Thursday, April 15, 2004
From Home Movies to Hollywood Blockbusters with Adobe Premiere Pro
Posted by Philip Colmer in "SOFTWARE" @ 03:05 PM
Effects
By default, every video track has two effects – motion and opacity – and every audio track has one effect – volume. Selecting a track causes the effect controls window to show the effects that are applied. In Figure 17, because the audio & video are linked, selecting one causes both tracks to be selected and therefore effects for both tracks to be displayed.
Whoa! Hang on just a minute there! Opacity? What's that then? It essentially defines how opaque that specific track is (i.e. not transparent). If a clip has 100% opacity, you won't be able to see anything of the lower tracks that are obscured by this track. As you move the opacity value down towards 0%, the track becomes more transparent. If there isn't anything below a partially transparent clip, you see the black background showing through.
Figure 17: The Effect Controls window. Click on the image for the full size image. (15KB)
The huge difference between the Premiere Pro way and the old way is that with the new way, it is much easier to manage the keyframes for the settings because you can see all of them at once. With previous versions of Premiere, you could only see the keyframes for one effect at a time. The keyframes were displayed over the video track in the timeline, which meant that you had a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the Effect Controls window and the timeline.
Figure 18: Drilling down into the Motion effect. Click on the image for the full size image. (6KB)
If you click on the “twirl down” icon, as shown in Figure 18, all of the settings for that effect are revealed. For each of the settings, you can change the value for the whole of the occurrence of the effect or you can enable keyframes and thus modify the values over time. This level of functionality is broadly similar to that offered by previous versions of Premiere – most of the difference is in the user interface – it is now a lot easier to manipulate the keyframes and see how the whole of the effect is mapped out. One useful improvement, though, is with regard to the keyframes themselves. In previous versions, Premiere would linearly move from the value set by one keyframe to the value set by the next. With Premiere Pro, it is possible to “ease” out from a keyframe, ease in to a keyframe or hold a keyframe’s value. Some of the variations are shown in Figure 19. The path between the first two keyframes is the traditional linear migration. Keyframe 2 then has an easy curve out leading to an easy curve in for keyframe 3, which then has a fast out, leading to a slow in for keyframe 4 which has a hold in. Finally, keyframe 5 has a hold in, with a normal out. The representation of this on the effect controls window can be seen in Figure 20.
Figure 19: Keyframe options.
Figure 20: Keyframes in the effect controls window. Click on the image for the full size image. (4KB)
Another improvement in the user interface can be experienced with effects that support direct updating such as the Motion effect. If you look at Figure 18, you can see a square with a mouse pointer to the left of the Motion title. Clicking on the title bar causes handles to be displayed over the clip, as shown in Figure 21. Dragging any of the edge handles alters the scale height or width, whilst dragging the centre target changes the position. This makes it a lot easier to adjust these settings by eye.
Figure 21: Motion handles. Click on the image for the full size image. (79KB)
Not all of the effects have been updated to use the new user interface. Some of them still display a settings window, which means that it is still tricky with these effects to get the desired results with keyframes because you have to keep on changing from one window to another. Hopefully, Adobe will get everything consistent with the next release.
SteadyMove Plugin
Adobe have included SteadyMove from 2d3 in Premiere Pro. This video effect allows you, within certain constraints, greatly reduce shake that you might have in your video clips. It has two controls – smoothness and max correction. The former controls the smoothness of the apparent camera motion while the latter controls the zoom and crop of the smoothed sequence. In order to achieve a stabilised shot, you need to have some pixels outside of the visible area that the image can be moved by. There is a pay-for upgrade available which gives you more control over the output but the freebie version is, I think, quite effective if you aren't too demanding. I've created a clip (see below) that shows some footage that was taken while riding a horse – not the most stable of platforms! I've applied three different levels of smoothing but not altered the "max correction" setting.
Click here for the video clip (4MB) - no sound. Please save the file before playing in order to avoid any problems.
Colour Correction
The full range of tools at your disposal now to correct colour is just mind-blowing, including but not limited to:
Figure 22: Colour correction monitor tools. Click on the image for the full size image. (54KB)
The Colour Corrector effect is extremely powerful and, as you can see in Figure 23, has a huge variety of controls that you can change … and they can be keyframed! A really useful feature is the split screen preview. As you can see, I've enabled this and reduced the saturation from 100 to 30. The net effect, as shown on the right-hand side of the frame is an almost complete loss of colour.
Figure 23: Colour correction in action. Click on the image for the full size image. (131KB)
By default, every video track has two effects – motion and opacity – and every audio track has one effect – volume. Selecting a track causes the effect controls window to show the effects that are applied. In Figure 17, because the audio & video are linked, selecting one causes both tracks to be selected and therefore effects for both tracks to be displayed.
Whoa! Hang on just a minute there! Opacity? What's that then? It essentially defines how opaque that specific track is (i.e. not transparent). If a clip has 100% opacity, you won't be able to see anything of the lower tracks that are obscured by this track. As you move the opacity value down towards 0%, the track becomes more transparent. If there isn't anything below a partially transparent clip, you see the black background showing through.
Figure 17: The Effect Controls window. Click on the image for the full size image. (15KB)
The huge difference between the Premiere Pro way and the old way is that with the new way, it is much easier to manage the keyframes for the settings because you can see all of them at once. With previous versions of Premiere, you could only see the keyframes for one effect at a time. The keyframes were displayed over the video track in the timeline, which meant that you had a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the Effect Controls window and the timeline.
Figure 18: Drilling down into the Motion effect. Click on the image for the full size image. (6KB)
If you click on the “twirl down” icon, as shown in Figure 18, all of the settings for that effect are revealed. For each of the settings, you can change the value for the whole of the occurrence of the effect or you can enable keyframes and thus modify the values over time. This level of functionality is broadly similar to that offered by previous versions of Premiere – most of the difference is in the user interface – it is now a lot easier to manipulate the keyframes and see how the whole of the effect is mapped out. One useful improvement, though, is with regard to the keyframes themselves. In previous versions, Premiere would linearly move from the value set by one keyframe to the value set by the next. With Premiere Pro, it is possible to “ease” out from a keyframe, ease in to a keyframe or hold a keyframe’s value. Some of the variations are shown in Figure 19. The path between the first two keyframes is the traditional linear migration. Keyframe 2 then has an easy curve out leading to an easy curve in for keyframe 3, which then has a fast out, leading to a slow in for keyframe 4 which has a hold in. Finally, keyframe 5 has a hold in, with a normal out. The representation of this on the effect controls window can be seen in Figure 20.
Figure 19: Keyframe options.
Figure 20: Keyframes in the effect controls window. Click on the image for the full size image. (4KB)
Another improvement in the user interface can be experienced with effects that support direct updating such as the Motion effect. If you look at Figure 18, you can see a square with a mouse pointer to the left of the Motion title. Clicking on the title bar causes handles to be displayed over the clip, as shown in Figure 21. Dragging any of the edge handles alters the scale height or width, whilst dragging the centre target changes the position. This makes it a lot easier to adjust these settings by eye.
Figure 21: Motion handles. Click on the image for the full size image. (79KB)
Not all of the effects have been updated to use the new user interface. Some of them still display a settings window, which means that it is still tricky with these effects to get the desired results with keyframes because you have to keep on changing from one window to another. Hopefully, Adobe will get everything consistent with the next release.
SteadyMove Plugin
Adobe have included SteadyMove from 2d3 in Premiere Pro. This video effect allows you, within certain constraints, greatly reduce shake that you might have in your video clips. It has two controls – smoothness and max correction. The former controls the smoothness of the apparent camera motion while the latter controls the zoom and crop of the smoothed sequence. In order to achieve a stabilised shot, you need to have some pixels outside of the visible area that the image can be moved by. There is a pay-for upgrade available which gives you more control over the output but the freebie version is, I think, quite effective if you aren't too demanding. I've created a clip (see below) that shows some footage that was taken while riding a horse – not the most stable of platforms! I've applied three different levels of smoothing but not altered the "max correction" setting.
Click here for the video clip (4MB) - no sound. Please save the file before playing in order to avoid any problems.
Colour Correction
The full range of tools at your disposal now to correct colour is just mind-blowing, including but not limited to:
- Colour corrector effect that allows you to adjust the black & white balance and colour, and limit chrominance and luminance values;
- Colour match effect that allows you to match the overall tone in a clip to other clips in the sequence;
- Waveform monitor that allows you to measure the luminance component so that you can ensure you are within the broadcast limits;
- Vectorscope that allows you to measure the chrominance component so that you can ensure you are within the broadcast limits.
Figure 22: Colour correction monitor tools. Click on the image for the full size image. (54KB)
The Colour Corrector effect is extremely powerful and, as you can see in Figure 23, has a huge variety of controls that you can change … and they can be keyframed! A really useful feature is the split screen preview. As you can see, I've enabled this and reduced the saturation from 100 to 30. The net effect, as shown on the right-hand side of the frame is an almost complete loss of colour.
Figure 23: Colour correction in action. Click on the image for the full size image. (131KB)
