[Alan Lloyd]

Beautiful aerial work.

[Alan Lloyd]

You’re welcome.

Glad I could be helpful.

[Alan Lloyd]

Pain In The…

OK – I can not find my v6.5 Premiere. It’s in a box someplace.

I found something here online:

https://www.jeremymoore.com/AdobePremiere/FAQ/#Anchor-3.2

The relevant text follows:

3.2 Picture in Picture

1. Place one clip on the timeline on the “Video 1A” or “Video 1B” track. This will be the background video.
2. Place your second clip on “Video 2” track or above.

o You have a few options here:Use “Clip -> Video Options -> Motion…” and set the begin and end time to the same settings (position and zoom). Use a zoom value of less than 100% (maybe around 25%) for the smaller images

or

o Use the effect “Perspective -> Transform” and set the “Scale Width” and “Scale Height” to the same values (maybe around 25%). Set the “Position” where you want the video to be placed.

Note that you can overlap many videos on top each other on the Video 2+ tracks and set the positions/size as above to get some really cool effects (multiple videos play and moving around, etc.) Set different keyframes for position, scale, and rotation to add even more complexity to your video.

I hope this is useful/helpful.

[Alan Lloyd]

I’ve seen this done here and there. Once, in a very interesting way (though not as you describe): In a studio, I saw a very nice blue wall breakup generated by bouncing a fairly hefty instrument – a 2K, if I recall correctly – off a blue-gelled card covered with crinkled aluminum foil. Shiny side facing the light, of course.

I’ve also seen a gaffer, some years back, bounce an HMI off a gelled white wall to match the mix of daylight and fluoros in the room.

Whatever works – like I need to be telling you that.

[Alan Lloyd]

Bear with me – I’m trying to remember, as Premiere 6.x was a while ago.

The Motion requester is what you want. You need to make the start and end keyframes the same – there are buttons for that alongside the little preview window. And you need to scale the clips to 25% – each will have room above and below it.

As I remember it, that requester was a PITA. PPro is much nicer.

Each clip will need to be in its own track. I’d see a minimum of three video tracks here, as you’ll want some element below both clips.

Maybe tomorrow I could try to put 6.5 back on an old barely used machine and experiment with it. I hope you’re not up against a time crunch.

[Alan Lloyd]

As I think about it (and you’re very welcome, by the way!) a compressed file may look “crisper” under some circumstances, because of some type of edge (or other) artifacting, where an uncompressed file may be seen as softer because it’s actually smoother/cleaner.

I have not tested this – as I said, side-by-side on the same monitor with the same file from different applications is the only real way to know for certain. Just a thought on re-reading things.

[Alan Lloyd]

That’s the standard .avi file output for PPro – I know, because that’s what I cut with.

You can output a regular uncompressed .avi file from After Effects and that’s what you’d get.

Also, the only way to be certain your client’s file output (or yours, for that matter) is “crisper” is for both of you to export the identical file from your respective applications of choice and compare them both, side-by-side, in two viewer windows on the same monitor. And make very certain it’s a monitor you can trust.

[Alan Lloyd]

PBS stations donate? Where?

They seek donations, true – constantly. Give anything up? Not that I’ve ever heard!

[Alan Lloyd]

Very good article.

I stopped cutting for years when digital came in. It had stopped being fun. Seeing how fast I could drive an interformat Sony BVE-910 room, making tape changes into an athletic event, telling clients to quiet down as I cut a word out and replaced it to cover a script error that was voiced as written, ahhh, the old days.

Oddly, the thing I missed most was the weighted jog/shuttle dial. Go figure…

Now, I have an edit machine and an edit laptop. I cut for clients and my own stuff. With a Wacom tablet instead of a shuttle knob. And I hop among Premiere, Photoshop, and sometimes After Effects.

The thing I see yet that I don’t like is that there are a lot of “operators” out there, and people who can sling filters and effects like there’s no tomorrow, but still not so many editors – because at the end of it all, editing is not operating, it’s storytelling.

And one final observation: If your cut piece feels shorter to watch than it’s real-time duration, it’s a good edit.

[Alan Lloyd]

If you like it, and can spare the time, get up to Argyle St. for pho.