Video transitions

[Vince Becquiot]

Hi Julio,

You would first select your pictures / footage in the project panel, then choose Project > Automate to sequence. A window will popup asking for clip length, transition type etc.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Scot Sheely]

Julio,

Although you did not specify which version of PPRO that you are currently using, there is a way to apply a single transition to multiple assets all at the same time. This makes it relatively easy to create a basic photo montage, for example, that dissolves between one pic to the next.

The following tip will work with CS2 & CS3, and I feel confident that it is probably still available in the latest versions as well.

Open up a new timeline, import all of your assets into a new bin (‘Photos’, for example), select all of the assets inside that new bin (selecting the first item, holding the SHIFT key, then selecting the last item is probably the fastest method to do this).

At the bottom of the PROJECT window you will see several icons. From the far left, they are LIST VIEW, ICON VIEW, then one that looks like a bar graph called AUTOMATE TO SEQUENCE. Click this last icon, and a small window pops up with your options.

Towards the bottom of this pop up window you will see check boxes that say APPLY DEFAULT VIDEO TRANSITION. You probably don’t need the default audio transition, so de-select that. Above these checkboxes is a section that says CLIP OVERLAP. Select SECONDS from the drop down menu and type in the amount of time for the dissolve to occur.

I suggest that you try values anywhere from .5 seconds, to 1 and 2 seconds. In some cases, even 5 seconds is appropriate, it really depends on your content, overall intent and accompanying music.

If you feel more comfortable using it, you can try using frames instead of seconds. Remember that 30 frames = 1 second, so 15 frames is half a second. As I recall, the default transition time is set to 2 seconds when you first install PPRO and any CS suite on your system.

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Remember the following tips when using this process:
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1) You may want to use SCALE TO FRAMESIZE before importing your photos. Sometimes this is appropriate, but not always. To do this, select all of your photos in you bin (or on the timeline), right click on one of them and select Scale to Framesize.

2) When you using the Automate to Timeline feature, where ever you have your CTI (Current Time Indicator, the red and blue pointer) is where the assets will be placed on your timeline. This is useful to know if you get another batch of photos or videos later on and want to add them in using the same process. You will, however, have to manually add in the one cross dissolve between the last asset in your original group and the first item in the new group.

3) You can always manually tweak and adjust the dissolve properties for a specific area using the Effects Controls panel, once that dissolve is selected. This is necessary sometimes to make a section flow better visually, always use your eyes and best judgment as the guide.

4) Although you will have a default Cross Dissolve effect using this process, you can always choose a different effect and set that as your default by going to your Effects panel, selecting a transition, then right-clicking on that same transition and clicking on SET SELECTED AS DEFAULT TRANSITION. This is easy to change at any time, you are never stuck with your new choice.

5) You can also add a little motion to your photos to give them that ‘Ken Burns’ style pan and scan effect. Select the very first photo in the first frame of its position, open up your Effects Controls panel, click on the POSITION stopwatch (pops up as TOGGLE ANIMATION when you mouse over); this sets the first frame’s keyframe.

Now for the fun part: click on the word MOTION at the top of the Effects Controls panel. Notice that in your program monitor that a selection box appears. Use your mouse to left click and HOLD on your photo in the monitor and drag the photo to where you would like its starting position to be. Don’t worry if you accidentally release the mouse button or don’t get the position exactly right the first time, you can keep tweaking its position until you are happy with the results. This is how you set your new starting position for your photo.

Use the PAGE DOWN key on your keyboard, then the LEFT ARROW key. This repositions your CTI to the end of that same photo, one frame back from the end, so you will be able to see what you are adjusting.

From there, repeat the left-click and hold process on the photo in your program monitor and adjust the desired ending position of your photo. This will place another keyframe at the end of the photo’s duration.

Playing back your results will show a smooth motion, and you can also go to the Effects Controls panel, select the beginning and last keyframes, right-click on one of them and choose from a couple of EASY EASE options that will make your motion appear even smoother. This is found under the TEMPORAL INTERPOLATION menu selection. Play with the options found there to see which works best for you in your project.

Last step: RIGHT-CLICK on the word MOTION again in the Effects Controls panel and choose COPY. Then select your next photo and right-click anywhere in the blank are at the bottom of the Effects Control panel. Select PASTE, and your motion is now copied to the next photo.

Although it is a bit labor intensive to COPY and PASTE this same motion to each photo, it can still be done rather quickly and offers a nice variation to the dissolve only version. You can also mix it up by creating a second motion set and copying that to every other photo in your sequence, which gives a nice pleasing to the eye effect and helps prevent viewer boredom.

All of this last process of adding motion sounds complicated and time consuming, but let me assure you, once you learn how to do this, it is very fast and very easy to do. From the moment you have imported all of your photos into your project, the whole automate to sequence and adding motion can be done in only a couple of minutes, even for a lot of photos.

Play with this effect; you can also adjust the first keyframe (photo’s starting position) very quickly, and this also looks pleasing to the eye, much more so than the last keyframe.

One last tip: If all you need to do is go straight to a DVD with a photo montage, I suggest you look into using Encore DVD instead. It has a wonderful automatic photo montage generator built into it. You can choose random transitions, random pan and scan, sync the visuals tightly to the music automatically, and adjust each and every photo’s transition or motion very quickly and easily. The whole process in Encore is a matter of a couple of minutes and a few checkboxes. You can put together groups of 99 photos at a time, and there is a way to do multiple groups for nearly infinite photos, limited only by space on the DVD.

If you are interested in learning that process, you can e-mail me and I will gladly do a free one-on-one phone training session with you. It is far faster that way than typing everything out here.

There you have it…two ways to skin a cat! And don’t get me started on using After Effects for this….there is already a free tutorial here on CREATIVE COW describing that process using AE that is excellent.

[Scot Sheely]

I found a static tutorial I made for creating quick and easy photo montages using Encore DVD:

https://www.imgvideos.com/downloads/weva/encore_slideshow_tutorial/encore_dvd_slideshow_tutorial.html

Hope that helps. The version displayed was 2.0, however, the process is the same with later version such as CS3 etc.

It’s always harder to do the right thing, but you’ll be glad you did in the end.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Dear Scott,

Allow me to ask a more technical question about the technique you just described. It applies to this technique and to keyframing in general.

Let’s imagine an animation with two still photos. The first photo fades in, and we start panning to the right for a few seconds, at which point we cross dissolve to another photo that continues the movement to the right for a few seconds, stops, then fades out.

At the dissolve, to keep movement continuous, we want to keep panning until the end of the crossfade, and we want to start moving the next photo already at the beginning of the crossfade. I can make this work when I put it together by key framing the start end end of the pan, applying the crossfade, and then moving the keyframes to the outer points of the clip.

But as soon as I want to change something, things get difficult. When I select the clip, I can move through the crossfade to get to the keyframe I want to adjust, but then I can’t see what I am doing because I am at the very beginning of a dissolve where the part which I am adjusting is not yet visible.

I have to move the cut out of the way, or move the keyframe so that I can see what I am doing, and then move it back again.

I find this hard to explain, hope it makes sense. Do you understand what I mean?

Is there a better/easier/quicker way to do this?

Thanks,

Carl.