Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part F

This is the last installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. The simplest way to have text credits in your movie isto click text/ new text/ default text. You might have to resize the text file in the timeline and will have to format the text in the dialog box. There are many text presets including rolling text like what they have in tv programmes. You can click animation / animation preset and animate the text that way. The titles and text has lots of text presets and they often have areas colored black which are alpha masks and take on the background you provide. Tools / smart trim is a tool that analyzes your video and can even tell you if it is too boring by using an algorithm that analyzes things like faces. It also tells you things like if the exposure is wrong. It shades in the parts on the timeline that can be improved and you merely hover over them with the mouse for the suggestions and decide whether to accept them or not. There are keep and select all options. Simply click on the footage and a menu comes up. Instant movie gives the movie a genre theme via the various presets. Video merge merges 2 video but usually requires you either mask part of the image and adjust the tolerance or use a single color chroma screen in the part you wish it applied to. If you select publish and share/ make dvd/ or tools/ dvd menu you must use the menu marker at the point you want the dvd menu and place stop markers at the end of each piece of footage so it knows to return to the menu. In addition you want a fade preset at the end of each piece of footage. There is an option to have motion in the menu. You also want a scene marker at the beginning of each piece of footage. There are various other options like web dvd which converts the film to HTML and you can have it on your website complete with menu. You can also upload the video to sites like YouTube & Vimeo. The next blog series will be on Microsoft Sharepoint which I will probably start tomorrow.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I have learnt doing the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. To delete highlight it on the timeline and press the backspace key. The red line that some refer to as the playback and plays stuff in real time is called the CTI or current time indicator. If you click on tools/ time remapping it can slow down or speed up your video. If you click on tools/ time stretch it does a similar but doesn’t offer the same amount of control. If you click on tools/ pan and zoom it moves in and out of a scene and to adjust where it moves there is a box you drag and drop. You can also resize the box to adjust magnification. Click create output when you are finished. There are something called markers which essentially mark a position in your film so you can find it easily. There are beat markers that mark a position in your soundtrack and another beats timeline opens when you use this. Video will adapt to fit the available space when used in conjunction with this. There are menu markers that mark a position for the menu and interlocked content in DVD production. You can right click the video and choose marker from the menu and then in, out, next numbered etc. Next numbered is used when there are several markers and puts them in order. Don’t use more than 2 types of transition. You should at most have one type for the credits and one type for use during the actual film. You can taper music with transitions which are found in transition/ dissolve. There are also used at the end of the film. One trick professionals is having a white color matte at the beginning and end of the film. The shift key can be used in conjunction with the timeline to make it lock to points. If you go into Elements Organizer and select a video and click view details it gives you the properties for that video. If you have to adjust the counter in the settings for something clicking the shift key increases the individual increments speeding it up. There is only one more installment in this series to go.

 

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course on this software by Infinite Skills. If you set up an effect with various settings you can store it as a preset so you can re use it. Simply right click the effect and from the menu select save as a preset. It’s stored in the my presets folder and to delete simply select it and press delete. To stretch a piece of video known as time stretch simply right click the footage on the timeline and select time stretch. Select your length and click save. There are various pips or picture in picture effects in effects under presets. If you do this make sure you render it afterwards. To adjust the settings in pips open the motion module. You must insert keyframes at key points although often this is done automatically. Select music and select the piece you want onto an audio timeline usually soundtrack. If you click transitions/ dissolve and say how many seconds duration you want you can insert a fade at the end of the video usually. The arrow key above the timeline scrolls up the timeline. The spacebar plays the video. The enter key plays it from the start. Control+k cuts the film at the point the playhead is. The red line is the playhead. Control+z is undo. If you click on effects, then audio effects there are loads of sound effects. The fill from left or right settings are ideal if you have a mono microphone. If you click on the music tab there is a smart sound option and this is a program you can purchase separately in its own right although it is a part of this program. You can choose one of the preset mood settings to suit your video. There is lots of music available with this module. You can change the length of the music by entering a figure in the duration box. There is a smart sound store where you can buy music cheaply. You can preview the music. In tools/ smartmix you can set whether you want sound in the foreground or background and if the latter it automatically inserts a key frame and turns down the sound. I’ll try and do another installment a bit later.

 

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills about this software. To start a project click file/ new project, then name the project, click ok, select what folder to put it in & click ok. You then import your movies and drag them one at a time onto your timeline. You can right click the movie and click remove audio to temporarily remove audio alternatively there is a coloured line that can be dragged down until it says 0 decibels and that does the same job. To adjust the images on the film select the movie click adjust and then there are other options but the ones we are interested in are color/ color RGB & smartfix. Color RGB adjusts the picture in terms of red, green and blue. Smartfix automatically adjusts the picture and color adjusts the picture in HSLV mode which stands for hue, saturation, lightness and vibrance. Saturation is pure color and vibrance is intensity of color. You can adjust the color modes manually or click one of the automatic options which on the whole do a good job. If you click applied effects you can adjust the shadows. There is also a render button on the timeline which if you do a lot of adjusting reduces the work the processor must do if you render it from time to time. In the lighting option under applied effects there is brightness, contrast, exposure, black and white options.  There are also auto levels and auto contrast options to automatically adjust the film. You can drag items from effects into the timeline and then they appear in applied effects ready to use. One is blue view cartoon which lets you turn your movie into a cartoon and has lots of options you can adjust also don’t forget to render for the changes to take effect. To use applied effects you always select the film you are working on first, but if using effects you drag the effect onto the film timeline. It’s an important difference. An advanced feature is inserting keyframes which are placed where something significant takes place ie resizing image in an image, sometimes called a PIP or picture in picture. Sometimes the program inserts keyframes automatically. You can also move a keyframe to adjust where an effect takes place. Smartfix found in applied effects when applied puts modules into adjust automatically not normally more than one or two as it fixes the image. It’s good for fixing things like shakiness. There is also a delete effects button you can click to remove effects and don’t forget to save regularly. Premiere Elements does auto save at regular intervals but you don’t want to rely on that entirely.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn on the Infinite Skills video training course of the same name. One thing worth bearing in mind is if you capture from tape it is in real time so a tape will typically take 60 minutes. Make sure your batteries are topped up as there is nothing more infuriating than them going flat mid capture. You will normally select add media/ then select the type of capture device. Sometimes a capture type won’t match up to the device you just have to experiment to get it right. This is especially true on older devices. It should display the model of your capture device but remember it doesn’t support every device. Sometimes you will have to use the proprietary software that came with your device to capture it or capture from a media card and then copy the folder into Premiere Elements. When you capture a piece of film which you will also have to click capture to capture it you can also play, rewind and fast forward with in the captured film. If the footage goes missing through re labelling right click the film’s icon and choose replace footage, and select the film name from a list. In post production found in the clip monitor the bars and tone is the same as a test signal and can be found by right clicking the footage then selecting it from the menu and goes at the beginning of the footage, it allows you to adjust the picture and volume. The colour matte which can be found in the same way fills in any unused space so you don’t mistakenly think the equipment is faulty. It is just a blank colour screen. To open the clip monitor right click the footage in project assets and choose open clip monitor from the menu. With in this program you can also play and rewind the clip etc. The safe margins command in clip monitor found in the same way as colour matte protects the screen with text going with in the inner border and action being preserved so you can see what is going on with in the outer border. Set in and set out edit where footage starts and stops with in clip monitor. You can edit it there and then copy it into the timeline. You can have upto 99 audio tracks with in the timeline in expert mode and if you were making an action feature film with lots of special effects it is quite feasible you would need something like that. You drag and drop the edges of the film with in the timeline to edit it and click the x icon and select the side you want cut to edit the film. The film will tend to jump to the left to fill the unused space when you do this. If you put the video on separate tracks it will snap to each other as you go from one piece of film and edit it to another. An exception to this is there is a piece of audio soundtrack on the timeline because you need to edit this the film will remain static on the timeline as you edit it. I will try and do another post in this series tonight.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 Part A

This is the 1st installment in my blog post series on Adobe Premiere Elements 11 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by Infinite skills of the same name. This is a video editing program although it will also do slide shows and handle things like photos and audio.Adobe has now gone over to cloud computing with the Creative Cloud series which I think is excellent value but you need the latest hardware to work with it so I thought I’d have a go at learning an older piece of software and incidently there is a professional version of Premiere Elements called Premiere Pro CC. Aparently if you learn all the major keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Elements and you might know a lot of them already as a lot are the same in Windows you stand to save 1 hour in every 8 hours you are working according to a university study. There are hundreds of shortcuts in this program and many that you can self define but this is just the 20 or so most commonly used ones. There are 3 steps to using a video editing program which are input, processing and output. Input is often called importing which you will usually do from a camera or media card. Output is putting it on something like DVD or the web. There are video studios in most big cities that you can rent by the hour and are very expensive. You need to get as much as possible done in as little time as possible in these places. Another option is disused warehouses where if you want something like a stage you can probably rent these quite cheaply for a day. Adobe Elements Organizer is a part of Premiere Elements but functions as a separate program on your computer. It stores things that you import ready to go into your video editing program. You can get into Organizer by clicking Add Media/ Elements Organizer. In Premiere Elements there are quick and expert buttons and quick is for working quickly and has fewer features. Most of your work will be done in the expert mode where you have more control over your work. There is a clean button that clears out your cache of video on your hard drive and is especially important if the video becomes corrupted or you need the space. You can get into the settings with edit/ settings/ general and there are also other settings on the same menu like project settings. Having these settings set right can save you a lot of time. Within your video timeline if you click the video portion and select time stretch there is a nifty feature where you can slow video down slightly to fill a slot. You can use a dissolve with sound as well as video and normally set it for around 1-2 seconds. To open a project the quickest way is to select control+o then select new or existing project. Each file has a log file which shows the steps you have taken and this is refreshed each time you save it and obviously you want to save frequently to keep this file manageable as well as not lose loads of work. I will do another installment tomorrow.