User manual PINNACLE STUDIO 9 - INCLUDING STUDIO SE, STUDIO QUICKSTART, STUDIO STANDARD AND STUDIO PLUS

Pinnacle Studio 9 Including Studio SE, Studio QuickStart, Studio Standard and Studio Plus Easy, MORE Powerful, MORE Creative Video Editing Special thanks to Mike Iampietro, William Chien, Richard Edgley, Ivan Maltz, Jon McGowan, Keith Thomson, Jörg Weselmann, and Chris Zamara. Documentation: Nick Sullivan Copyright © 1996-2004 Pinnacle Systems, Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. You agree not to remove any product identification or notices of the property restrictions from Pinnacle Systems' products or manuals. Pinnacle Systems, Pinnacle Studio Plus, TitleDeko, RTFx and VST are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Pinnacle Systems, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Manufactured under license from Dolby Laboratories. © 1992-2003 Dolby Laboratories. All rights reserved. Dolby is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories. mpegable DS 2.2 © 2004 Dicas Digital Image Coding GmbH. Pentium, Centrino, the Intel Centrino logo and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. QDesign MPEG-1 Layer 2 Fast Encoder/Decoder © 19962002 by QDesign Corporation. QuickTime and the QuickTime logo are trademarks used under license. The QuickTime logo is registered in the U.S. and other countries. The RealProducer is included under license from RealNetworks, Inc. Real Producer version 8.0. copyright 1995-2002, RealNetworks, Inc. "RealProducer", "RealVideo," "RealServer," and "Real" logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc. All rights reserved. SmartSound is a registered trademark of SmartSound Inc. Windows Media is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. No part of this manual may be copied or distributed, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any human or computer language, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, manual, or otherwise, without the express written permission of Pinnacle Systems, Inc. Pinnacle Systems, Inc. 280 North Bernardo Avenue Mountain View, CA 94943 Printed in the USA. ii Pinnacle Studio 9 Table of contents BEFORE YOU START ..................................................XI Equipment requirements.........................................................................xi Abbreviations and conventions.............................................................xiv On-line help ........................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1: USING STUDIO ....................................... 1 Undo, Redo, Help and Unlock................................................................. 2 Setting options ......................................................................................... 3 Edit mode .................................................................................................... 5 The Player................................................................................................ 6 Playback controls..................................................................................... 8 Further editing topics............................................................................. 11 Expanding Studio .................................................................................. 11 CHAPTER 2: CAPTURING VIDEO.............................. 15 The Capture mode interface.................................................................... 17 The Diskometer ..................................................................................... 19 The Camcorder Controller..................................................................... 20 The capture process.................................................................................. 21 Capture hardware................................................................................... 21 Capture step-by-step .............................................................................. 23 Scene detection...................................................................................... 25 Table of contents iii Digital capture .......................................................................................... 26 SmartCapture: Preview-quality capture................................................. 27 Full-quality capture................................................................................ 29 Audio and video levels ­ digital ............................................................ 31 Analog capture.......................................................................................... 32 Capture quality options.......................................................................... 32 Audio and video levels ­ analog............................................................ 33 CHAPTER 3: THE ALBUM .......................................... 35 The Video Scenes section ......................................................................... 38 Opening a captured video file................................................................ 40 Viewing captured video......................................................................... 43 Selecting scenes and files ...................................................................... 44 Displaying scene and file information ................................................... 45 Comment view....................................................................................... 46 Combining and subdividing scenes ....................................................... 47 Redetecting scenes................................................................................. 49 The Transitions section ............................................................................ 50 The Titles section...................................................................................... 52 The Still Images section ........................................................................... 53 The Sound Effects section........................................................................ 54 The Disc Menus section............................................................................ 56 CHAPTER 4: THE MOVIE WINDOW........................... 59 Movie Window views................................................................................ 62 Storyboard view..................................................................................... 62 Timeline view........................................................................................ 63 Text view ............................................................................................... 67 The toolboxes ............................................................................................ 67 The Video toolbox ................................................................................. 69 The Audio toolbox................................................................................. 71 iv Pinnacle Studio 9 CHAPTER 5: VIDEO CLIPS ........................................ 73 Video clip basics ....................................................................................... 74 Adding video clips to your movie ......................................................... 74 Working with multiple capture files ...................................................... 75 Interface features ................................................................................... 76 Trimming video clips................................................................................ 78 Trimming on the Timeline using handles .............................................. 78 Clip-trimming tips ................................................................................. 82 Trimming with the Clip properties tool................................................. 83 Resetting trimmed clips ......................................................................... 85 Splitting and combining clips .................................................................. 86 Advanced Timeline editing ...................................................................... 87 Insert editing.......................................................................................... 89 Split editing ........................................................................................... 91 Using video effects .................................................................................... 95 Working with the effects list.................................................................. 96 Changing effect parameters ................................................................... 98 Fading effects in and out ....................................................................... 99 Previewing and rendering.................................................................... 100 Video effects ­ the basic set.................................................................... 101 Cleaning effects....................................................................................... 103 Auto color correct................................................................................ 103 Noise reduction.................................................................................... 104 Stabilize ............................................................................................... 104 Time effects ............................................................................................. 105 Speed ................................................................................................... 105 Strobe................................................................................................... 106 Color effects ............................................................................................ 107 Black and white ................................................................................... 107 Color correction................................................................................... 108 Posterize .............................................................................................. 108 Sepia .................................................................................................... 109 Table of contents v Fun effects ............................................................................................... 109 Lens flare ............................................................................................. 110 Noise.................................................................................................... 110 Water drop ........................................................................................... 111 Style effects.............................................................................................. 112 Blur...................................................................................................... 112 Emboss ................................................................................................ 113 Mosaic ................................................................................................. 113 Old film ............................................................................................... 114 Stained glass ........................................................................................ 115 The SmartMovie music video tool......................................................... 115 CHAPTER 6: TWO-TRACK EDITING WITH STUDIO PLUS ... 119 Introducing the overlay track............................................................... 119 A/B editing .......................................................................................... 121 The Picture-in-picture tool................................................................... 123 The Chroma key tool ........................................................................... 128 Selecting colors ................................................................................... 135 CHAPTER 7: TRANSITIONS..................................... 137 Transition types and their uses ............................................................ 138 Previewing transitions in your movie .................................................. 141 Audio transitions ................................................................................. 142 The Ripple Transition command ......................................................... 143 Trimming transitions ............................................................................. 144 Trimming with the Clip properties tool............................................... 145 CHAPTER 8: STILL IMAGES .................................... 147 Editing still images ................................................................................. 150 Editing image clip properties............................................................... 150 The Frame Grabber ............................................................................... 158 The Frame grabber tool ....................................................................... 158 vi Pinnacle Studio 9 CHAPTER 9: DISC MENUS....................................... 161 Disc authoring in Studio ...................................................................... 163 Using menus from the Album.............................................................. 165 The DVD Player Control..................................................................... 167 Editing menus on the Timeline............................................................ 168 Editing with the Clip properties tool ................................................... 170 The Disc menu tool.............................................................................. 175 CHAPTER 10: THE TITLE EDITOR .......................... 177 Launching the Title Editor................................................................... 178 The Title Editor controls ....................................................................... 179 Title-type buttons................................................................................. 179 Object toolbox ..................................................................................... 180 Editing-mode selection buttons ........................................................... 183 Object layout buttons........................................................................... 185 Clipboard and delete buttons ............................................................... 187 Text-styling controls............................................................................ 187 The Title Editor Album ......................................................................... 189 The Looks Browser ............................................................................. 189 The Backgrounds section..................................................................... 191 The Pictures section............................................................................. 192 The Buttons section ............................................................................. 193 CHAPTER 11: SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC........ 197 The Timeline audio tracks ................................................................... 199 The CD audio tool ............................................................................... 201 The SmartSound tool ........................................................................... 203 The Voice-over tool ............................................................................. 205 Trimming audio clips ............................................................................. 208 Trimming with the Clip properties tool............................................... 208 Audio volume and mixing...................................................................... 210 Anatomy of an audio clip .................................................................... 211 Adjusting audio on the Timeline ......................................................... 213 The Volume and balance tool .............................................................. 215 Table of contents vii Audio effects............................................................................................ 220 Noise reduction.................................................................................... 221 Equalizer.............................................................................................. 223 Grungelizer .......................................................................................... 224 Karaoke ............................................................................................... 225 Leveler................................................................................................. 226 Reverb ................................................................................................. 226 CHAPTER 12: MAKING YOUR MOVIE..................... 229 Outputting to a camera or video recorder... ......................................... 231 Output your movie to videotape .......................................................... 232 Save your movie as an AVI file........................................................... 234 Save your movie as an MPEG file....................................................... 237 Save as RealVideo or Windows Media ............................................... 239 Share your movie via the Internet........................................................ 240 Output your movie to DVD, VCD or S-VCD...................................... 242 Copying an AVI file to tape................................................................. 245 APPENDIX A: SETUP OPTIONS .............................. 247 Capture source settings........................................................................ 248 Capture format settings........................................................................ 252 Edit settings ......................................................................................... 256 CD and voice-over settings.................................................................. 260 Make tape settings ............................................................................... 262 Make AVI file settings ........................................................................ 264 Make MPEG file settings .................................................................... 266 Make RealVideo file settings............................................................... 268 Make Windows Media file settings ..................................................... 271 Make disc settings ............................................................................... 272 APPENDIX B: TIPS AND TRICKS ............................ 277 Hardware ............................................................................................. 277 Software............................................................................................... 279 Increasing the frame rate ..................................................................... 281 Studio and computer animation ........................................................... 282 Smart Capture Tips (DV only) ............................................................ 282 viii Pinnacle Studio 9 APPENDIX C: TROUBLESHOOTING ....................... 285 Technical help on-line ............................................................................ 286 Studio crashes in Edit mode ................................................................ 289 Capture error occurs on starting capture.............................................. 294 Studio hangs when rendering............................................................... 297 CD or DVD burner is not detected ...................................................... 299 Studio hangs on launch or does not launch.......................................... 300 HollywoodFX transitions are still watermarked after upgrading......... 302 "Cannot initialize the DV capture device" error appears in Capture mode ............................................................................................................. 302 Installation problems ............................................................................. 306 Operation problems ............................................................................... 308 APPENDIX D: VIDEOGRAPHY TIPS ........................ 315 Creating a shooting plan ...................................................................... 316 Editing ................................................................................................. 317 Rules of thumb for video editing ......................................................... 320 Soundtrack production......................................................................... 322 Title ..................................................................................................... 323 APPENDIX E: GLOSSARY........................................ 325 APPENDIX F: LICENSE AGREEMENT .................... 341 APPENDIX G: KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS................ 345 INDEX ........................................................................ 349 Table of contents ix Before you start Thank you for purchasing Pinnacle Studio. We hope you enjoy using the software. This manual covers all versions of Studio, including Studio Plus. Differences between versions will be noted as applicable. Most of the time, the word "Studio" will be used generically to refer to all versions. If you have not used Studio before, we recommend that you keep the manual handy for reference even if you don't actually read it all the way through. In order to ensure that your Studio experience gets off on the right foot, please review the three topics below before continuing to Chapter 1: Using Studio. Equipment requirements In addition to your Studio software, here is what you need to make a Studio editing system. Computer · Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon 800 MHz or higher (1.5 GHz or higher recommended) Before you start xi · Microsoft Windows 98 SE, Windows "Millennium", · · · · · · · · · · · · Windows 2000 or Windows XP (recommended). The MicroMV digital video format is supported only under Windows XP. Graphics card compatible with DirectX 9 (ATI Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce2 or higher recommended) Sound card compatible with DirectX 9 Audio system with Dolby Pro Logic compatibility if previewing surround-sound mixes is required 256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended) CD-ROM drive DVD drive for installing the bonus DVD containing tutorial, electronic manual and bonus content. The same content is available free on CD-ROMs from the Pinnacle e-store (shipping cost not included). Speakers Mouse A microphone, if you want to record voice-overs 500 MB of free hard drive space to install software Optional CD burner for creating VideoCDs (VCDs) or Super-VideoCDs (S-VCDs) Optional DVD burner for creating DVDs The hard drive Your hard drive must be capable of sustained reading and writing at 4 MB/sec. Most drives are capable of this. The first time you capture at full quality, Studio will test your drive to make sure it is fast enough. Video in the DV format occupies 3.6 MB of hard drive space per second, so just four and a half minutes of DV video will consume a full gigabyte on the drive. xii Pinnacle Studio 9 If disk space is a concern with your DV captures, use SmartCapture to capture your video at preview quality (see "SmartCapture: Preview-quality capture" on page 27). This feature uses much less disk space. An entire tape can fit in as little as 360 MB. Tip: We recommend using a separate hard drive dedicated to video capture. This avoids competition between Studio and other software, including Windows, for use of the drive during capture. Video capture hardware Studio can capture video from a variety of digital and analog sources. Please see "Capture hardware" on page 21. Video output hardware Studio can output video to: · Any DV or Digital8 camcorder or VCR. This requires an OHCI-compliant IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port (as provided by Pinnacle Studio DV). The camcorder must be set up to record from DV Input. · Any analog (8mm, Hi8, VHS, SVHS, VHS-C or SVHS-C) camcorder or VCR. This requires Pinnacle Studio DC10plus, Studio AV, or another Pinnacle card with analog outputs. Output to analog camcorders or VCRs is also possible using a Pinnacle Studio DV or other OHCI-compliant 1394 port if your DV or Digital8 camcorder or VCR can pass a DV signal through to its analog outputs (see your camcorder manual and Chapter 12: Making your movie, for more information). Before you start xiii Abbreviations and conventions This guide uses the following conventions to help organize the material. Terminology Studio: "Studio" and "Studio Plus" refer to the editing software. DV: The term "DV" refers to DV and Digital8 camcorders, VCRs and tapes. 1394: The term "1394" refers to OHCI-compliant IEEE-1394, FireWire, DV or i.LINK interfaces, ports and cables. Analog: The term "analog" refers to 8mm, Hi8, VHS, SVHS, VHS-C or SVHS-C camcorders, VCRs and tapes, and to Composite/RCA and S-Video cables and connectors. Buttons, menus, dialog boxes and windows Names of buttons, menus and related items are written in italics to distinguish them from the surrounding text, whereas window and dialog names are written with initial capital letters. For example: Click the Edit menu button to open your menu in the Title Editor. Choosing menu commands The right arrowhead symbol ( ) denotes the path for hierarchical menu items. For example: Select Toolbox xiv Generate Background Music. Pinnacle Studio 9 Keyboard conventions Key names are spelled with an initial capital and are underlined. A plus sign denotes a key combination. For example: Press Ctrl+A to select all the clips on the Timeline. Mouse clicks When a mouse click is required, the default is always a left-click unless otherwise specified: Right-click and select Go to Title/Menu Editor. On-line help Two kinds of immediate help are always available while you are working in Studio: · On-line help: Click the help button in the Studio main menu bar, or select the Help Help topics menu, or press F1 to open Studio's on-line help file. · Tool tips: To find out what a button or other Studio control does, pause your mouse pointer over it. A "tool tip" appears explaining its function. Before you start xv CHAPTER 1: Using Studio Creating movies with Studio is a three-step process: 1. Capture: Import source video material ­ your "raw footage" ­ to your PC hard drive. Possible sources include analog videotape (8mm, VHS etc.), digital videotape (DV, Digital8), and live video from a video camera, camcorder or webcam. Capture mode is covered in Chapter 2: Capturing video. 2. Edit: Arrange your video material as desired by reordering scenes and discarding unwanted footage. Add visuals, such as transitions, titles and graphics, and supplementary audio, such as sound effects and background music. For DVD and VCD authoring, create interactive menus that give your audience a customized viewing experience. Edit mode is the arena for most of your work in Studio. See "Edit mode" later in this chapter (page 5) for a fuller introduction. 3. Make movie: When your project is complete, generate a finished movie in your choice of format and storage medium: tape, VCD, S-VCD, DVD, AVI, MPEG, RealVideo or Windows Media. Make Movie mode is covered in Chapter 12: Making your movie. Chapter 1: Using Studio 1 Setting the mode Select which step of the movie-making process you want to work on by clicking one of the three mode buttons at the top left of the Studio window: When you switch modes, the Studio screen changes to display the controls needed for the new mode. Undo, Redo, Help and Unlock The Undo, Redo, Help and Unlock buttons are always to be found in the top right corner of the Studio window, no matter which of the three modes you are currently working in. · Undo allows you to back out of any changes you have made to your project during the current session, one step at a time. · Redo reinstates the changes one by one if you undo too far. · The Help button launches Studio's on-line help system. · The Unlock button lets you expand Studio by purchasing and installing premium content. (See page 11 for details.) All other controls on the Studio screen are dedicated to tasks within the current mode. 2 Pinnacle Studio 9 Chapter 1: Using Studio 3 Setting options Most options in Studio are set using two tabbed dialog boxes. The first lets you control options related to Capture mode and Edit mode. It has four tabs: The other dialog box is concerned with options relating to Make Movie mode. It has six tabs, one for each of the six movie output types: Each panel of both dialog boxes can be opened individually with a corresponding command on the Setup menu (e.g. Setup Capture Source). Once either dialog box is open, however, all of its panels are available through the tabs. For simplicity, we generally refer to the different options panels independently, as in "the Capture source options panel". Detailed explanations of the options in both dialog boxes are contained in Appendix A: Setup Options. 4 Pinnacle Studio 9