doing so far has been for blocking parts of a frame out with a moving garbage matte so the keyframe movements have been very small, just a few pixels at a time. I did not realize the trajectories could have different shapes because they are too small to see in this application. Good to know for some larger motion stuff I have coming up for my next scene! But for this scene, there are so many of the trajectories so close together covering the garbage matte points they are not useful to me. Is there a way to turn them off? And an auxiliary question. Is there a way to specify that the trajectory BE ONLY a straight line between two keyframes? Now THAT would be useful to me right now.

Thanks for your help. Even if I can't turn them off, having a better understanding of what they are doing will help. Even my Doh moment might be useful here. I just realized that if I magnify the Monitor panel, it will allow me to better see the garbage matte point amongst the trajectories. Only it will take longer to keyframe it because I have to be scrolling around the frame.... hmmm, maybe I need a bigger computer monitor or two or three. Yeah right after the better green screen, and the professional lights, and the nicer camera......sigh. One step at a time.

[momoffduty]

Marg, what resolution do you have your screen set at? I work in the highest number mine will go and get a better view. And Welcome to Muvipix!

[Margthecar]

Cheryl I am using the highest resolution I can (just checked). I think the problem is my computer monitor is rather smallish (20") because I am limited by my desk setup. However, I found that the workaround of changing the PrE8 monitor panel to something like 200 or 400% and zooming in on the area has helped a lot. So my initial mistake of resizing the monitor panel has turned into a positive learning experience . Always a nice thing.

[momoffduty]

My resolution is 1680x1050 on a 22". When I first started editing I had a small monitor...think it was 17". When I got the 22" it was like night to day.

Another tip is to grab the bottom corner of the monitor panel in PrEl until you get the 4 arrows and drag the panels so that the monitor panel takes up a big chunk of screen space. That way you can really see when you are working with motion paths in the monitor. Just drag it back when you don't need it that size. I do the same for the timeline, etc. Just depends on what I am working on at the time.

[Chuck Engels]

I hope I don't have to go back to a single monitor ever again .....

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I hope I don't have to go back to a single monitor ever again .....

I'll second that!

[Jayell]

I hope I don't have to go back to a single monitor ever again .....

I'll second that!

You mean there's folks out there that only have ONE?!

[Margthecar]

LOL.
Oh great Moviemaking Gods and Goddesses......Take pity on us lowly Newbies, ignorantly but bravely navigating the NLE cinematic waters with but a single monitor, mono microphones and unevenly lit green screens. May we aspire to enter the Olympic editing rooms of you lofty beings someday. But for now, we are reduced to our sisyphean task of forever resizing our Monitor Panels on our one small computer screen.

[Bob]

I only have ONE monitor, and I don't think I would be classified as a newbie. It is a 16:9 widescreen, not a 4:3, and that does make a difference. If there were only 4:3 monitors available, I probably would have switched to dual years ago.

[Dave McElderry]

I have one widescreen 23" monitor. I actually tried PrEl with dual monitors for a while but found it somewhat cumbersome. If the single monitor is large enough I think it works okay. If I could put the Properties panel into its own monitor (using V7) then I might have to rethink the dual monitor thing.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

LOL.
Oh great Moviemaking Gods and Goddesses......Take pity on us lowly Newbies, ignorantly but bravely navigating the NLE cinematic waters with but a single monitor, mono microphones and unevenly lit green screens. May we aspire to enter the Olympic editing rooms of you lofty beings someday. But for now, we are reduced to our sisyphean task of forever resizing our Monitor Panels on our one small computer screen.

It is 03.45 UK time. Thank you for making my day brighter.

[Kitwn]

John,

What are you doing out of bed at that time of day? You'll catch your death!

Re monitors, I used to run a pair of 17" 4:3 monitors for pre but now use a single 22" 16:9 monitor most of the time, occasionally dragging the 'monitor' window onto one of the 17" screens to review the whole project. Most of the time the second monitor has a word processor on it with my continuously updated project notes on. Great if you have a few days break between editing sessions and a memory as bad as mine.

Kit