User manual PINNACLE HOLLYWOOD FX 4.5 FOR STUDIO PRO & STUDIO PLUS

Hollywood FX for Studio Advanced Tutorials Release 4.5 For Windows Revision A Plus & PRO Pinnacle Systems, Inc. 280 N. Bernardo Ave Mountain View, CA 94043 www.pinnaclesys.com www.hollywoodfx.com Introduction Thank you for purchasing Hollywood FX. Hollywood FX gives you an incredible collection of 3D transitions that you can quickly add to your video productions, and customize completely for your needs. Plus & Pro also adds the ability to create entirely new FX using the hundreds of 3D objects included or by importing objects from 3D modeling programs. This guide provides tutorials for the advanced features in Hollywood FX. Hollywood FX will add new tutorials from time-totime. Check our website at http://www.hollywoodfx.com for updated revisions of this document. Before following these tutorials, you should fully read and understand the Quick Start guide. Each tutorial indicates which product levels (Plus or PRO) that the tutorial is useful for. Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials Advanced Tutorials 4 The Hollywood FX Dialog The Hollywood FX dialog gives you quick and easy access to all of your 3D transitions, and lets you quickly change rendering options and edit flight paths and other attributes of FX. This chapter describes the Hollywood FX dialog and all of its controls. Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials The Hollywood FX Dialog The Hollywood FX dialog is made up of a number of panels. These panels group together the different features of Hollywood FX so that you can quickly and easily select effects and make changes. The Control panel lets you select items to be changed. The Monitor panel provides an instant preview that lets you see changes immediately. The Options panel changes to provide options for the selected item in the Control panel. The Tool Bar (Pro Only) panel provides buttons to accept or cancel changes, and to display the Settings and About dialogs. Click here to open or close the Envelope Editor. The Edit List Panel The Envelope Editor panel is where you work with keyframes for flight paths and envelopes for individual options. The Edit List is the central control for the Hollywood FX dialog. It contains items to select the current FX, set options for the FX, and edit individual media items and objects (Plus & PRO). When you click on one of these items, the Item 6 Adding a MultiWindow in Pinnacle Studio Panel on the right side of the Hollywood FX dialog changes to show the options for the selected item. Click on Effect Options to change options like lighting, shadows, shine, motion blur, and more. Click on the current FX name to display the FX Catalog and select a new FX. Click on Object items to change objects, alter flight paths and rendering options for each 3D object in an FX. Click on Media items to change video sources in an FX. Media can come from the host application or from video or still image files. Use these buttons to sort objects, rename items, clone, delete and save a new FX to disk. Click on Surface items to change texture mapping or colored surfaces. The Control Panel In addition, the Control Panel provides controls for sorting objects, rename items, clone, delete and save a new FX to disk. (Saving is Pro Only). 7 Adding a MultiWindow in Pinnacle Studio Plus & PRO Prepare two video sources on the 1st and 2nd frames of the storyboard. Now drag any HFX Plus transition between them. Two video clips ready with a Hollywood FX transition in the storyboard To edit the transition: Go to the desired transition in the storyboard. Double-click on the transition block. The Studio Transition Options should appear. Now click the Edit button. Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials The Studio Transition Options where you can edit your selection. To Change an FX: Click on the Edit button and the powerful HFX Plus/PRO editor appears. Select Plus or PRO Bars group from the FX Group popup list. Click on the Flying Bars icon. The Hollywood FX Plus Bars for Studio transition group 10 Adding a MultiWindow in Pinnacle Studio Now add the 3rd Source: Click on the Host Video 3 button in the Control panel. Click the Select File button and choose a media clip from where it resides on your hard drive. Now you can trim the In and Out point by dragging the preview bar and click the In and Out buttons for the desired length. Basic options ­ Shadows checked and Easy Flight modified 11 Tutorial: Envelopes Plus & PRO (PRO envelope editor shown) This tutorial demonstrates the way you can keyframe any option in Hollywood FX to create advanced results. Hollywood FX uses the term Envelope to describe a set of keyframes that describe how an option's value will change over time in Hollywood FX. Prepare for the Tutorial and Select the FX: Create a new project in your host application. Add two video clips and create a two second transition between them. Add Hollywood FX as a transition between the two video clips. From the Hollywood FX dialog, select the Tumble 2 transition in the Flying Window Transitions group. The Envelope Editor is normally hidden when you first begin using Hollywood FX (to keep life simple). To display the Envelope Editor: Click on the Envelope Editor button at the bottom of the Hollywood FX dialog. The Envelope Editor Button The Envelope Editor will appear. We are going to modify the Tumble 2 transition by making the tumbling video dissolve as it tumbles into the distance. We will do this by creating an envelope for the object's Dissolve option. Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials Select the Object and Option: Click on the Flat Window object in the Edit List panel. Click on the Dissolve slider in the Object Options panel so that it is highlighted. Notice that the word Dissolve under the slider is highlighted in green. This is an indicator that it is the current option that can be modified in the Envelope Editor. Whenever you select a control that can have an envelope in Hollywood FX, it will be highlighted in green. Hollywood FX makes it extremely easy to create envelopes by simply clicking and dragging in the envelope window. We want to create an envelope for dissolve that makes the object disappear over the entire length of the transition. To create a simple envelope: Click-and-drag in the envelope window at 100% in time, and 100% in value. Drag the keyframe you create all the way to 100% value and release the mouse. A second keyframe is created automatically at time 0% The envelope after creating the first keyframe Click here to create your first keyframe. Notice that there are two keyframes (indicated by blocks). The one at 100% is the one you created. The keyframe at 0% is created automatically, since all envelopes in Hollywood FX must at a minimum have keyframes at 0% and 100%. Also notice that the preview and the current time slider at the top of the envelope window both moved to 100%, and that the keyframe at 100% is highlighted in red to indicate that it is the current keyframe. The way the envelope is currently designed, the value of Dissolve will remain 100% for the entire effect. What we want is for the value to start at 0%, so lets change the first keyframe. 14 Tutorial: Envelopes To change the first keyframe: Click-and-drag on the blue block that represents the keyframe at time 0%. Drag the blue block to the bottom of the envelope window (value 0%). Notice the Dissolve slider (in the Object Options panel) while you are dragging. Its value is "tied" to the current envelope. Release the mouse button. Click and drag the keyframe at time 0%. The first keyframe is adjusted Now our envelope will work correctly, causing the object to dissolve over the entire length of the transition. Try playing the preview to see the results. Let's add one more keyframe to this envelope, so that the object becomes transparent more quickly. We will create this key in a different way. To create the new keyframe: Drag the current time slider at the top of the envelope window until it is at 50%. Now drag the Dissolve slider in the Object Options panel up to 90%. After creating the new keyframe The new keyframe is created automatically when you change the value of Dissolve. This shows how the original value slider for Dissolve and the Envelope Editor are tied together. 15 Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials This feature makes it extremely easy to create keyframes for any value in Hollywood FX. Before concluding this tutorial, lets play around with some of the other envelope controls. First, let's move quickly between the keyframes in this envelope. To move between keyframes: Click on the Prev button in the Envelope Editor. The current time slider (and preview) will move to the keyframe at 0%. Click on the Next button in the Envelope Editor. The current time slider will move to the keyframe at 50%. Click on the Next button. The current time slider will move to the keyframe at 100%. Finally, click on the Prev button to return to the 50% keyframe. Using the Prev and Next buttons can quickly get you to the keyframe you need, especially when you have keyframes close together and one of them is hard to select by clicking on it with the mouse. Now, let's save our current envelope to disk. If you create an interesting envelope that you might want to use again, you can save it to disk. To save the envelope: Click on the Save... button in the Envelope Editor. Type tutorial for the filename in the file requester. Click Ok in the file requester to save the envelope. Now let's say we don't really like having the keyframe at 50%, so we will get rid of it. To delete the current keyframe: Click on the Delete button in the Envelope Editor. The keyframe at 50% disappears, and the envelope returns to a straight line between 0% and 100%. If we decide we don't want the envelope at all (we want to return to a single value for the entire duration of the FX), then we can remove the envelope. 16 Tutorial: Envelopes To remove the envelope: Click on the Remove button at the top of the Envelope Editor. The envelope will disappear, and the Dissolve slider now controls the dissolve value for the entire duration of the FX. For our final trick, let's load back in the envelope we saved above. To load an envelope: Click on the Load button in the Envelope Editor. Double-click the tutorial file in the file requester. Our envelope is back. Exit the Hollywood FX dialog and try rendering the FX with the dissolve envelope. Remember, envelopes can be created for almost any value in Hollywood FX. If a control is highlighted in green when you use it, that means you can control that value with an envelope and create exciting results. 17 Tutorial: Path Editing Plus & PRO. When you want to customize an FX, you can edit the paths of any 3D object to create unique results. A set of tools on the Object Options panel along with the Envelope Editor give you complete flexibility to create new flight paths for objects. In this tutorial, we will take the Ball Backup FX, and create a new path so that the ball bounces up and down on the screen. We use the term path to mean the envelope for an object's position, rotation, and scale. Prepare for the Tutorial and Select the FX: Create a new project in your host application. Add two video clips and create a two second transition between them. Add Hollywood FX as a transition between the two video clips. Select the Ball Backup transition in the Basic Shape Transitions group. Click on the Sphere object in the Edit List panel. The Positioning group should be highlighted in green, indicating that object positioning is currently being edited in the Envelope Editor. This is exactly what we want, since the positioning tools are what we use to create a path for an object. In the case of path editing, each keyframe of the envelope (or path) indicates the position, rotation and scale of the object at that time in the FX. Hollywood FX then automatically determines the positioning of the object between each keyframe, so that the object moves smoothly from the position at one keyframe to the position at the next keyframe. Let's start by looking at the keyframes in the Ball Backup FX. Hollywood FX: Advanced Tutorials The picture above shows each keyframe in the Ball Backup FX. For each keyframe you can see the position, rotation and scale values, as well as a camera preview and a perspective preview of the FX at that time. You can follow along yourself by using the Next and Prev buttons in the Envelope Editor, and using the View buttons in the Monitor panel to switch between camera and perspective view. At the first keyframe, the object is not morphed, and is positioned at 0, 0, 0 on the X, Y, and Z axis. It is not rotated at all (0, 0, 0), and is scaled at 100% of normal size (1, 1, 1). At the second keyframe, the object is moved down a small amount along the Y axis (-0.123) and farther away from the camera (-0.37 along the Z axis). The sphere object is also scaled smaller (0.39, 0.39, 0.39) in all directions. The third keyframe continues the object's movement away from the camera (-1.36 on Z), and is smaller again (0.25, 0.25, 0.25 for scale). 20