[Charles Lawrence]

Hello Doug,

I noticed your post and since I was trying to do a similar thing, except that my source was a WTV file created by Windows Media Center on my Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit platform, I thought I’d try a source like yours with a downloaded FLV from YouTube. I had been struggling with this, as you must have too, for some time, but I have gotten these settings to work. Choose the left most “To AVI” conversion mode. I created a profile within AVS Video Converter 6, version 6.4.4.420, the latest from their site, so that I can pull it up anytime I want to convert a file to import into Vegas. I use Vegas Pro 9e, so I can’t vouch for Movie Studio 10, but I suspect it will work too. The profile will convert any supported input source file to a DV-AVI file that will work in Vegas. The settings I use are in this screen snapshot. I did not adjust any of the Video Codec Advanced Settings.

944_avsconverterprofile.png.zip

The resultant AVI file imports into Vegas Pro 9e with both a video and audio stream. Below is the MediaInfo analysis text of the AVI file.

General
Complete name : D:\Downloads\Youtube Videos\SpanishRomance.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format_Commercial_IfAny : DVCPRO
File size : 342 MiB
Duration : 1mn 34s
Overall bit rate : 30.3 Mbps

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Format_Commercial_IfAny : DVCPRO
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 1mn 34s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 325 MiB (95%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : 1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Duration : 1mn 34s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 17.3 MiB (5%)
Interleave, duration : 33 ms (1.00 video frame)

Hope this helps you and any others others.

[Charles Lawrence]

Before I had seen your latest post I had “persevered” forward assuming my thought about the 31 clips was correct. I figured I needed to create a clip out of the 31 PNG files with each image duration one frame in length. The quickest way I knew to do this, at the time, was to change the preference for default “New still image length (seconds)” in the Options|Preferences|Edit tab to one frame (0.017 sec), and then import the PNG files into the “Project Media” panel, then select all 31 PNG files and drag/drop them onto the timeline. After removing the empty space between every 2 events in the resultant timeline “movie”, I had what I was looking for on the timeline. I did not realize you could do an “Open digital image sequence” that you pointed out. Thanks for the tip. Using that method, how would you get each image to be say 2 frames in length, for a resultant 2 second transition?

Anyway, with the “overlay matte” on the timeline, I was able to follow the steps in the Digital Juice tutorial to finish creating the one second pinwheel wipe transition. However, I did deviate slightly from their steps. They had you putting the A-roll snippet track as the child of the matte track. To recreate what I had done in PRE7, I needed to put the B-roll snippet track as the child of the matte. In addition, I put their tracks 3 and 4 all on my track 3, not a big deal, I know.

Also, it turns out I needed to delete PNG file 1 from the sequence, otherwise, as soon as the transition starts, you get a one frame flash of the fully uncovered B-roll frame, when it should be just starting to uncover the B-roll with the small pinwheel vanes.

Again, thanks for your help. Now I am going to try to figure out how to make the grayscale gradient of the pinwheel using Photoshop. Then it should import into the gradient wipe transition and work as well, without quite so much trouble.

BTW: I have discovered this link to help me get started on this: https://www.psdpenguin.com/2009/11/psd-quickie-2-the-pinwheel-effect/

If anyone following this thread knows how it is done, please chime in.

[Charles Lawrence]

Again, thanks Mike for your help.

The step I don’t quite understand in the Digital Juice tutorial is the first one. They say put your “overlay matte” on the first track. What is an overlay matte? Not having the Editor’s Toolkit from Digital Juice to work with, I assume that this overlay matte is created from the collection of png’s you provided. Do I understand that correct. If so, how do I do it? I can’t help but think that since you provided 31 images, that each one should represent one frame of a 1 second clip, to produce a one second transition.

Having an overlay matte on track 1, I think I can follow the other steps in the tutorial.

Also, just how did you create the 31 images? There may be others shapes that I might want to use in the future.

Thanks

[Charles Lawrence]

Thank you Theo for your suggestion. I’m sorry to be so late in responding to your post, but I have been away for a few days.

It looks like your technique will work, based on the way the other supplied “gradients” within Vegas work. Too bad there is no pinwheel.

Now I just have to figure out how to create the pinwheel gradient using Photoshop. If you could, can you provide a few instructions on how to do it in Photoshop? I would greatly appreciate it. I am a novice using Photoshop too, but I do want to learn how it is done for future projects.

Thanks

[Charles Lawrence]

Thank you Mike for your response. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this. I am sorry to be so late in responding to your previous post, but I have been away for a few days.

I downloaded the collection of png files, and I looked at the steps on the Digital Juice site. Excuse my ignorance, being a relative newcomer to Vegas, but I don’t see how to utilize the png files to achieve the desired result. Would you mind elaborating just a little for us “newbies” on how to put it all together? Thanks in advance for your time.

It also seems that this procedure is just way too complicated to achieve the pinwheel transition, but I do want to understand it. After all, PRE7 has the transition built in with several options like number of vanes, border width/color, direction, etc. Its too bad Vegas doesn’t have something like it.

Theo van Laar also suggested using the “gradient wipe” within Vegas to achieve the desired effect. I just have to figure out how to create the grayscale image of the pinwheel using Photoshop, which I do have, but again, I am not an expert with Photoshop either.

[Charles Lawrence]

Hello Mike,

Thanks for your efforts. I anxiously await your solution to this request.

Charles

[Charles Lawrence]

Thanks Mike for your response.

It took me a while to figure out how to upload to YouTube, never having done it before.

I have provided a 10 sec clip of two free ArtBeat clips with the subject pinwheel wipe transition. I used Adobe Premiere Elements 7 to do the video. Here is a link to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCDoEVb5Lmw&layer_token=9ac1eef39c5d06be

Thank you for your interest. I’m hoping you can show me how to “roll my own” in Vegas Pro.

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[Charles Lawrence]

Thank you Jon, for your posts.

I am looking forward to visiting your web site to view the tutorials you spoke of. Sounds interesting and informative. Thanks for the information.

Charles

[Charles Lawrence]

Thank you John, for your reply.

I was not so much wanting the thumbnail clips playing as they were flying in, as I was in having them start to play as soon as the fly in settled down to its final position. However, having them playing as they are flying in will add a bit of professionalism to it.

Your offer to put together as screen capture on how to accomplish that trick will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Charles

[Charles Lawrence]

Thank you so much Clint, for your solution to this problem. I was so hung up on following the Adobe instructions in their help files, that I could not see “outside the box.”

Let me see if I have your idea straight. Basically, you suggest dividing the menu into two parts. The 1st is the AE “animated fly ins”, and the 2nd is the EN “animated buttons” of the original menu. Instead of having the AE rendered animation of the flying buttons become the background video of the original EN menu, as I was trying to do, it should be its own separate 1st part of the menu that links to the second part, hopefully seamlessly. Excellent! This will “kill two birds with one stone.” It provides a way to link back into the “middle” of the menu where the thumbnail clips start to play, instead of having to link to the beginning of the menu where the fly ins re-occur every time. Such a looping can become distracting to the viewer after a few repeats.

The way I made the AE comp from the EN menu, I had the poster frames set ahead of time, so the AE rendering also had the poster frames inside the flying buttons. Your example did not have the first frame (or poster frame) of the thumbnail clips displayed during the fly in. A matter of personal preference.

You mentioned that another way would be to have the thumbnail rendered inside AE. If you could, please elaborate a little on how one might accomplish this. I, being such a newbie, do not as yet see how to do this.

Again, thanks so much for your solution. I’m going to try to implement it right now.

Charles