I want to modify/customize a montage theme for a project and I'm following the clone tutorial on the 20cents-video website.

I'd like to use a theme from the album2 series. I'm puzzled by a few things namely my album2 bin in Studio 20 has five themes Houndstooth, Red, Brown, Purple Fancy, and Green. The Album2 folder holds content for only four themes: Houndstooth, Brown Retro, Purple Fancy,and Green Retro. None for Red. Anyone know why? Even more puzzling the assets folder contains files for six themes the first named album2 which I can see is Houndstooth, #3 Red, 4 Brown Retro, 5 Fancy Purple, #6 Green Retro and  the final set of assets listed merely as book-cover. It's plain brown.If it's in there I wonder why there's no corresponding theme in Studio with a plain brown cover.

Can anyone explain the discrepancies? I want to make sure I understand as much as possible before going any further.

Thanks,

Paul

How many .axt files do you have into C:\Users\Public\Documents\Pinnacle\Studio20\Content\IMG-Templates\Album 2 ?

Me, 20.

 

16. Four each for Houndstooth, Fancy Purple, Retro Green and Brown Retro. I have a theme called Red Nouveau pretty sure that's French or Euro whatever.

So, 16 + 1 = 17 ?

Would you list all of them ?

Yes Nouveau is French, but that's the name given by Pinnacle to this theme whatever the localization of Studio.

No just 16. I've got:

01 Opening Houndstooth

02 segue A HT

03 segue b HT

04 Ending HT

09 Opening Brown Retro

10 segue a BR

11 segue b BR

12 Ending BR

13 Open Fancy Purple

14 segue a FP

15 segue b FP

16 Ending FP

17 Open Green Retro

18 segue a GR

19 segue b

GR 20 Ending GR.

I was just kidding about Nouveau.

 

Is PS19 still present on this PC ?

14, 18 & 19

And you have a C:\Users\Public\Documents\Pinnacle\Studio20\Content\ folder with assets inside ?

Weird ! PS20 installs its assets in PS19's content folder if it is existing.

I found  the missing theme sequences (5-8) in the S19 content folder. S20's content is in a folder simply labeled content while 18 & 19 content folders are within their respective PS folder. The lone folder 20 used was from S16 or 17. I had wondered before why it wasn't in a version specific folder like the others.

Thank you for the help. Once I copy the missing files it should all make sense.

Have a good weekend Yann.

Thanks Paul. You too.

I can't locate any Red Nouveau.ixl files.

As luck would have it Red is the one I wanted to use. I wonder how it works without the .ixl files?

I guess I have to modify the ixl files anyway so I can no doubt use say the green retro ixl's and modify?

Paul, what's this mess ?

You should not have any .ixl file in this folder. That's for old versions of Montage Themes. I guess before Avid Studio.

No doubt because instead of making a folder called Studio 20 for the content folder it just put it in the "orphan" content folder sitting in the Pinnacle folder from S16 or 17.

I see the S18 folder has .ixl files too. 19 does not.

paul37:

No doubt because instead of making a folder called Studio 20 for the content folder it just put it in the "orphan" content folder sitting in the Pinnacle folder from S16 or 17.

How do you know PS20 is picking up its assets in this folder and not in PS19's content folder ?

 

paul37:

I see the S18 folder has .ixl files too. 19 does not.

Definitely an heritage of some manual tweaking you must have done in the past.

Would you happen to know if the discontinuation of the use of.ixl files effectively killed the ability to modify the templates or perhaps even made it easier?

Tony replied to a post in 2013 telling a woman simply that the templates couldn't be modified with no mention of 20cents tuts or anything.

That's a possibility. Thanks again.

Maybe I can contact someone at 20cents-video as to whether their tutorial is still valid.

paul37:

Would you happen to know if the discontinuation of the use of.ixl files effectively killed the ability to modify the templates or perhaps even made it easier?

Tony replied to a post in 2013 telling a woman simply that the templates couldn't be modified with no mention of 20cents tuts or anything.

I quote 20cents :

What are the .axt files?

The .axt files contain the version of montage themes for Avid Studio.
They are generated from the .ixl slightly modified from the version for legacy Pinnacle Studio, in order to ensure optimal compatibility.

 

paul37:

That's a possibility. Thanks again.

Maybe I can contact someone at 20cents-video as to whether their tutorial is still valid.

Email your question to 20cents dot video at sfr dot fr

He stopped developing his website when Montage themes became .axt files.

Francois provided me a link to doing the procedure in Avid Studio. I'm never sure what Avid Studio is referring to exactly. Is it Studio 15? My understanding is the code of Studio was completely changed after S14 with the successor named Avid Studio at least for a few months

Quoted email from Francois @ 20cents-video:

see http://www.20cents-video.com/en/tuto-Avid_clone.html to clone a montage theme with Avid (old version of Studio20). The directory has changed since Studio 18 it should be something like C:\Users\Public\Documents\Pinnacle\Studio20\Content\IMG-Templates instead of C:\Users\Public\Documents\Pinnacle\Content\IMG-Templates

And just that quick I hit a snag in this tutorial. I have S20 open during the procedure. I hope someone out there has modified a montage following the tut and can help me identify what's going wrong.

Some background info: I started by making a folder named wedding album2 in the Studio 19 IMG templates folder. I did this to avoid damaging original files. Inside it I pasted the entire IMG Templates album 2 folder. I then modified the Opening Red Nouveau.png in the assets folder with a background I prepared in Photoshop and saved it replacing the existing file of the same name (the original).

I think I figured out the .axt file modification. I should delete everything between the > sign following the ? to the "(quotation mark) before 05 Opening Red Nouveau in this case. Following is what I deleted: <OperatorExtension effectGUID="56DC2C0D-98F9-4508-8DAC-AEA2F11B2229" engineGUID="DE43A45F-212E-41fe-8FFB-0F0203D79579">
 <UIDescription version="1.2" name=

Does this look about right to you? I did also delete the necessary section at the bottom and saved what remained as a .ixl file. I then copy and pasted it into the IMG Templates album folder(note album not album 2) along with the corresponding .png and .axt files . I also pasted the corresponding Opening Red Nouveau assets in the assets folder.

It kept creating a copy of the axt file with one containing .temp before the .axt extension and generating an error message from studio until I deleted the .ixl file. I attempted it without the .axt file and it still generates the .temp.axt file and XML parsing error from Studio.

Does anyone see what I'm doing wrong? 

[click to view image]

Paul

http://www.20cents-video.com/en/tuto-Avid_clone.html

I must be a freaking idiot. A couple of prior blood clots in the brain should earn me some modicum of slack I hope.

Case solved!

I quite simply took the Red Nouveau background file (actual name Album3_BackgoundGradient.png) that I designed and pasted it directly in the Album 2 Assets folder choosing to save both versions rather than overwrite. I then had to rename both files to make my design the original filename. Studio still displays the original Red Nouveau thumbs but I could change them in the same manner if I chose to. The original background is stored right there to change it back quite easily as well.

I may just go willy nilly and change all the themes heck!

I burned a day on this. Mostly because I can't settle for Vanilla.

Thank you to all who gave this some thought.

 

Yann,

Francois volunteered to take a look at the files for me. In preparing the attachments and writing the email the solution hit me. I'm quite relieved I didn't have to trouble him with any of it.

Thank you for your assistance once more.

Paul

saby:

Weird ! PS20 installs its assets in PS19's content folder if it is existing.

Saby,

If I uninstall PS19U after installing PS20U, will I lose Content?