Using GIFs

[Ken]

PapaJohn and John,

I like the PIP transition. How did you get the helicopter clip to slide up
the screen? Was it done entirely with MM2? I assume that the helicopter clip
was the second clip with the transparent color surrounding it? If you don't
mind revealing your trade secrets, I would like to know how you produced
that clip.

I had not thought about using the key transition for picture in picture.
There is another custom transition that will do that in one easy step. It
will shrink, zoom, stretch and crop any region of the second clip to a
rectangular window of any size at any position over the first clip. Of
course, you cannot move the PIP window up the screen as you did, PapaJohn;
so the key transition is much more robust.

I have been thinking about what you said, John, about fixing the edge color
effect. It sounds like it will be particularly difficult to fix in text over
video transitions. Have either of you figured out where the unwanted color
comes from? My guess is that it comes from anti-aliasing during either the
image creation or mm2 resizing of source video or both. Have you noticed
that the unwanted color on the edge is a mix of the transparent color and
the opaque color? Perhaps it would turn out cleaner if the color near the
edge of the opaque part was just one click away from the transparent part.
For a font overlay, you could use a font color of RGB(254,254,254) and a
transparent color of RGB(255,255,255). That way any anti-aliasing or font
smothing affects would not be noticeable in the final product. Let me know
if you have had any other thoughts on the subject.

Ken

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

A quick note Ken and back to raking leaves. I don't have any trade secrets.

You're right on the helicopter clip being the second one. I resized it in
Virtual Dub, and added a large frame around it with my transparent color.
Then in MM2 I applied one or two of the Pixelan Pan/Zoom effects to the
clip.

Yes, all done in MM2 except the countdown over the flag, which I had done
earlier in Premiere.

More later,

PapaJohn

 

[John Kelly]

Hi there both,

The unwanted colour's come from imperfect transitions of an object....for
example between two adjacent frames the moving image tries to move 1/2 of a
pixel...this forces the rendering engine to do an approximation of the
colour, I had the same problem in a package I wrote some years back it
resized certain images for the purpose of storage in a fixed size bin, and
it caused me some real nightmares I can tell you, in the end I had to
re-write the program so that the size of the image no longer mattered...it
slowed the program right down.

There are some very very expensive rendering engines that will get it right
just about every time, such engines are used in fingerprint analysis and
tachograph chart readers, so they are way out of our league with regards to
MM2. Those algorithms sacrifice the size of the image in order to get the
colour right. This usually only involves one or two pixels in the width or
height, but again, its out of the scope of MM2

What I have been thinking about is the use of Sprites, which is effectively
what your code in that xml file does, in a sense anyway. So, for the
purposes of MM2, I am wondering if there is a way of making a sprite move
around in a field of transparent colour....no mater what the graphic
overlays the transparent part will always be transparent and there will be
no interaction and nothing for the rendering engine in MM2 to calculate...I
haven't explained that all too well...its been a long day. So, if "She who
must be obeyed" lets me.....I will have a tinker with that.

There is a chap who has a truly excellent web site on Graphics...I think the
sites name is something like www.efg.com, and I am sure his first name is
Earl. Unless its changed, which is not likely, his site will have nothing at
all to do with MM2, his site is about programming techniques. But, it might
be the place to pick up some tips...It was always useful to me in the past.
So thats what I will aim to do tomorrow

 

[John Kelly]

Hi Again,

That web sites address is http://www.efg2.com, as I said before it has
nothing to do with MM2, its where the graphics boffin's who write software
packages meet amongst other things

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Ken and John,

I made another sample clip using the transparency transition and a PIP type
effect, this time taking more care to position the smaller inset video so it
moves slowly along the bottom from right to left. The link to the sample is
the fiddlers image on the Editing... Video... Effects page of the website. I
want to, for this one, emphasize the use of a Pixelan Pan/Zoom effect.
Without using that effect, the small inset video would sit static in the
middle of the frame through the movie.

Someone's head got in the way as I shot the video and it effected the lower
right corner of the video, so by using the PIP effect, I was able to make
the scene better and at the same time cover up the problem area.

In my testing so far, I tried black, white, blue, etc. for transparency and
found the one that worked the best is my Do Amazing Things book accent
color, and I like seeing the accent color around the inset image. The color
is R-230, G-147, B-74 (Hex E6934A).

PapaJohn