Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus 02 Us M3 M2 Man 9.0 Quick Start Guide E

User Manual: pinnacle Studio - 9.0 - Quick Start Guide Free User Guide for Pinnacle Studio Software, Manual

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Pinnacle Studio 9

Including Studio SE, Studio QuickStart,

Studio Standard and Studio Plus

Easy, MORE Powerful,

related content.

Additional items of locked content will be provided for

download as they become available. These items can

sampled and purchased within Studio using the same

activation method as for the premium content included

with the program installation.

New tools, new media, new frontiers

You can purchase additional media and filters in any of

three ways from within Studio:

• With the Help ¾ Purchase activation keys

menu command (or the unlock shortcut

button at the top right of the Studio screen).

This opens a special browser window in which you

can access a catalog page for any type of premium

content that interests you.

• With the Album commands More transitions, More

sound effects and More menus.

These commands are found on the dropdown lists in

the corresponding sections of the Album. They will

enable you to download, try out and purchase

additional premium content that was not included

with the program installation.

• By clicking the unlock theme pack buttons found in

some parts of Studio.

These buttons can be found whenever premium

content is on display within Studio. The one above,

Chapter 1: Using Studio 13

when seen in the Audio effects tool and the Video

effects tool, would let you unlock a pack of audio or

video filters.

Here, the “Bravo Studio Pack 2” page is open in the

Video Effects tool. The Unlock Effect Pack button

could now be used to unlock the effects in this set.

Similar buttons in the Album let you purchase all the

media on a particular Album page as a theme pack.

The Transitions section of the Album, open to the

“HFX Family Fun 1” theme pack of Hollywood FX

transitions. Click anywhere in the unlock panel on

the right-hand page to unlock this set of transitions.

How unlocking works

“Unlocking” premium content for Studio means to

obtain a license allowing you unrestricted use of the

content on the single machine where Studio is installed.

14 Pinnacle Studio 9

The licensing mechanism employs two distinct but

mutually related codes:

• An activation key for each premium content item

you purchase

• Your Passport, which is a number generated the first

time you install Studio on your computer. You can

view your Passport by selecting the Help ¾ My

Passport menu command.

Because the Passport is specific to one computer, you

will need to obtain new activation keys if you install

Studio on a different machine. These will be provided

at no charge, but your user licenses for both Studio and

any premium content you have obtained then apply to

the new machine only.

Note: Although your Passport is specific to an

individual computer, it is not affected by ordinary

hardware modifications such as adding or removing

expansion cards, drives or memory.

If you don’t have an Internet connection...

You can purchase and apply premium content

activation keys even if you don’t have an Internet

connection on the computer where Studio is installed.

When you click one of the unlock links within Studio, a

dialog will be displayed showing information needed

for ordering the specific content you want, including:

• An Internet URL where you can activate the content

• Numeric identifiers for the Studio program and the

item you want to activate

• Your Passport and your Serial Number

Navigate to the given URL from another computer,

enter the information, and complete the purchase as

directed.

Chapter 2: Capturing video 15

CHAPTER 2:

Capturing video

Capture is the process of importing video from a video

source such as a camcorder to a file on your PC’s hard

drive. Clips from this “capture file” can then be used in

Studio as ingredients of your edited movies. You can

open capture files into the Album in Studio’s Edit

mode (see Chapter 3: The Album).

Capture is the first step in using your video footage.

Studio is able to capture from both digital (DV,

MicroMV) and analog video sources. See “Capture

hardware” on page 21 for details on configuring Studio

to capture from your equipment.

Availability: Capturing video from MicroMV camcorders is supported

only under Windows XP.

Switching to Capture mode

The very first step in capturing is to switch into

Studio’s Capture mode by clicking the Capture button

at the top of the screen.

16 Pinnacle Studio 9

This opens the Capture mode interface, enabling you to

set up and carry out video capture. The details of the

interface are somewhat different for analog than for

digital video sources.

Topics in this chapter

• “The Capture mode interface” (below) introduces the

controls and displays for both analog and digital

captures.

• “The Capture Process” (page 21) covers setting up

for your hardware, gives step-by-step capturing

instructions, and describes the automatic scene

detection feature.

• “Digital capture” (page 26) and “Analog capture”

(page 32) cover topics specific to each type of source.

Chapter 2: Capturing video 17

THE CAPTURE MODE INTERFACE

The tools and controls you see in Capture mode are

different depending on whether your capture hardware

is digital or analog.

Digital capture

If your video source is digital, your Capture mode

screen will look like this:

The Album, at the top left of the screen, displays icons

representing the video scenes as they are captured. The

Player, at top right, lets you view the incoming video

while cueing for capture, and monitor the capture itself.

Readouts on the Player tell you the exact length of the

captured video, and the number of frames dropped

during the capture (normally zero).

18 Pinnacle Studio 9

The Camcorder Controller, at bottom left, provides a

tape counter display and a set of transport controls for

operating the playback device. Finally, the Diskometer,

at bottom right, displays the capture space remaining

on the drive. It also provides the Start Capture button

and buttons for setting capture options.

The Diskometer and the Camcorder Controller are

described in detail beginning on page 19.

Analog capture

Both the Album and the Player are used in analog as

well as digital captures, so when you capture from an

analog source the top half of the screen is the same as

shown and described above for digital sources.

Not the bottom half of the screen, however. It now

features a second version of the Diskometer, with two

fly-out panels for adjusting audio and video levels

during capture. (The panels are described under “Audio

and video levels – analog” on page 33.)

Digital vs. analog

To summarize, the digital and analog setups reflect two

major differences in capability:

• The digital setup lets you control the tape transport

of the camcorder or VCR using the Camcorder

Controller.

• The analog setup lets you modify audio and video

levels dynamically during capture.

Chapter 2: Capturing video 19

The Diskometer

The Diskometer displays, both numerically and

graphically, the amount of space available on your

capture drive. It also indicates the approximate duration

of video that can be accommodated, which depends on

both the available space and the configured capture

quality. Capture quality settings are selected using the

preset buttons that are displayed on the Diskometer for

some capture devices, or by entering custom settings.

See “Capture source settings” (page 248) and “Capture

format settings” (page 252) for information on capture

settings.

The Diskometer when capturing from a digital

source (L) and an analog source (R). Click the side

tabs on the analog version to open fly-out panels for

adjusting video and audio levels during capture.

The Start capture button on the Diskometer begins and

ends the capture process. The caption changes to Stop

capture while the operation is in progress.

The default save location for captured video is your

system’s Shared video directory.

20 Pinnacle Studio 9

Setting the capture directory: To save captured video

to a different location, click the file folder button .

This displays the Select Folder And Default Name For

Captured Video dialog. The folder you assign will be

used to store captured video during this and future

sessions. The file name you enter will be offered as the

default file name on your next capture.

The Camcorder Controller

This panel of transport controls is shown in Capture

mode if you are capturing from a digital video source.

(Analog devices must be cued and operated manually.)

The Camcorder Controller and a close-up view of

the transport controls. The counter window above

the control buttons displays the current position of

the source tape, along with the current transport

mode of the camcorder.

From left to right, the transport control buttons are:

Stop, Rewind / Review, Play, Fast forward / Cue and

Pause.

The Frame reverse and Frame forward buttons (second

row) let you locate the exact frame you want. These

two buttons are available only when the device is in

pause mode.

Chapter 2: Capturing video 21

THE CAPTURE PROCESS

Studio lets you capture video from a variety of analog

and digital hardware types. Choose the device you wish

to use on the Capture source options panel. See

“Capture hardware” (below) for more information.

Performing the actual capture is a straightforward step-

by-step procedure (see page 23). As the capture

proceeds, Studio automatically detects the natural

breaks in the incoming video and divides the material

into “scenes”. Upon detection, each scene is added to

the Album, where it is represented by an icon of its first

frame. Automatic scene detection is described starting

on page 25.

Some capture options apply to digital captures only or

to analog captures only. These are covered in their own

sections, “Digital capture” (page 26) and “Analog

capture” (page 32).

Capture hardware

Studio can capture digital and analog video from the

following sources, depending on your hardware:

• Digital: A DV, MicroMV or Digital8 camcorder

connected to an IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port.

• Analog: A camcorder or VCR with analog outputs

connected to a DirectShow-compatible capture board

or external device.

• Analog: A USB video camera or webcam.

22 Pinnacle Studio 9

Availability: Capturing video from MicroMV camcorders is supported

only under Windows XP.

Pinnacle Systems offers a complete line of DV, analog,

and combination capture boards and devices. For more

information see your dealer or visit our web-site:

www.pinnaclesys.com

To select a capture device:

1. Click the Setup ¾ Capture Source menu command.

The Capture source options panel appears.

2. Select the devices you want to use from the Video

and Audio dropdown lists in the Capture devices

area, and click OK.

See “Capture source settings” on page 248 for

detailed information about the Capture source

options panel.

Standard vs. widescreen capture

Studio can capture in both the standard (4:3) and the

widescreen (16:9) frame aspect ratios. With digital

hardware, the frame format is detected automatically.

With analog hardware, you use the Aspect ratio

dropdown on the Capture source options panel to

select the format that matches the source material. You

can’t use this setting to change one format to another: it

simply lets Studio know how to display the video at the

correct aspect ratio.

Chapter 2: Capturing video 23

Capture step-by-step

Here is a step-by-step outline of the capture process.

The instructions apply to both digital and analog

captures, with differences noted as required.

Further information relating to some of the steps can be

found elsewhere in this chapter. Also see Appendix A:

Setup Options (page 247) for detailed descriptions of

the Capture source and Capture format options panels.

To capture video:

1. Verify that your equipment is properly connected.

For a digital (DV or MicroMV) capture, your

camcorder or VCR must be connected to your PC’s

1394 port.

For an analog capture, connect the source video to

the Composite or S-Video input of your capture

hardware. Connect your source audio to the audio

input of the capture hardware, if there is one;

otherwise, connect the audio to the audio input of

your PC’s sound card.

2. Click the Capture button at the top of the screen if

you are not already in Capture mode. The Capture

mode interface is displayed (see page 17).

3. Click the desired capture setting on the Diskometer.

If you need to make detailed adjustments, click the

Diskometer’s Settings button, which opens the

Capture format options panel (page 252).

For a DV capture, keep in mind that full-quality

capture uses much more disk space than does

preview quality. If you are planning to output your

finished movie to disc (VCD, S-VCD or DVD),

24 Pinnacle Studio 9

you may choose to make your full-quality capture

in MPEG rather than DV format.

For an analog capture, keep in mind that the higher

the quality setting, the larger will be your captured

video file. See “Digital capture” (page 26) and

“Analog capture” (page 32) for further explanation

of these options.

4. Click the Start capture button on the Diskometer.

The Capture Video dialog box is displayed.

5. Type in a name for the video capture file you are

about to create, or accept the default name. You can

optionally also enter a limiting duration for the

capture.

If you are making multiple DV captures in preview

quality from the same tape, use the file naming

convention described on page 28. It will help

streamline the Make Movie process later on.

Note: Windows 98 and Millennium have file size

limitations. For FAT16 disks the limit is 2 GB. For

FAT32 disks the limit is 4GB. Studio estimates

how much video of the desired quality the largest

allowable file can accommodate, and displays this

as the maximum duration for the capture.

6. If you are capturing from an analog camcorder or

VCR, start playback now. This step is unnecessary

with a digital-source capture, as Studio will control

the playback equipment automatically when needed.

7. Click the Start capture button in the Capture Video

dialog box. The button caption changes to Stop

capture.

Capture begins. The Player displays the incoming

digitized video that is being saved to your hard

Chapter 2: Capturing video 25

drive (unless you have unchecked Capture preview

on the Capture source options panel).

During capture, Studio performs automatic scene

detection based on the current setting in the

Capture source options panel.

8. Click the Stop capture button to end capture at a

point you select.

Studio automatically stops capturing if your hard

drive fills up or the maximum duration you entered

is reached.

Scene detection

Automatic scene detection is a key feature of Studio.

As video capture proceeds, Studio detects natural

breaks in the video and divides it up into scenes. A new

icon is created in the Video Scenes section of the

Album for each scene detected.

Depending on which capture device you are using,

automatic scene detection is carried out either in real

time during capture, or as a separate step immediately

after capture is completed.

You can configure scene detection using the options

under Scene detection during video capture on the

Capture source options panel (Setup ¾ Capture

Source). Not all scene detection options are available

with every type of video source. Options that do not

apply to your setup are disabled in the dialog.

The four possible options are:

• Automatic based on shooting time and date: This

option is available only when you are capturing from

26 Pinnacle Studio 9

a DV source. Studio monitors the time stamp data on

the tape during capture, and starts a new scene

whenever a discontinuity is found.

• Automatic based on video content: Studio detects

changes in the video content, and creates a new

scene wherever there is a large change in the images.

This feature might not work well if the lighting is not

stable. To take an extreme example, a video shot in a

nightclub with a strobe light would produce a scene

each time the strobe flashed.

• Create new scene every X seconds: Studio creates

new scenes at an interval you choose. This can be

useful for breaking up footage that contains long

continuous shots.

• No automatic scene detection: Select this option if

you want to monitor the entire capture process and

decide for yourself where scene breaks should occur.

Press the [Space] key each time you want to insert a

scene break during capture.

DIGITAL CAPTURE

This section covers aspects of capturing from a DV

source deck (camcorder or VCR) and a 1394 port. To

read about capturing from analog hardware, please see

“Analog capture” on page 32.

Preview quality and full quality

When capturing in DV format from a DV device,

Studio offers the choices of preview quality (Smart-

Chapter 2: Capturing video 27

Capture) and full quality. At full quality, two types of

encoding are available: DV and MPEG.

The two DV capture quality choices are covered in

detail in the following pages. This section concludes

with a note on adjusting audio and video levels in

digital captures (page 31).

Note: If you are using a MicroMV camcorder con-

nected to a 1394 port, the user interface in Capture

mode is almost identical to that for DV equipment.

However, most DV capture options and features are

not available with MicroMV captures, including

preview-quality capture and DV encoding. Captures

from MicroMV are always encoded as MPEG-2.

MicroMV is supported only under Windows XP.

SmartCapture: Preview-quality capture

SmartCapture is a unique feature of Studio. It allows

you to capture from DV videotape to a file of reduced-

quality video using minimal hard drive space. With

SmartCapture, you can capture an entire tape onto your

hard drive rather than having to pick and choose which

portions to capture. You can work with this “preview-

quality” material throughout the editing of your movie.

When your movie is finished and ready for output,

Studio will recapture any preview-quality clips at full

28 Pinnacle Studio 9

quality, automatically controlling your source deck to

locate and capture the footage. The reduced quality of

the preview video therefore has no impact on the

quality of your finished movie. Scenes captured at

preview quality are denoted in the Album by a dotted

border.

Continuous timecode

For the greatest convenience in using SmartCapture,

your digital tape must have continuous DV timecode.

Studio cannot capture in preview quality through

breaks in the timecode. If your camcorder has a

timecode-striping feature, stripe your tape before

shooting. If it does not, the simplest way to avoid

timecode gaps is to overlap your shots if you start and

stop the camcorder during shooting. Before beginning a

new shot, rewind a few frames so that there will not be

a blank spot.

SmartCapture can still be used with tapes that do not

have continuous timecode throughout, but a separate

capture file must be created for each segment of the

tape. SmartCapture will stop capturing when a break in

timecode is detected. To continue capturing, cue the

tape to the start of the next video segment and click

Start Capture again.

Naming convention

If you capture multiple segments from the same tape,

we strongly recommend the following naming

convention: For each capture file that originates from

the same tape, use a name that starts with the same

word.

For example, if you have a tape that contains three

different activities from your vacation, you might call

Chapter 2: Capturing video 29

the captures “vacation-picnic”, “vacation-sailing” and

“vacation-soccer”. Because Studio processes the files

in alphabetical order when recapturing, following this

convention will greatly reduce the number of times you

have to switch tapes during the Make Tape process.

Analog tapes and Digital8 camcorders

SmartCapture requires DV timecode. Analog tapes

(Hi8 and 8mm) do not have DV timecode even when

played in a Digital8 camcorder. As a result, it is not

possible to use SmartCapture with analog tapes played

in a Digital8 camcorder. To use your analog tapes with

Studio, either capture them at full quality, or copy them

to DV tape.

Full-quality capture

You have two choices for the way the video data is

encoded and compressed in full-quality captures. For

most purposes, DV format is the logical choice, but if

you are planning to output your finished movie to disc

(VCD, S-VCD or DVD), you may prefer the MPEG-1

or MPEG-2 format instead.

Because of the intensive computation required for

MPEG-2 encoding, older computers may not be fast

enough to achieve a satisfactory MPEG-2 capture. The

type of capture hardware you have and the capture

quality you choose also help determine the minimum

CPU speed needed. In cases where Studio is able to

estimate that your computer is not fast enough to carry

out a particular capture, it will advise you of the

problem and give you a chance to cancel the operation.

30 Pinnacle Studio 9

An MPEG movie requires much less disk space than

the equivalent full-quality DV movie, although thanks

to SmartCapture this is not generally a concern.

DV is a high-resolution format with correspondingly

high storage requirements.

Your camcorder compresses and stores video on the

tape at 3.6 MB/s, at a quality equivalent to broadcast

video. With full-quality capture, the video data is

transferred directly from the camcorder tape to your PC

hard drive with no changes or additional compression.

Because the video quality is high, capturing at this

setting does consume a lot of disk space, so you may

want to pick and choose small segments to capture

instead of the entire tape.

You can calculate the amount of disk space you will

need by multiplying the length of your video in seconds

by 3.6, which gives the number of megabytes required.

For example:

1 hour of video = 3600 seconds (60 x 60)

3600 seconds x 3.6 MB/s = 12,960 MB (12.7 GB)

Hence 1 hour of video uses 12.7 GB of storage.

To capture at full quality, your hard drive must be

capable of sustained reading and writing at 4 MB per

second. All SCSI and most UDMA drives are capable

of this. The first time you initiate a full-quality capture,

Studio will test your drive to make sure it is fast

enough.

MPEG

DVD and S-VCD discs both use files in MPEG-2

format, an extension of the MPEG-1 format used for

Chapter 2: Capturing video 31

VCDs. MPEGs intended for use on the Internet will be

at lower resolutions and in MPEG-1 format.

The Capture format options panel (Setup ¾ Capture

Format) includes a variety of options to control the

quality of MPEG captures. Refer to “Capture format

settings” on page 252 for detailed information about

MPEG quality options.

Audio and video levels – digital

With DV and MicroMV captures, you are using audio

and video that have been encoded digitally during

recording, right in the camera. When you transfer the

footage through a 1394 port to your computer, the data

remains in the compressed digital format throughout,

so you cannot adjust the audio or video levels during

the capture. This is in contrast to analog captures,

where the audio and video can be adjusted as capturing

takes place.

With digital captures, you defer any needed adjustment

of audio and video levels until Edit mode, where Studio

provides plug-in video effects for adjusting the visual

balance of a clip, and audio effects to enhance the

sound. These effects allow you to adjust individual

clips rather than having to make global adjustments

affecting all the video in a capture file.

For more information see “Analog capture” (below),

“Using video effects” (page 95), and “Audio effects”

(page 220).

32 Pinnacle Studio 9

ANALOG CAPTURE

The topics in this section relate to capture with analog

equipment, such as:

• A camcorder or VCR with analog outputs connected

to a DirectShow-compatible capture board or

external device.

• A USB video camera or webcam.

If you are using a DV or MicroMV camcorder

connected to your computer via a 1394 port, please

refer instead to “DV capture” on page 26.

Capture quality options

With most analog capture hardware, Studio offers three

preset quality choices – Good, Better and Best – plus a

Custom option. Your hardware’s capabilities determine

how the presets translate into particular settings for

picture size, frame rate, compression characteristics

and quality. Keep in mind that the higher the quality,

the more disk space is required. Choose the Custom

preset to configure your own video capture settings.

For more information on video capture settings, see

Appendix A: Setup Options (page 252).

Chapter 2: Capturing video 33

Audio and video levels – analog

Studio provides fly-out panels for controlling video and

audio levels during capture. This feature is especially

useful when you need to compensate for differences in

video captured from multiple sources.

Video (L) and audio (R) panels for

setting levels during analog capture.

Although you can also adjust these levels with the

appropriate Video effects in Edit mode, setting them

correctly for capture can save you from having to

worry about color correction later on.

Setting your audio options correctly as you capture will

help in achieving consistent volume levels and quality.

Particular capture devices may offer fewer options than

are shown and discussed here. For instance, with

hardware that doesn’t support audio captures in stereo,

a balance control will not appear on the audio panel.

Video

Choose the type of video you are going to digitize by

clicking the appropriate Source button (Composite or

S-Video). The five sliders allow you to control the

34 Pinnacle Studio 9

brightness (video gain), contrast (black level),

sharpness, hue and color saturation of the incoming

video.

Note: The Hue slider does not appear when capturing

from PAL equipment.

Audio

Use the Audio capture buttons to control whether

Studio should capture the audio along with the video.

Select the Off button if your source is video only. The

sliders on the tray let you control the input level and

stereo balance of the incoming audio.

Chapter 3: The Album 35

CHAPTER 3:

The Album

The Video Scenes section of the Album. Click the

tabs down the left side of the Album to access the

materials in the other sections.

The source materials you need for making a movie are

stored in the various sections of the Album, each of

which is accessed by its own tab as follows:

Video Scenes: This section contains your

captured video footage. You can access and

preview the capture files directly, or you can load one

into the Album, where its scenes are represented by

thumbnail icons. To use some of the scenes in your

movie, just drag their icons into the Movie Window.

See “The Video Scenes section”, page 38.

Transitions: This Album section contains fades,

dissolves, slides, and other transition types,

36 Pinnacle Studio 9

including the elaborate Hollywood FX transitions. To

use a transition, position it next to or between video

clips and graphics in the Movie Window. See “The

Transitions section”, page 50.

Titles: This section contains editable titles,

which you can use as overlays or as full-screen

graphics. You can create your own titles from scratch,

or use or adapt the supplied ones. Studio supports rolls,

crawls, and many typographical effects. See “The

Titles section”, page 52.

Still Images: This is a section of photographs,

bitmaps and grabbed video frames. You can use

these images full-screen or as overlays on the main

video. Most standard image file formats are supported.

See “The Still Images section”, page 53.

Sound effects: Studio comes ready with a wide

range of high-quality sound effects. You can also

use wav, mp3 and avi files that you have recorded

yourself or obtained from other sources. See “The

Sound Effects section”, page 54.

Disc Menus: Studo has an extensive collection

of chapter menus to use in DVD, VCD and

S-VCD authoring. You can use these as they are,

modify them, or create your own. See “The Disc

Menus section”, page 56.

Using the Album

Each section of the Album contains as many pages as

are necessary to hold the icons representing the items in

that section. At the top right of each Album page,

Studio shows the current page number and the total

page count for the section. Click the arrows to move

forward or back through the pages.

Chapter 3: The Album 37

All types of Album content can be previewed simply

by clicking on the icons.

This chapter introduces each of the Album sections in

turn, beginning with a detailed discussion of the all-

important Video Scenes section. Actually using the

contents of the Album to create your edited movie will

be the subject of chapters 4 through 11.

Source folders for Album content

The scene icons in the Video Scenes section come from

a captured video file, while the Transitions section is

filled from resource files associated with the Studio

program.

The icons in each of the other four Album sections are

different: they represent the files contained in a

particular disk folder. Each of these sections – Titles,

Images, Sound Effects and Disc Menus – has a default

folder assigned to it, but you can select a different

folder if desired.

The icons in the Titles section represent files stored

in a selected source folder on your hard drive. The

dropdown list at the top of the Album page lets you

select either “Standard Titles” or “My Titles” from

the installed “Titles” folder. The folder button beside

the list lets you look elsewhere on your hard drive.

The Disc Menus section works similarly.

38 Pinnacle Studio 9

The source folder for the section’s content is listed at

the top of the left Album page, next to a small Folder

button . To change the source of the current section,

either select a folder from the dropdown or list, or click

the button, browse to another folder on your system,

and select any file. The file you select will be

highlighted in the repopulated Album section.

Some Album sections also provide a Parent folder

button to facilitate moving around within a group of

folders containing appropriate media.

THE VIDEO SCENES SECTION

This is where the editing process really begins –

in the Video Scenes section of the Album with

your captured raw footage. In a typical production,

your first step will probably be to drag some scenes

from the Album down into the Movie Window (see

Chapter 5: Video Clips).

In the Album, scenes are displayed in the order in

which they were captured. This order cannot be

changed, since it is determined by the underlying

capture file, but scenes can be added to your movie in

any order you choose. Similarly, while you can’t trim

(edit) Album scenes, you can use any desired portion of

a scene when it appears as a clip in your movie.

Interface features

The Video Scenes section offers several special

interface features:

• The icons of scenes captured at preview quality are

drawn with a dotted outline in the Album. Scenes

captured at full quality do not have this outline.

Chapter 3: The Album 39

• Scenes that have been added to the Movie Window

are distinguished in the Album by a green

checkmark. The checkmark remains as long as any

clip in the Movie Window originates with that scene.

• To see how a particular Album scene is used in your

current project, use the Album ¾ Find Scene in

Project menu command. Studio highlights any clips

in the Movie Window that originate in the selected

scene (or scenes). To go the other way, use the Find

Scene in Album command, which is on the right-

click menu for Movie Window clips.

• Nearly all menu commands that apply to scenes are

available both on the main Album menu, and on the

pop-up menu that appears when you right-click a

selected scene. When this documentation calls for a

menu command like Album ¾ Combine Scenes,

remember that an equivalent command is usually

available on the pop-up “context” menu as well.

Summary of operations

Because of its central role, the Video Scenes section of

the Album provides an extensive set of operations.

These are covered below in the following topics:

• Opening a captured video file

• Viewing captured video

• Selecting scenes and files

• Displaying scene and file information

• Comment view

• Combining and subdividing scenes

• Redetecting scenes

40 Pinnacle Studio 9

Opening a captured video file

The default locations for your video files are the

Windows default capture folder and the My videos

folder. When you are viewing the folder contents page

of the Video Scenes section, both of these locations

always appear on the dropdown list at the top of the

Album.

You can also choose other hard drive folders to access

stored video files. Both the current and previous folders

are also listed, if they are different from the two

standard locations, making four different folders that

may appear in the list at any one time.

Under Windows XP, the system capture folder is

located in the Windows’ “all users” documents folder.

The capture folder’s real name is My videos, but

Windows Explorer and Studio customarily call it by an

alias, Shared videos. This distinguishes it from My

videos in the user’s personal documents folder.

Under versions of Windows with no special shared

video folder, the default capture folder is called:

C:\My Documents\Pinnacle Studio\Captured Video

Under Windows 98, the full pathname of the My

Videos folder is:

C:\My Documents\My Videos

Chapter 3: The Album 41

Opening a folder

The folder contents page is displayed whenever you

choose a new folder. It lists both the subfolders and the

digital video files within the folder you chose:

Three ways to open a folder:

• Select the folder name on the dropdown list on the

folder contents page.

• Select a folder listed on the folder contents page.

• Click the parent folder button .

Opening a file

When you open a video file, the file contents page is

displayed, showing icons that represent the scenes in

the file:

Three ways to open a digital video file:

• Select the file name on the dropdown list on the file

contents page.

• Double-click a file listed on the folder contents page.

• Click the browse for file button and use the Open

dialog to locate an avi, mpg or mp2 file on your

hard drive.

42 Pinnacle Studio 9

Scene detection and thumbnails

The Album now fills with the detected scenes from

your captured video (see “Scene detection” on page 25).

Each scene is denoted by a thumbnail frame – an icon

of the scene’s first frame. It may be that the first frame

doesn’t make a good icon for the scene, so Studio lets

you pick a different one if desired.

To change thumbnails in the Album:

1. Select the scene to be changed.

2. Use the Player to find the frame you want used for

the thumbnail.

3. Click the Album ¾ Set Thumbnail menu command.

Video aspect ratios

Most digital video files provide format information that

allows Studio to detect the frame aspect ratio of 4:3 or

16:9 automatically. If the file does not provide aspect

ratio information, Studio defaults to the standard 4:3

format.

The Aspect Ratio 4:3 and Aspect Ratio 16:9 commands

on the Album menu let you manually set whichever

ratio you need. These commands also appear on the

right-button context menu for video scenes in the

Album.

Studio does not allow you to mix footage of different

aspect ratios in the same movie. If you want to add

16:9 footage to a 4:3 movie, or 4:3 footage to a 16:9

movie, you must first use whichever Aspect Ratio

command is needed to bring the Album scenes into

conformity with the movie. The new clips will be

squeezed or stretched as needed to match the movie.

Chapter 3: The Album 43

Viewing captured video

Individual or multiple scenes in the open captured

video file can be viewed at any time.

To view captured video starting at a selected scene:

1. Click on the scene’s icon in the Album.

The Player displays the first frame of the selected

scene.

2. Click the Play button in the Player.

The Player now plays the selected scenes and any

subsequent ones. Progress is indicated in three

ways.

• The scenes highlight successively as they are

played.

• The Player scrubber shows the current point of

play relative to the entire movie.

• Scene thumbnails display a progress bar during

preview. As you continue to view your captured

video, the progress bar moves from one

thumbnail to the next.

Previewing digital video files

When a folder is open in the Album and the name of a

digital video file is selected, you can use the Player to

44 Pinnacle Studio 9

preview the video without actually opening the file into

the Album.

You can even select multiple files for playback using

standard selection techniques.

Selecting scenes and files

Studio offers a variety of ways to select scenes and

other items in the Video Scenes section of the Album.

Selected video scenes are indicated by a highlighted

border. Selected folders and video files are shown with

text highlighting.

Selected scenes have a highlighted border (center).

Selection techniques follow standard Windows

conventions. Use any of the following, separately or in

combination:

• Choose the Edit ¾ Select All menu command or

press Ctrl+A to select all the scenes (or files and

folders) currently displaying in the Album, including

those on other pages.

• Shift-click to select a range of neighboring items.

Chapter 3: The Album 45

• Ctrl-click to add or remove individual items from the

selection.

• Starting with the mouse pointer over a blank area of

the Album page, click and drag to “marquee” an area,

selecting all the items that intersect the area.

• Use the arrow keys to navigate the Album grid. Use

the arrows in combination with Shift to select items

as you go.

Selected folders and video files have highlighted text.

Displaying scene and file information

As you move the mouse pointer over video

scenes, the pointer changes to a grabber symbol.

If you pause momentarily on the scene, the start

time and length is displayed in a pop-up box. If

you leave the grabber on the scene, the display

persists for several seconds. The start time shown is the

timecode from the original source video, in minutes,

seconds, and frames.

For information regarding video files

when the Video Scenes section is in

folder view mode, select Details view

in the Album’s right button context

menu. The file name, resolution, aspect ratio, duration

and frame rate are displayed. Switch back to a more

compact listing with Icon view.

46 Pinnacle Studio 9

Comment view

In the default view for the Video Scenes section,

known as Scene view, each scene is represented by a

thumbnail frame icon. To see more information about

each scene, use the Album ¾ Comment View menu

command.

In comment view, editable captions are displayed for

Album scenes. The usage of these captions is up to you:

they might be search keywords, or scene names, or text

comments describing the scene content. The default

caption is generated from the scene’s sequence number

and duration (e.g. “Scene 3, 7:21”).

If you click on a video scene, an in-place text field

appears, allowing you to enter the custom name or

comment.

Selecting scenes by name

A related option lets you select video scenes by

scanning for keywords in the comments. Use Album ¾

Select By Name to open this dialog box:

Chapter 3: The Album 47

Enter a keyword into the text field and click OK to

highlight all Album scenes whose caption contains the

keyword. The default captions are not searched – only

the ones you have customized.

Combining and subdividing scenes

After previewing your scenes, you might want to

combine or subdivide some into larger or smaller units.

Such adjustments are easily made.

To combine scenes in the Album:

1. Select the scenes to be combined.

2. Select Album ¾ Combine Scenes.

The selected scenes are combined into one.

Only selected adjacent scenes can be combined.

Furthermore, they are joined in the order in which

they appear in the Album, regardless of the order in

which they were selected. (Album order proceeds

across rows and then down the page.) To revert,

press Ctrl+Z, or click the undo button.

If the scenes you selected were not all neighbors,

each set of adjacent scenes is combined, but the

different sets are not combined with each other.

48 Pinnacle Studio 9

Several selected scenes (black) are merged into two

longer scenes. Having no neighbors, scene 4 is

unaffected, even though it was part of the selection.

To subdivide scenes in the Album:

1. Select the scenes to be subdivided.

2. Select Album ¾ Subdivide Scenes.

The Subdivide Selected Scenes dialog box appears.

3. Choose the length of the subdivided scenes by

typing in a value.

The smallest allowed subdivision is one second.

Any video remaining after subdivision is added to

the last scene.

4. Click OK.

A progress bar appears, the scene is subdivided,

and new scenes are added to the Album. To revert,

press Ctrl+Z, or click the undo button.

Chapter 3: The Album 49

You can subdivide these scenes still further, if

desired, down to the minimum duration of one

second.

Three selected scenes are subdivided to a duration

of five seconds. The vertical stripes indicate five-

second divisions within each scene. The uneven clip

timings at right occur because time left after

subdivision is added to the final divided scene; that

is also why scene 2 is ultimately unaffected by the

subdivision operation.

Redetecting scenes

If you combine or subdivide scenes and later decide

that you’d prefer to restore them to their original state,

you may redetect any scene or selection of scenes. The

detection results are identical to those obtained after

capturing, provided the same scene detection technique

is used.

If you have subdivided scenes, you must first

recombine them. Even if you cannot exactly recall the

initial state and so recombine more than is necessary,

the detection process will restore the original scene

sequence.

50 Pinnacle Studio 9

To redetect scenes:

If you need to recombine any scenes, first select the

subdivided scenes, then apply the Album ¾ Combine

Scenes menu command.

1. Select the scenes you wish to redetect.

2. From the Album menu, select either Detect Scenes

by Video Content or Detect Scenes by Shooting

Time and Date.

A progress window appears as Studio detects the

scenes and repopulates the Album.

THE TRANSITIONS SECTION

The Transitions section of the Album provides a

large set of drag-and-drop clip transitions. To

keep things manageable, the transitions are divided into

groups. Use the dropdown list to select which group of

transitions you want to view. All the transitions in the

group are displayed, using as many Album pages as

necessary.

To learn about transitions, and how you can use them

in your movies, see Chapter 7: Transitions.

Chapter 3: The Album 51

Studio’s transitions collection includes 74 standard

transitions, 52 Alpha Magic transitions, 16 unrestricted

Hollywood FX 3-D transitions, and many more

“locked” Hollywood FX transitions (with a padlock

symbol in the top-left corner of the transition icon).

Using the locked transitions

These demo transitions are freely available for you to

try, but a Studio 9 “watermark” will be superimposed

on part of the video frame during playback. To make

use of these transitions in an actual production, simply

open the Album to the desired transition, then click in

the unlock panel on the same Album page. You can

purchase an activation key in just a few minutes, with

no need to exit Studio.

The Transitions section of the Album, open to the

“HFX Family Fun 1” theme pack of Hollywood FX

transitions. Click anywhere in the unlock panel on

the right-hand page to unlock this set of transitions.

For more information about purchasing premium

content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

Displaying the transition name

As you move the mouse pointer over the transition

icons in the Album, the pointer changes to a grabber

52 Pinnacle Studio 9

symbol (indicating that the transition can be

dragged from the Album to the Movie

Window). If you pause momentarily on the

icon, the name of the transition is displayed.

The display persists for several seconds or until

your mouse pointer moves off the transition.

Previewing transition effects

When you click on a transition icon, the Player

demonstrates the transition using the convention that

“A” represents the original clip and “B” the new clip.

The demonstration cycles for as long as the icon

remains selected.

To see a detailed view, stop the Player and use the jog

buttons (Frame reverse and Frame forward) to step

through the transition one frame at a time.

THE TITLES SECTION

This section of the Album contains a collection

of text titles in a variety of styles. They can be

used in your movie as either full-screen or overlay titles.

The difference is that in an overlay title the transparent

background is replaced by other material (usually a

video clip), whereas in a full-screen title, the

background is replaced with black.

Chapter 3: The Album 53

In the Album, a gray checkerboard is used

to indicate the portion of a title that will be

treated as transparent in overlays. As with

video scenes, titles that have been added to your

current project are indicated in the Album by a green

checkmark symbol.

With Studio’s powerful built-in Title Editor, you can

readily create your own titles when needed. However,

you may find it easier still to start with one of the

supplied titles and customize it in the Title Editor.

The Titles folder: The icons in the Titles section

represent files in the folder named at the top of each

left-hand page in the section. Titles that you have

created or modified can be added to the section by

saving them into this folder from the Title Editor. You

can also select a different folder to be the source of the

section (see “Source folders for Album content” on

page 37).

For information on using titles in your movie, see

Chapter 8: Still images.

THE STILL IMAGES SECTION

This section of the Album displays thumbnail

icons of image files, which may include grabbed

video frames, photographs and bitmapped drawings.

Most standard image file formats are supported. As

with video scenes, images that are in use in your

current movie are indicated by a green checkmark

symbol.

54 Pinnacle Studio 9

The Still Images folder: The icons in the Still Images

section represent files in the folder named at the top of

each left-hand page in the section. Images can be added

to the section by storing them in this folder. For

instance, you can save grabbed video frames into the

folder from the Frame grabber tool, or save a title from

the Title Editor. You can also select a different folder

to be the source of the section (see “Source folders for

Album content” on page 37).

For information on using still images in your movie,

see Chapter 8: Still images.

THE SOUND EFFECTS SECTION

Studio comes with a wide range of ready-to-use

sound effects. These wav files are installed into a

number of folders, covering categories such as

“animals”, “bells” and “cartoons”.

The Sound Effects folder: This section of the Album

displays the sound files contained in one disk folder,

named at the top of each left-hand page in the section.

You can display the sounds in a different folder – not

necessarily one of those installed by Studio – by

selecting a different folder to be the source for the

section (see “Source folders for Album content” on

page 37).

Besides wav (Windows “wave”) files, music files in

mp3 format and avi animation files are also displayed

in this section of the Album, and may be drawn upon

for supplemental audio in your productions.

Chapter 3: The Album 55

Any sound clip can be previewed simply by clicking its

name or icon.

For information on using sounds in your movie, see

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music.

Along with the many unrestricted sound effects that

come with Studio, you will also find several folders of

effects in the UFX, or “Ultimate FX” series. These

effects are “locked” (indicated by a padlock symbol

beside the sound effect name in the Album).

Using the locked sound effects

These demo effects are freely available for you to try,

but a Studio 9 “watermark” will be superimposed on

part of the video frame whenever the sound is playing,

and an intermittent beep will be added to the

soundtrack. To make use of the effects in an actual

production, simply open the Album to the desired

effect, then click in the unlock panel on the same

Album page. You can purchase an activation key in just

a few minutes, with no need to exit Studio.

The Sound Effects section of the Album, open to the

“UFX House 2” theme pack of Ultimate FX sound

effects. Click anywhere in the unlock panel on the

right-hand page to unlock this set of effects.

For more information about purchasing premium

content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

56 Pinnacle Studio 9

THE DISC MENUS SECTION

This section of the Album contains a collection of

artist-designed menus for VCD, S-VCD and

DVD authoring. Menus in Studio are really specialized

titles: they can be created and edited in the Title Editor,

and either saved from the editor into a disk folder or

incorporated directly into your movie.

As with video scenes and other visual resources, disc

menus that are in use in your movie are distinguished

in the Album by a green checkmark symbol.

For information on using disc menus in your movie,

see Chapter 9: Disc menus.

The Disc Menus folder: The icons in the Disc Menus

section represent files in the folder named at the top of

each left-hand page in the section. Menus can be added

to the section by storing them in this folder. You can

also select a different folder to be the source of the

section (see “Source folders for Album content” on

page 37).

The motion background symbol: Some of the menus

supplied with Studio incorporate a background of

moving video rather than a static picture, and you can

also create such menus yourself. This “motion

background” can help give a professional look to your

finished disc.

Menus with motion backgrounds are indicated by a

small symbol in the bottom right-hand corner of the

Album icon.

Availability: Menus with motion backgrounds are not supported in

the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio.

Chapter 3: The Album 57

Along with the many standard menus and motion

menus that come with Studio, you will also find several

folders of menus in the “Pinnacle Premium DVD

Menus” series. These menus are “locked” (indicated by

a padlock symbol in the top-left corner of the menu

icon.). Many of these professional DVD menus include

looping soundtracks.

Using the locked menus

The demo menus are freely available for you to try, but

a Studio 9 “watermark” will be superimposed on part

of the video frame whenever one is playing. If you

want to use one in an actual production, simply open

the Album to the desired menu, then click in the unlock

panel on the same Album page. You can purchase an

activation key in just a few minutes, with no need to

exit Studio.

The Disc Menus section of the Album, open to the

“Holiday” theme pack of Pinnacle Premium DVD

Menus. Click anywhere in the unlock panel on the

right-hand page to unlock this set of menus.

For more information about purchasing premium

content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 59

CHAPTER 4:

The Movie Window

The Movie Window, where you build your movie from

the raw materials in the Album, occupies the bottom

half of the screen in Studio’s Edit mode. To access the

Movie Window, first switch to Edit mode if you are not

already there:

The Movie Window title bar contains several important

controls and displays. The toolbox buttons at the left of

the title bar open the Video toolbox and the Audio

toolbox, which are discussed on page 67.

To the right of the toolbox buttons is a text area where

the project file name is displayed. Status and warning

messages are also displayed in this area when required.

Further still to the right are the Clip Split and Clip

Delete buttons, while at the far right are three view

selection buttons (see “Movie Window views” on page

62).

60 Pinnacle Studio 9

Split clip/scene button – the razorblade

Click this button to split the currently-selected

clip in the Movie Window, or the currently-

selected scene in the Album.

No information is lost. If the item is an Album scene, it

is split at the indicated point into two shorter scenes. If

the item is a clip in the Movie Window, it is duplicated

and automatically trimmed to the split point.

The razorblade button can be used in conjunction with

the track-locking buttons in the Movie Window’s

Timeline view to carry out special operations such as

insert editing, and edits in which the audio leads or lags

behind the video. See “Advanced Timeline editing” on

page 87.

Splitting a clip: The placement of the edit line in the

original clip determines the split point. When you

apply the razorblade tool, Studio duplicates the clip

and trims away the portion after the split point in the

first copy and up to the split point in the second.

Delete Clip button – the trashcan

This button deletes the currently-selected content

in any of the Movie Window views. By default,

when video clips on the main video track of your

project are deleted in any view, the gap in your movie

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 61

that would otherwise be created by the deletion is

automatically closed up, and clips on other tracks are

removed or shortened as required to keep everything in

sync.

If you delete clips on other tracks, the default behavior

is that gaps between them are not automatically

removed, so the timing of other clips is not affected.

If you press the Ctrl key while clicking the delete

button, or pressing the Delete key, the default behavior

for the current track is reversed. That is, on the main

video track, Ctrl+Delete leaves a gap when the clip is

removed, while on the other tracks, the gap on the track

is closed up. In neither case are other tracks affected.

You can also access the delete operations through the

right-button context menu for clips on the Timeline.

The delete options on the right-button menu for

Timeline clips are not the same for clips on the main

video track (L) as for those on other tracks (R). The

menus summarize the context-dependent keyboard

shortcuts.

Positioning: edit line, scrubbers

The current position is the frame showing in the Player

when you are working with a clip in the Movie

Window. In the Timeline view, it is indicated by the

edit line. The current position can be changed by

moving either the Timeline scrubber (to which the edit

line is attached) or the Player scrubber.

62 Pinnacle Studio 9

When the Clip properties tool is open, a third

scrubber, the trim scrubber, is available for

adjusting the current position within the clip during

trimming.

MOVIE WINDOW VIEWS

The Movie Window provides three different views of

your project: Timeline, Storyboard and Text. Select the

one you want to use by clicking the view selection

buttons in the upper right corner of the Movie Window.

Storyboard view

Storyboard view shows the order

of video scenes and transitions. It

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 63

uses thumbnail icons for quickly structuring a movie.

You can choose large or small thumbnails in the Edit

options panel.

Timeline view

Timeline view shows the positions

and durations of clips relative to

the Timescale. This view also displays up to eight

tracks on which you can place various types of clip:

• Video, plus full-screen disc menus, titles

and graphics: The video track contains the

primary visual material in your production. See

Chapter 5: Video clips, Chapter 9: Disc menus and

Chapter 8: Still images for more information.

• Original (or “synchronous”) audio: The

original audio track contains the audio that

was captured along with the video from your camera.

You can manipulate the audio clips on this track to

achieve various effects using insert-editing and split-

editing techniques. See “Insert editing” (page 89)

and “Split editing” (page 91) for more information.

64 Pinnacle Studio 9

• Overlay video and audio: In Studio Plus,

video and images placed on the overlay track

can be used with the Picture-in-picture and

Chroma key tools to give your video

productions a professional appearance. These

features are locked in other versions of Studio,

producing “watermarked” output when used. You

can upgrade to Studio Plus at any time if you need its

advanced capabilities. Original audio for overlay

video is stored on the linked audio track. See

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus for

details about the overlay track.

• Title and graphic overlays: Images placed on

the title track will be rendered as overlays

upon the main video, with transparent backgrounds.

See Chapter 8: Still images and Chapter 9: Disc

menus for more information.

• Sound effects and voice-overs: The audio

clips on this track are mixed with the original

audio track and the background music track to create

the final soundtrack for your movie. See Chapter 11:

Sound effects and music for full information.

• Background music: The background music

for your movies can be created to any desired

duration with the SmartSound tool (page 203) or

imported with the CD audio tool (page 201). Your

soundtrack can also make use of mp3 and other

music files (see page 197).

• Disc menus, chapter marks and return-to-

menu links: This is an extra track that appears

above the video track whenever the movie has at

least one disc menu. See Chapter 9: Disc menus for

information.

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 65

Because many editing operations can be carried out

only in Timeline view, you should choose it whenever

extensive, detailed or advanced editing is required.

Track locking

The video track normally takes precedence over all

other tracks for trimming or deleting. This has several

consequences:

• When you trim a video clip, clips running

simultaneously on other tracks are also trimmed.

• When you delete a video clip, the time segment it

used is also removed from any parallel clips.

• Clips that fall entirely within a deleted video clip’s

span are also deleted.

These behaviors can be bypassed when necessary with

a feature that allows you to “lock” any track indepen-

dently of the others, thereby excluding it from editing

and playback operations.

The padlock buttons along

the right edge of the Movie

Window, can be clicked to

toggle locking for the

corresponding track. Track-

locking gives Studio insert-

edit and split-edit capability

(see Chapter 5: Video clips).

66 Pinnacle Studio 9

Track muting

The audio tracks can be

individually muted with the

mute buttons at the right edge

of the Movie Window. These

buttons have the same

function as the mute buttons

in the Volume and balance

tool. (See page 215 for more

information.)

Placement feedback

Studio gives you several types of feedback about your

actions as you place clips in the Timeline view.

The status line: The status line area on the left of the

Movie Window title bar displays messages as you

place clips and perform other actions.

Placement symbols: While you are dragging a clip

into position on the Timeline, Studio provides feedback

to tell you whether the current placement of the clip is

valid. The mouse pointer shape and the colors of the

vertical placement lines indicate what you can and

cannot do.

For example, if you attempt to drag a sound onto the

video track, the placement guidelines turn from green

to red, the mouse pointer changes from “copy” to

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 67

“unavailable”, and the status line tells you, “Only

scenes, titles, photos and transitions on video track.”

Green placement lines with the “copy” pointer mean

that an action is valid; red placement lines with the

“unavailable” pointer ; show that it is not.

Text view

The Movie Window Text view is a

list showing the start and end times

of clips, as well as their duration. In addition, custom

names for clips are visible in this view.

THE TOOLBOXES

The toolboxes provide a convenient point-and-click

interface for editing operations – adding clips to your

movie, modifying existing clips and applying special

effects. Studio provides separate toolboxes for video

and for audio operations.

68 Pinnacle Studio 9

The toolboxes are available only in Edit mode. They

are opened and closed with the buttons at the top left of

the Movie Window.

Select the toolbox you want to open by moving your

cursor over the icons. The individual buttons highlight,

indicating which toolbox will open when you click.

The Album is then replaced by the toolbox display,

which contains two main areas:

• Tool selector buttons in a panel on the left. Clicking

one of these opens the corresponding tool.

• The currently-selected tool on the right. Double-

clicking a clip in the Movie Window also displays

the corresponding tool (except for title clips, which

are opened directly in the Title Editor when you

double-click).

All the tool-selector buttons, except the top one in each

set, open specialized tools. The top button in both

toolboxes is the Clip properties tool. It displays a tool

appropriate for trimming and otherwise editing the type

of clip currently selected in the Movie Window.

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 69

The Title Editor

One powerful tool that is not directly accessed through

the toolboxes is the Title Editor, in which you can

combine text, images and other graphic resources to

make titles and disc menus for your Studio productions.

Access the Title Editor through the Title and Disc menu

tools, or with the Go to Title/Menu Editor command

from the right-button context menu in the Movie

Window. See Chapter 10: The Title Editor for full

information.

The Video toolbox

The six tools in this toolbox modify or create visual

clip types, including video clips, titles, still images and

disc menus.

Clip properties: The Clip properties tool

adjusts the start and end times of any type of

clip. This is called “trimming”. The tool also allows

you to type in a descriptive name for the clip. The tool

also presents additional interface components

appropriate to the type of clip being edited.

70 Pinnacle Studio 9

Titles: This tool lets you edit the name and

length of titles. The Edit Title button provides

access to the Title Editor window where you can

change the text and appearance of the title.

Disc menus: The Disc menu tool has a number

of controls for editing the links between the

buttons on a disc menu and entry points into your

movie called chapter marks, which are represented on

the menu track in the Movie Window. The Edit Menu

button opens the Title Editor, where you can modify

the visual appearance of a menu.

Frame grabber: This tool takes a snapshot of a

single frame from your movie or from your

current video source. You can use it in your movie, or

save it for use in other applications. As with Capture

mode itself, this tool presents a different interface if

your current capture source is DV than if you are using

a non-DV source.

SmartMovie: This tool automatically com-

bines your source footage with the digital song

file of your choice to create a music video in any of a

variety of styles.

Video effects: Studio provides numerous plug-

in video effects with this tool. Each video clip

or still image in your project can use effects, whether

alone or in combination.

Along with its basic library of useful effects, Studio

provides some “locked” premium effects that you can

try out. For information about purchasing premium

content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

Chapter 4: The Movie Window 71

The Audio toolbox

The six tools in this set operate on or create audio clips

– “original” audio, voice-overs, sound effects and other

audio files, CD tracks and SmartSound background

music.

Clip properties: The Clip properties tool lets

you adjust (“trim”) the start and end times of

any type of clip. You can also enter a descriptive name

for the clip to replace the default name if desired. (Clip

names are displayed when the Movie Window is in

Text view.) The tool’s other controls vary depending

on the type of clip.

Volume and balance: This tool gives you

master volume controls for each of the three

audio tracks: original audio (audio captured with

video), sound effects and voice-overs and background

music. It also enables you to mute any or all of the

tracks, and to add real-time volume fades. Use the

balance and surround control to position each track

independently of the other two in a one-dimensional

stereo or two-dimensional surround-sound space.

When the overlay track is open, the tool provides a

72 Pinnacle Studio 9

fourth set of controls, which affect the overlay audio

track.

Availability: Surround sound is not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

Record voice-overs: To record a voice-over,

simply click the Record button and begin

speaking into your microphone.

Add CD audio: Use this tool to add tracks, in

whole or in part, from an audio CD.

Background music: This tool lets you add

background music using SmartSound, Studio’s

powerful music generator. Choose a style, song,

and version. Studio will create a musical soundtrack

that matches the duration of your movie.

Audio effects: This tool lets you apply plug-in

effects to any audio clip. The popular VST

standard for audio plug-ins is supported, enabling you

to augment your library with add-on and third party

effects. Factory-supplied effects include a configurable

noise reduction filter, graphic EQ, reverb and others.

Some “locked” premium effects are also included for

you to try out. For information about purchasing

premium content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio”

on page 11.

Chapter 5: Video clips 73

CHAPTER 5:

Video clips

The cornerstone of most Studio video projects is the

Album section containing your captured video scenes.

To create your edited movie, you drag scenes from the

Album into the Movie Window, where they are treated

as editable video clips.

This chapter explains how to set the “in” and “out”

(start and end) points for each clip. The Movie

Window’s editing interface makes this “trimming”

process simple, rapid and precise. The methods covered

in this chapter for trimming video (“Trimming video

clips”, page 78) can for the most part also be applied to

the other types of clip (such as titles and sound effects)

that are covered in later chapters.

A later section of the chapter covers more advanced

editing techniques, including split edits and insert edits,

that you can use to give your movies a more

professional look. See “Advanced Timeline editing” on

page 87.

Finally, we’ll look at using visual effects in Studio, and

at some of the effects you can use in your movies - to

correct a flaw, to communicate an idea, or just for fun.

See “Video effects” on page 95.

74 Pinnacle Studio 9

VIDEO CLIP BASICS

The first step in creating a movie is to introduce some

video scenes from the Album into the Movie Window,

where they become editable clips. At some point you

will probably also add some transitions, titles, audio

and other extras, but a set of video scenes is the starting

point for just about any project.

This section explains how to add scenes to your movie,

and how to work with scenes from multiple capture

files. It also covers some interface features that provide

useful feedback as you work.

Adding video clips to your movie

There are two ways to add a video clip to your movie:

Drag and drop: Drag a scene from the Video Scenes

section of the Album and drop it into the Movie

Window. This is normally the easiest and quickest way

to put together a rough cut of your movie. You can

drag multiple scenes simultaneously if you wish.

The clipboard: The standard clipboard operations (Cut,

Copy and Paste) can be used with video clips in the

Movie Window. The Copy operation works on Album

scenes also.

When a scene or clip is pasted into the Movie Window,

it is inserted at the first clip boundary starting at the

edit line position. You can use the standard keyboard

shortcuts for clipboard operations (Ctrl+X for cut,

Chapter 5: Video clips 75

Ctrl+C for copy, Ctrl+V for paste), or select the desired

operation from the right-button menu.

When the Movie Window is in Timeline view, you can

drop a video scene or clip onto any of the following:

• The main video track. If the clip has associated audio,

it is added to the original audio track. This video

will serve as the background for any overlay video or

titles that on the lower Timeline tracks.

• The overlay track. Video on this track is

superimposed on the contents of the video track. The

picture-in-picture and chroma key effects are used to

make a portion of the overlay frame transparent so

that some of the main video can be seen. Except in

Studio Plus, any clips on the overlay track are

displayed with a “watermark” graphic. If you decide

to use the overlay track in your movies, you can

upgrade to Studio Plus at any time.

• The title track. In Studio Plus, if the overlay track is

hidden, dropping a video clip on the title track cause

the overlay track to open and the clip to be placed

upon it. In other versions of Studio, or when the

overlay track is already displayed, the title does not

accept video clips.

• The sound effects track or the background music

track. Attempting to drop a video clip on either of

these tracks actually drops the clip’s original audio.

Working with multiple capture files

For some projects you may want to incorporate scenes

from multiple source tapes, or from different capture

files made from one tape. To achieve this, load in each

76 Pinnacle Studio 9

of the files in turn and drag whichever scenes you want

from each file into your movie.

To use multiple capture files:

1. Drag scenes from the first capture file into the

Movie Window.

2. Using the dropdown list or the folder button in the

Video Scenes section of the Album, open the

second capture file. Studio displays scenes from

only the current file in the Album. See “Opening a

captured video file” on page 40 for detailed

information on this step.

3. Drag scenes from the second captured file into the

Movie Window. Continue in this manner until you

have gone through all the files.

Because any given movie can be in only one of the

standard 4:3 format and the widescreen 16:9 format,

Studio does not let you mix frame formats in the Movie

Window. The first video clip you add to a movie

determines the movie’s frame format, and later clips

must conform to it. Use the Aspect ratio commands on

the Album menu to convert scenes from one format to

the other. (See “Video aspect ratios” on page 42 for

more information.)

Interface features

Studio provides a variety of visual cues regarding the

video clips in the Movie Window:

• Clips from video that was captured at preview

quality are shown with a white dotted outline. These

clips will be automatically recaptured at full quality

during the Make Movie process.

Chapter 5: Video clips 77

• When a clip is added to the Movie Window, a green

checkmark appears on the Album’s icon for the

corresponding scene. The checkmark remains as

long as any clip in the Movie Window belongs to

that scene.

• To see the original location of a clip in your source

video, use the Find Scene in Album command on the

right-click menu for Movie Window clips. Studio

highlights the Album scene from which the selected

clip is drawn. To go the other way, use the Album ¾

Find Scene in Project to show how a particular

Album scene is used in your current project.

• When neighboring scenes from the Album are placed

in sequence in the Movie Window, the border

between the clips is displayed as a dotted line. This

is to help you keep track of your clips, and does not

affect how they can be manipulated in the Movie

Window.

• In Timeline mode, any special effects you have

applied to a clip are indicated by small icons along

the bottom of the clip. These correspond to the effect

groups shown on the Video effects tool browser. You

can open the tool for parameter editing by double-

clicking any of the icons.

The star icon below this video clip shows that one or

more of the effects in the “Fun effects” group has

been applied.

78 Pinnacle Studio 9

TRIMMING VIDEO CLIPS

In general, captured video scenes contain more material

than you actually require for your movie. “Trimming”

– the process of adjusting the in and out points of a clip

to remove unwanted footage – is a fundamental editing

operation.

No data is lost by trimming: Studio sets new start and

end points for the clip in the Movie Window, but the

source of the clip - the original Album scene – remains

intact. This means you can always reset clips to their

original state, or select different trim points.

Studio offers two ways to trim any clip (video scenes,

transitions, titles, still images, audio clips and disc

menus):

• Directly on the Timeline (see “Trimming on the

Timeline using handles” below).

• Using the Clip properties tool (see “Trimming with

the Clip properties tool” on page 83).

A video clip can be trimmed to any desired in and out

points within the limits of the original scene.

Trimming on the Timeline using handles

The quickest way to trim is by dragging the edges of

clips directly on the Timeline. Watch the Player as you

trim, so you can find the frame on which you want to

begin or end.

Chapter 5: Video clips 79

Let’s first consider the simplest trimming case, in a

movie with only one clip. Then we’ll turn to the more

usual situation of trimming a single clip that is

surrounded by other clips.

To trim a single clip on the Timeline:

1. Delete all but one clip from the Timeline. If the

Timeline is empty, drag a scene in from the Album.

2. Expand the Timescale to make fine adjustments

easier.

Position the mouse pointer anywhere on the

Timeline except directly over the edit line. The

pointer becomes a clock symbol. Click-drag it to

the right to expand the Timescale.

This illustration shows maximum expansion, where

each tick mark represents a single frame:

3. Position your mouse pointer over the right edge of

the clip. The pointer becomes a left-pointing arrow.

4. Click-drag to the left while keeping an eye on the

Player, which updates continuously to show the last

frame in the trimmed clip.

As you shorten the clip, the arrow cursor becomes

two-directional, indicating that the clip edge can be

dragged both left and right. You can reduce the clip

80 Pinnacle Studio 9

to as little as a single frame, or increase it up to the

end of the source scene.

5. Release the mouse button. The clip is now trimmed.

Multiple clips

The secret to trimming a clip when multiple clips are

on the Timeline is that you must first select the clip to

be trimmed by clicking on it with the mouse.

To trim with multiple clips on the Timeline:

1. Set up the Timeline with two short clips.

2. Expand the Timescale by right-clicking in the ruler.

Choose 30 seconds from the pop-up menu.

3. Click the second clip. The video track should now

look something like this:

You can trim the right-hand edge of the clip just as

in the single-clip example above. As you do so, the

last frame of the clip is displayed in the Player. As

long as the second clip remains selected, you can

continue to trim more video by dragging the edge to

the left, or restore some of the trimmed video by

dragging the edge to the right.

Chapter 5: Video clips 81

4. With the second clip still selected, move your

mouse pointer over the left edge of clip until the

pointer changes to a right arrow.

5. Drag the left edge of the second scene to the right.

As you drag, the first frame of the clip is displayed

in the Player. As long as the clip remains selected,

you can continue to trim more video by dragging

the edge to the right, or restore some of the trimmed

video by dragging the edge to the left.

6. Release the mouse button. The clip you trimmed

snaps back against the right edge of the first clip.

Gaps and fills: Trimming with the Ctrl key

As we have seen in the example above, when you

shorten a clip on the video track, the clip and any clips

to the right of it move leftwards as necessary so that no

gap is left. At the same time, clips on other tracks are

shortened to keep the whole Timeline in sync. When

you trim a clip on any other track, however, gaps are

not automatically closed up, and no other track is

affected.

82 Pinnacle Studio 9

This default trimming behavior simplifies editing under

most circumstances, but Studio also gives you a way to

invert the behavior when needed. If you press the Ctrl

key before you begin trimming a clip on the video track,

neither that clip nor any other will be repositioned, and

gaps are not closed up. There is no effect on other

tracks.

Meanwhile, using Ctrl when trimming clips on other

tracks again inverts the normal behavior. The clips on

the track will close in to fill any gap left by the trim.

Clips on tracks besides the one being trimmed are again

unaffected.

Note: See page 60 for a description of the parallel

behavior of Ctrl when deleting clips.

Clip-trimming tips

If you are having difficulty manipulating the edges of

clips during trimming, try the following:

• Verify that the clip you wish to trim is selected, and

that it is the only one selected.

• Expand the Timescale until it is easier to make fine

adjustments.

• Avoid expanding the Timescale too far, which

makes clips appear very long. If that happens, undo

until the scale is the way you want it; or reduce the

scale by dragging it towards the left; or select an

appropriate value from the Timescale’s context

menu.

Chapter 5: Video clips 83

Trimming with the Clip properties tool

Although it is possible to trim video clips

directly on the Timeline with full frame

accuracy, rapid, precise trimming is often easier to

achieve with the Clip properties tool. To access this

tool, select the clip you want to change, then use the

Toolbox ¾ Modify Clip Properties menu command, or

click one of the toolbox buttons at the top left of the

Movie Window. (Clicking the same button a second

time will close the tool.)

In the case of video clips – in fact, any clips other than

titles – you can also open and close the Clip properties

tool by double-clicking the clip in any Movie Window

view.

The Clip properties tool can be used to modify any

kind of clip. It offers an appropriate set of controls for

each type.

The Name text field: For a video clip, most of the clip

property controls are for trimming. The only exception

is the Name text field, which lets you assign a custom

name to the clip to replace the default one assigned by

Studio.

The Name field is provided on the Clip properties tool

for all clip types. Clip names are used by the Movie

Window’s Text view, and can also be viewed as fly-by

labels when your mouse moves over clips in the

Storyboard view.

Preview areas: Separate preview areas show the in and

out frames of the trimmed clip, together with a counter

84 Pinnacle Studio 9

and jog buttons. The layout of each preview area is

similar to that of the Player during normal editing.

Setting playback position: A scrubber control across

the bottom of the tool lets you set the playback position

anywhere within the clip. You can also set the playback

position using the counter and jog buttons located

between the two preview areas.

Using the counters: The positions reported by all three

counters are relative to the beginning of the clip, which

is position 0:00:00.0. As with the counter on the Player,

you can adjust the counters in the Clip properties tool

by clicking in one of the four fields (hours, minutes,

seconds, frames) to select it, then using the jog buttons.

When none of the fields is explicitly selected, the jog

buttons apply to the frames field.

Transport controls: While the Clip properties tool is

in use, the transport controls in the center area

substitute for those that normally appear on the Player.

These special transport controls include a Loop

play/Pause button that can be used to cycle

repeatedly through the trimmed portion of the clip

while the trim points are being adjusted.

Setting the trim points: The left bracket button

beside the counter in the left preview area, and the right

Chapter 5: Video clips 85

bracket button beside the counter in the right

preview area, set their respective trim points to the

current position.

You can also adjust either trim point by:

• Entering a value directly into its counter

• Adjusting a counter field with the jog buttons

• Dragging the corresponding trim caliper

The Duration text field: This field shows the length of

the trimmed clip in hours, minutes, seconds and frames.

If you modify the value, either by editing the numbers

directly or by clicking the associated jog buttons, the

effect is to change the out point of the clip. Of course,

you cannot reduce the duration to less than a frame, or

increase it beyond the limits of the original video scene.

Usage tip: If you want to switch from trimming one

clip on the video track to trimming another, just click

on the new clip while the Clip properties tool remains

open, or drag the Timeline scrubber to the new clip.

Resetting trimmed clips

If you change your mind about a particular trim

operation (or group of operations) after previewing,

either use the Undo button (or Ctrl+Z) or manually

reset the trimmed clip using one of these methods:

• Drag the clip’s right edge directly on the Timeline

until it stretches no further,

• In the Clip properties tool, drag the trim calipers to

the ends of the clip.

86 Pinnacle Studio 9

SPLITTING AND COMBINING CLIPS

If you want to insert one clip on the video track into the

middle of another clip, split the latter into two parts

then insert the new item. “Splitting” a clip actually

results in it being duplicated. Both clips are then

automatically trimmed so that the first ends at the split

point and the second begins there.

To split a clip in Timeline view:

1. Choose the split point.

You may use any method that adjusts the current

position, such as moving the Timeline scrubber,

clicking Play and then Pause, or editing the counter

value in the Player.

2. Either right-click within the clip you wish to split

and select Split Clip from the pop-up menu; or,

make certain the edit line is positioned where you

wish to split the clip, and click the Split clip/scene

(razorblade) button (see page 60).

The clip is split at the current position.

To restore a split clip:

• Use the Undo button (or press Ctrl+Z). Even if you

have performed other actions since you split the clip,

the multilevel undo allows you to step back as far as

needed. Or,

• If undoing is not desirable because of intervening

actions that you don’t want to discard, you can

replace both halves of the split clip with the original

from the Album. Or,

• Delete one half of the split clip, and trim out the

other.

Chapter 5: Video clips 87

To combine clips in the Movie Window:

Select the clips you wish to combine, then right-click

and choose Combine Clips.

The operation is allowed only if the combination of

clips will also be a valid clip – that is, a continuous

excerpt of the source video. On the Timeline, clips that

can be combined meet along a dotted edge.

ADVANCED TIMELINE EDITING

Availability: The advanced editing techniques discussed below are

not supported in the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio. The

additional advanced features of Studio Plus, making use of the

overlay track, are covered in Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio

Plus.

During most editing operations, Studio automatically

keeps the clips on the various Timeline tracks

synchronized. For instance, when you insert a scene

from the Album onto the video track, the relative

positions of all clips to the right of the insertion remain

unchanged.

Sometimes, though, you might like to override the

default synchronization. You might want to insert a

new video clip into your project without displacing any

clips of other types. Or you might want to edit video

separately from its accompanying original audio – a

valuable technique with several variations, discussed

below.

Such special edits are possible using the track lock

buttons along the right edge of the Movie Window in

88 Pinnacle Studio 9

Timeline view. Each of the standard tracks (all except

the menu track) provides a lock button. See “Track

locking” on page 65 for more information on track

locking.

A locked track is grayed out in the Timeline view,

indicating that the clips on the locked track cannot be

selected or edited in any of the three views; nor are

they affected by editing operations on unlocked tracks.

Apart from the menu track, any combination of tracks

can be locked.

Locking the title track, for example prevents the

duration of a title from being changed even when you

trim clips on the main video track at the same time

index.

When the title track is unlocked, trimming the main

video clip above it automatically trims the title.

Chapter 5: Video clips 89

Insert editing

In ordinary Timeline editing, a video clip and the

original audio that was captured with it are treated as a

unit. Their special relationship is symbolized in the

Movie Window by the dotted line connecting the video

track indicator with the original audio track indicator,

showing that the latter is dependent on the former.

The track lock buttons make it possible to deal with the

two tracks independently for operations like insert

editing, which typically means replacing part of a clip

on the video track while the original audio track

continues uninterrupted.

Availability: Insert editing is not supported in the SE and QuickStart

versions of Studio. Under Studio Plus, insert editing may also be

carried out on the overlay video and audio tracks, using analogous

methods to those described here.

For instance, in a sequence that shows someone

recounting a story, you might wish to insert a shot of an

audience member smiling (or sleeping!) without

breaking away from the main audio.

To perform an insert edit on the video track:

1. In the Timeline view of the Movie Window, click

the original audio track’s padlock button to lock

the track.

The lock button is highlighted in red, and the

track itself is grayed to show that its contents

will not be affected by editing operations.

2. Clear space on the video track for the video clip

you want to insert. Position the Timeline scrubber

at the point you want the insertion to start and use

90 Pinnacle Studio 9

the Split clip/scene button. Now move to the point

where the insertion should end and again split the

clip. Finally, delete the portion of video that will be

replaced by the insertion.

Because the audio track is still intact, having been

locked, the video to the right of the insertion point

does not move leftwards to fill the gap you have

made in the Timeline, for the video and audio

would then no longer be synchronized. If you were

to preview your video now, you would see a black

screen as the gap portion played back, but the

soundtrack would be normal.

3. Now all that remains is to place the clip you want to

insert. Drag the clip (whether from the Album or

elsewhere on the Timeline) into the hole in the

video track that you’ve just opened up.

If the inserted clip is too long for the space you

created it is automatically trimmed to fit the space.

You can adjust the trimming with the Clip

properties tool.

Insert editing on the original audio track

The converse insert-editing operation, in which a sound

clip is inserted into the original audio track over

Chapter 5: Video clips 91

unbroken video, is needed less often but is also readily

performed in Studio.

The procedure is analogous to the one for inserting

video: simply reverse the roles of the two tracks at

every step.

Split editing

In “split editing”, a clip’s audio and video are

separately trimmed so that the transition to one occurs

before the transition to the other.

Availability: Split editing is not supported in the SE and QuickStart

versions of Studio. Under Studio Plus, split editing may also be

carried out on the overlay video and audio tracks, using analogous

methods to those described here.

In an “L-cut”, the video precedes its sync audio; in a

“J-cut”, the audio comes first.

Tip: For faster, more precise trimming, you may find it

helpful to have the Clip properties tool open when

following the procedures in this section. To open the

tool, just double-click one of the video clips before you

begin.

The L-cut

In an L-cut, the cut to new video comes before the cut

in the audio.

Imagine a videotaped lecture in which the video

periodically cuts away from the speaker to show travel

or nature scenes illustrating the lecture topic.

92 Pinnacle Studio 9

Audio and video cut simultaneously.

Instead of cutting the audio and the video

simultaneously, you might decide to let the speaker’s

voice overlap into the following scene. This makes it

clear to the audience that the new scene they are now

watching illustrates whatever explanation the speaker

has been providing.

Notice that the video and audio clip boundaries in the

completed cut form an L-shape.

Audio cuts after video. The resulting “L” shape is

outlined in this illustration.

There are many effective uses of this technique. It can

be considered whenever the second clip’s video serves

to illustrate the first clip’s audio.

To perform an L-cut:

1. Adjust the Timeline so you can easily count off the

number of frames or seconds you want to overlap.

Chapter 5: Video clips 93

2. Select the left-hand clip and trim its right edge to

the point where you want the audio to end.

3. Lock the audio track. Now drag the right-hand edge

of the same clip’s video leftward to the point where

the following clip’s video should start.

4. With the audio track still locked, drag the second

clip’s video to the left until it meets the original clip.

If there isn’t enough excess video at the start of the

second clip to make this trim possible, you will first

need to trim off a sufficient amount from both its

video and audio then try again.

94 Pinnacle Studio 9

5. Unlock the audio track.

The video now cuts away to the second clip ahead

of the audio. Video has been trimmed from the end

of the first clip, and audio has been trimmed from

the start of the second clip.

The J-cut

In the J-cut, the new audio cuts in before the video

switches. This can be effective when the second clip’s

audio prepares the viewer for the material in the scene.

Returning to the videotaped lecture example, let’s say

we are now going to switch back to the speaker at the

end of the interpolated footage. If we let the next part

of the lecture appear on the soundtrack a few moments

before the video shows us the podium again, the

change will be much less abrupt.

This time the clip boundaries outline the letter J:

Audio cuts before video. The resulting “J” shape is

outlined in this illustration.

To perform a J-cut:

1. Adjust the Timeline so you can easily count off the

number of frames or seconds you want to overlap.

2. As before, trim back the right edge of the left-hand

clip, both video and audio, by the overlap interval.

Chapter 5: Video clips 95

3. Lock the audio track. Now drag the right-hand edge

of the same clip’s video back to the right by the

overlap interval.

4. Unlock the audio track.

The audio now cuts away to the second clip ahead

of the video.

Note: The procedures described above for performing

the L-cut and the J-cut are not the only possibilities.

With the J-cut, for example, another method would be

to trim the right-hand clip to the desired start point of

the video then, with the video track locked, drag the

audio portion leftwards to overlap the audio of the left-

hand clip.

USING VIDEO EFFECTS

Most video editing consists of selecting, ordering and

trimming video clips, of connecting clips with

transition effects and combining them with other

materials such as music and still images.

Sometimes, though, you also need to modify the video

images themselves, manipulating them in some way to

achieve some desired effect. Studio’s Video effects tool

provides an extensive set of plug-in video effects that

can be applied either to video or still images. See page

101 for descriptions of the basic set of effects supplied

with Studio.

The Video effects tool is the seventh tool in the

Video toolbox. It has two main areas: at the left,

an effects list showing which effects are already

96 Pinnacle Studio 9

attached to the currently-selected clip(s), and at the

right, a parameters panel where you can tune the effect

as required.

Video effects vs. audio effects

In most respects, the Video effects tool and the Audio

effects tool work identically, except for the type of

material they apply to.

Working with the effects list

Each video or image clip in your project can be

modified by one or more video effects. Each effect is

applied to the original image in turn, in the order in

which they are listed on the Video effects tool.

The checkboxes next to each effect name allow you to

enable and disable effects individually without have to

remove them from the list (which would cause any

customized parameter settings to be lost). In the above

Chapter 5: Video clips 97

illustration, the “Speed” effect has been disabled while

the other two effects on the list remain in force.

Adding and deleting effects

To add an effect to the list for the

current clip, click the Add new effect

button, which opens an effects browser on the right-

hand side of the tool window.

Click an item in the browser’s Category list to display

the names of the individual effects in that category.

Select the effect you want, then click the OK button to

add the effect.

To remove the currently-selected effect from

the list, click the delete effect (trashcan) button.

The Video Effects browser is open here to the “Fun

Effects” page. Entries having a padlock symbol are

premium effects requiring separate purchase. In the

illustration, variants of the padlock symbol indicate

effects belonging to the Plus and Mega expansion

packs, which both offer effects in several categories.

Premium video and audio effects, like other locked

content in Studio, can be used freely, but cause a

“watermark” graphic to be added to the video when

played back. If you want to use the effect in an actual

98 Pinnacle Studio 9

production, you can purchase an activation key without

leaving Studio. For information about purchasing

locked video and audio effects, and other premium

content for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

Changing the order of effects

The cumulative result of using more than one

effect on the same clip can vary depending on

the order in which the effects are applied. With

the up and down arrow buttons to the right of

the effects list, you can control the position of each

effect in the processing chain. The buttons apply to the

currently-selected effect.

Changing effect parameters

When an effect is selected in the effects list, the

parameters panel on the right-hand side of the Video

effects tool window provides controls for adjusting the

effect’s parameters, if any.

The controls for the basic library of effects supplied

with Studio are described below (beginning on page

103). Add-on effects are described in their own on-line

documentation, which you can access from the

Chapter 5: Video clips 99

parameters panel by pressing function key F1 or

clicking the help button at the top left of the

parameters panel.

Note: Some plug-in effects may provide their own

parameter windows with specialized controls. In those

cases, the parameters panel on the effects tool displays

a single Edit button, which accesses the external editor.

Using parameter presets

In order to simplify the use of parameters, many effects

offer presets that let you configure an effect for a

particular use simply by selecting a name from a list.

Often, the quickest way to configure an effect is to start

with the preset that comes closest to what you want,

then fine-tune the parameters by hand.

Resetting effects: A special type of

preset is the factory default setting of

each effect. The default can be restored at any time by

clicking the Reset button at the bottom of the

parameters panel.

Fading effects in and out

You can smooth the application of an effect by fading

it in at the beginning of the clip, fading it out at the end

of the clip, or both.

When an effect fades in, some or all of its numeric

parameters start out at neutral, default values (usually

100 Pinnacle Studio 9

zero). As the clip begins to play, each affected

parameter gradually approaches its configured value,

until by the end of the fade duration the effect is at full

strength. Fading out reverses the process, by moving

from the configured to the neutral values in the closing

portion of the clip.

The durations for fades are set in seconds and frames

using the counters at the bottom of the parameters

panel for the effect. Fades can be set to any length, but

the total of the fade in and the fade out must be less

than or equal to the total duration of the clip.

To turn a fade off, set the corresponding fade counter to

zero.

Previewing and rendering

While you are working with the Video effects tool,

choosing effects and adjusting parameter settings, the

Player gives a dynamically-updated preview of the

current frame in your movie. Previewing a single frame

may not be very revealing when you are working with

the Time effects (page 105), or effects that evolve over

the duration of the clip (like the Water drop effect,

page 111).In those cases, you will need to play back the

clip to see the full impact of the effect you are applying.

Because many effects require intensive calculation, a

fully smooth and detailed preview of the full clip won’t

be instantaneously available in most cases. Each time

effects are added or removed, or settings are changed,

Chapter 5: Video clips 101

Studio commences “rendering” the clip –

recalculating its final appearance – in the

background without interrupting your

workflow. The progress of rendering is

indicated by a colored bar that advances from

left to right along the Timescale above the

clip in the Movie Window.

Options affecting background rendering are provided

by the Edit options panel (Setup ¾ Edit). See

“Rendering” on page 258 for details.

VIDEO EFFECTS – THE BASIC SET

Your starter library of video effects is divided into five

categories:

• Cleaning effects help correct defects in the source

video, such as noise and camera shake.

• Time effects change the tempo of playback without

affecting the appearance of the video frames

themselves.

• Color effects let you modify the coloration of a clip,

whether subtly or dramatically.

• Fun effects like Water drop and Lens flare provide

extra scope for creativity and fun in your movies.

• Style effects like Emboss and Old film let you apply

distinctive visual styles for added impact.

Availability: In the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio, the Time,

Color, Fun and Style effects are rendered with a “watermark”

overlying the video until unlocked by purchasing the appropriate

activation key. See page 11 for details. The effects in the Overlay

group provide the underlying functionality for the overlay features

(Picture-in-picture and Chroma key) of Studio Plus. These features

are covered in Chapter 11: Two-track editing with Studio Plus.

102 Pinnacle Studio 9

Building your effects library

Studio’s plug-in architecture means that you can

continue to add new effects to your video effects

library as they become available. Expansion packs of

effects from Pinnacle and other vendors will integrate

seamlessly with the program.

Some expansion effects are shipped with Studio as

locked, premium content. These include Pinnacle’s

Plus and Mega video effect packs, and a variety of

third-party effects. Such effects can be previewed in

Studio as usual, but are “watermarked” with a special

graphic during playback.

Purchasing an activation key will remove the

watermark. This can be done without leaving Studio.

For more information about obtaining premium content

for Studio, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

When context-sensitive help documentation for an add-

on pack of video effects is available, it can be viewed

by clicking the help button at the top left of the

parameters panel for each effect.

Warning: Studio’s plug-in video effects are computer

programs. They are theoretically capable of actions

with the potential to damage or disrupt your system,

such as modifying or deleting files and editing the

system registry. Pinnacle advises against installing

third-party plug-ins except those from trusted vendors.

Chapter 5: Video clips 103

CLEANING EFFECTS

Cleaning effects help correct defects in the source

video, such as noise and camera shake.

Note: Studio’s video cleaning effects are general-

purpose filters designed to reduce the most common

problems found on a wide range of material. They are

not a panacea. Your results will vary depending on the

original material and the severity and nature of the

problems.

Auto color correct

This effect compensates for incorrect color balance in

your video. The idea is similar to the “white balance”

setting on a camcorder.

Brightness: Color correction may affect the brightness

of the image. You can apply a manual correction, if

needed, with this slider. (Technically, the control

modifies the “contrast gamma” of the image rather than

its actual brightness.)

Note: The Auto color correct effect may introduce

video noise into the clip as a side-effect of processing.

If this happens to a troublesome degree, add on the

Noise reduction effect described below.

104 Pinnacle Studio 9

Noise reduction

This plug-in applies a noise-reduction algorithm that

may improve the appearance of noisy video. In order to

minimize artifacts (image defects caused as a side-

effect of image processing), noise reduction is only

performed in areas of the frame where the amount of

motion falls beneath a certain threshold value.

Motion threshold: This slider governs the threshold

value. Moving the slider rightwards increases the

amount of motion the effect will tolerate, thus tending

to increase the proportion of the image that will be

affected. At the same time, the danger of introducing

unacceptable artifacts into the video is also increased.

Stabilize

Like the electronic image stabilization feature in many

digital camcorders, this effect minimizes jerkiness or

jitter from camera movement. The edges of the image

are discarded, and the center is magnified by about

20% to fill the frame. By adjusting the boundaries of

the selected region on a frame-by-frame basis, Studio is

able to compensate for the unwanted camera motion.

Studio’s Stabilize effect works by expanding a

selected area (inner lines) to full-frame size. The

area is adjusted from frame to frame to compensate

for slight aiming differences caused by camera shake.

Chapter 5: Video clips 105

TIME EFFECTS

Availability: Unrestricted use of the effects in this group is not

included with the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio. Until

unlocked with the appropriate activation key, a “watermark” graphic

appears over part of the video frame when clips using any of the

effects are played back. See page 11 for details.

Time effects change the tempo of playback without

affecting the appearance of the video frames

themselves.

Speed

This effect allows you to set the speed of any video clip

from one-tenth to five times normal. Set the slider to

the speed you wish to apply to the clip. Notice that the

clip changes length in the Movie Window as you vary

its speed.

Playback speed is increased by omitting frames.

Here, the movie will run at triple speed. In the first

nine frames of the original clip (top), two out of

every three frames will be dropped when the final

movie (bottom) is generated.

Conversely, you can change the playback speed of a

clip directly on the Movie Window Timeline. After

selecting the clip and opening the parameters panel for

106 Pinnacle Studio 9

the Speed effect, move your mouse pointer to the clip’s

right-hand edge. When the Speed change pointer

appears, click and drag the edge of the clip as though

you were trimming its length. You can select anywhere

from one-fifth to ten times the original duration. The

actual trimming of the clip – the range of frames it

incorporates – is not affected.

Playback speed is reduced by repeating frames. Here,

the movie runs at one-third speed as each frame is

played three times before moving onto the next.

Slowing a clip down can make its motion look choppy.

The Smooth motion option creates intermediate frames

that reduce the choppiness.

Strobe

The Strobe effect creates “frozen” motion like that of a

dancer under strobe lights. The Strobe repetition

parameter indicates how many times to repeat each

displayed frame in the currently-selected clip. The

maximum setting is 50.

The clip duration remains constant; Studio drops

frames to make room for the repeated ones.

Chapter 5: Video clips 107

The strobe effect omits some frames and repeats

others. Here, with strobing set to 2, six frames

(shaded) will be dropped from the first nine frames

of the clip (top). In the final movie (bottom), the

remaining frames are repeated twice each.

COLOR EFFECTS

Availability: Unrestricted use of the effects in this group is not

included with the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio. Until

unlocked with the appropriate activation key, a “watermark” graphic

appears over part of the video frame when clips using any of the

effects are played back. See page 11 for details.

Color effects let you modify the coloration of a clip,

whether subtly or dramatically.

Black and white

This effect subtracts some or all of the color

information from the original video, with results

ranging from partly desaturated (the “Faded” preset) to

fully monochrome (“Black and white”). The Amount

slider controls the strength of the effect.

108 Pinnacle Studio 9

Color correction

The four sliders in the parameters panel for this effect

control the coloration of the current clip.

Brightness: This is the relative intensity of light,

without regard to color. Try adjusting both brightness

and contrast to correct video that is underexposed or

overexposed.

Contrast: The range of light and dark values in a

picture or the ratio between the maximum and the

minimum brightness values. Moving the slider to the

left lowers contrast, forcing all areas of the image

towards medium brightness values. Moving the slider

to the right increases contrast, making dark areas darker

and bright areas brighter.

Hue: This is the visual property that allows us to

distinguish colors. The slider biases all the colors in a

clip towards red (right) or green (left). This can be

especially useful for correcting flesh tones in some

video.

Saturation: This is the quantity of pure color, ranging

from zero (no color at all – a gray scale) to fully

saturated (the maximum color intensity your output

system can deliver). Move the slider leftwards for a

tonally-reduced, washed-out look; or rightwards for

extra vibrancy.

Posterize

This effect lets you control the number of colors used

to render each frame of the clip, all the way from the

Chapter 5: Video clips 109

full original palette down to two colors (black and

white) as you drag the Amount slider from left to right.

Regions of similar color are coalesced into larger flat

areas as the palette shrinks.

Sepia

This effect imparts the appearance of antique

photography to the clip by rendering it in sepia tones

rather than full color. The strength of the effect is

controlled with the Amount slider.

FUN EFFECTS

Availability: Unrestricted use of the effects in this group is not

included with the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio. Until

unlocked with the appropriate activation key, a “watermark” graphic

appears over part of the video frame when clips using any of the

effects are played back. See page 11 for details.

Fun effects like Water drop and Noise provide extra

scope for creativity and fun in your movies.

Note: Some advanced effects in this group can only be

used under Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and are

not available with other Windows versions. The effects

with this restriction are Lens flare and Water drop.

110 Pinnacle Studio 9

Lens flare

This effect simulates the flaring seen when direct bright

light overexposes an area of a film or video image.

Tip: The parameters of this effect do not give good

feedback during stationary preview. You can use the

playback controls or the scrubbers to see the impact

they have during playback.

The Flare direction dropdown list sets the axis of

movement of the light to one of eight available

orientations.

The Size slider sets the size of the main light.

The icons in the Type box let you choose from a

number of models that determine the appearance and

coloring of the main light. You can remove the light

altogether by selecting the first option, though its

secondary effects – rays and reflections – should still

appear.

The eight Type options.

Noise

This effect adds a layer of simulated video noise,

reminiscent of the “snow” seen in faulty television

Chapter 5: Video clips 111

reception. The slider controls set the amount and

characteristics of the noise:

• Amount: Set the strength of the effect.

• Variation: Slightly vary the random noise pattern by

setting a different “seed” value for the randomizer.

• Transparency: Combine the original and the

modified images in any desired proportion. Moving

this slider rightwards moderates the overall effect.

Clear the Color noise checkbox if you don’t want to

disturb the original coloration of the image.

Water drop

This effect simulates the impact of a drop falling onto

the surface of water, producing expanding, concentric

ripples.

Stages in the Water Drop effect (“Big drop” preset).

Two sliders, Horizontal and Vertical, set the drop

position, and so the origin point of the waves.

The next three parameters let you set the number of

ripples (1-8, or Infinite), plus the Wave width and Wave

height. The “infinite” choice for the Wave count

dropdown means that rippling will continue for the full

duration of the clip, whereas with the numeric choices

the effect ends when the last ripple has expanded

beyond the edges of the video frame.

112 Pinnacle Studio 9

Finally, the Refraction slider controls the amount by

which water refracts the light as it enters and leaves the

wave. The resulting distortion increases as the slider

moves right.

STYLE EFFECTS

Availability: Unrestricted use of the effects in this group is not

included with the SE and QuickStart versions of Studio. Until

unlocked with the appropriate activation key, a “watermark” graphic

appears over part of the video frame when clips using any of the

effects are played back. See page 11 for details.

Style effects like Emboss and Old film let you apply

distinctive visual styles for added impact.

Note: The Stained glass effect in this group can only

be used under Windows 2000 or Windows XP. It is not

available with other Windows versions.

Blur

Adding blur to your video produces a similar result to

shooting out of focus. Studio’s Blur effect allows you

to add separate intensities of horizontal and vertical

blurring over the whole frame or any rectangular region

within it.

Chapter 5: Video clips 113

The Horizontal and Vertical sliders control the amount

of blur in their respective directions from zero (no blur)

to the maximum value.

The Left, Right, Top and Bottom sliders specify the

margins of the blurred region as percentages of the

frame width and height. Setting all the sliders to zero

applies the blurring to the entire frame. You can use

these sliders to blur out only a selected portion of the

image, such as a person’s face, an effect familiar from

TV news coverage.

Emboss

This specialized effect simulates the look of an

embossed or bas-relief sculpture. The strength of the

effect is controlled by the Amount slider.

Emboss can be used with the Color Correction effect to

adjust contrast and brightness (right).

Mosaic

This effect breaks each frame of the video image into

increasingly large squares of solid color as you move

the Tile size slider to the right. The color of each square

114 Pinnacle Studio 9

is determined by averaging the colors in the

corresponding area of the original.

Old film

Old movies have a number of traits that are usually

considered undesirable: grainy images caused by early

photographic development processes, spots and streaks

from dust and lint adhering to the film, and intermittent

vertical lines where the film has been scratched during

projection.

The Old film effect lets you simulate these defects to

lend your pristine video the appearance of movies that

have suffered the ravages of time.

The three options on the Color dropdown list let you

set the coloring of the video to full color, black and

white, or sepia.

Chapter 5: Video clips 115

Stained glass

This effect simulates the appearance of viewing the

video through a pane of irregular polygons arranged

into a mosaic.

The Horizontal and Vertical sliders control the average

dimensions of the polygonal “tiles” in the image. Move

the sliders to the right to increase the tile size, or left to

decrease it.

The Joint slider sets the width of the dark edging

between neighboring tiles from zero (no edging) to the

maximum value.

Three variations of the Stained Glass effect

THE SMARTMOVIE MUSIC VIDEO TOOL

Creating a music video seems like a big job, even with

the convenient editing features of Studio. Dozens of

brief clips must be carefully aligned to the beat of the

soundtrack, in order that the music and video are

properly coordinated.

With Studio’s SmartMovie tool, however, you

can construct a dynamic, beat-synchronized

116 Pinnacle Studio 9

music video almost instantly, in your choice of styles

and using any combination of video footage and music.

The tool walks you through the

creation process with simple step-

by-step instructions. To begin, use

the Album to locate the video

footage you want to include, and

drag the scenes onto the Movie

Window.

With the visuals in place, add a SmartSound, CD audio

or digital music (wav, mp3) clip to the background

music track. The duration of this clip determines the

length of your music video. For best results, your video

footage should be at least twice as long as your music

clip.

Select a style from the dropdown list at the top of the

tool window. The Use clips in random order option lets

you mix up the video without regard to its initial

sequence. This option, which is the default with some

styles, will give a relatively uniform texture to the

finished product, but at the expense of any narrative

continuity in the original material.

The Relative volume slider adjusts the prominence of

the background music track relative to the other audio

Chapter 5: Video clips 117

tracks. Move the slider all the way to the right if you

want to hear only the music track in the finished video.

The last configuration step is to enter the text to use for

the opening and closing titles. Each text line consists of

two edit fields. Use Tab and Shift+Tab to jump

between the left and right fields.

Finally, click the Create SmartMovie button and sit

back while Studio generates your movie.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 119

CHAPTER 6:

Two-track editing with

Studio Plus

Studio Plus brings the power of multitrack video

editing to Studio with the addition of an auxiliary video

track on the Movie Window Timeline called the

overlay track. Now you can use advanced picture-in-

picture and chroma-key effects while retaining the

convenience of Studio’s streamlined and intuitive user

interface.

Introducing the overlay track

Upon installation, the Timeline displays the five tracks

familiar to long-time Studio users: the video track with

its original audio track, and the title, sound effect and

music tracks.

To open the new overlay track, drag a video clip from

the Album n into the Movie Window and drop it on

the title track o. The overlay track instantly appears

with the clip properly positioned upon it p. (See

illustration next page.)

120 Pinnacle Studio 9

Drop video on the title track to open the overlay track.

Along with the overlay track, Studio adds an overlay

audio track to accommodate the video clip’s original

audio information.

Note: If you have used earlier versions of Studio, you

may remember that the Title track, as it is now called,

was formerly known as the “Title overlay track”, or

simply the “overlays track”, reflecting that titles on this

track are superimposed on the video. To simplify the

terminology, we now use “overlay” only to refer to the

second video track.

Once the overlay video and audio tracks have been

opened, Studio no longer accepts video clips on the

title track. Drag clips from the Album directly onto

either the video or overlay track as required.

Video clips on the video and overlay tracks.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 121

Displaying and hiding the overlay track

As we have just seen, the overlay video and audio

tracks are displayed when you add your first overlay

clip. Similarly, when you remove the last clip from

these tracks, Studio again hides them from view.

This default behavior help keep the Movie Window

uncluttered, but if you are making frequent use of

overlay video, you might prefer to have the track

visible at all times. This can be achieved by activating

the Always show overlay track command on the pop-up

“context” menu that appears when you click on the

Movie Window with your right mouse button.

A/B editing

The second video track in Studio Plus often simplifies

the editing tasks – insert edits, L-cuts and J-cuts –

discussed under “Advanced Timeline editing” on page

87.

An insert edit, for instance, becomes a trivial operation:

simply drag the clip to be inserted onto the overlay

track, and trim it as desired. (See “The Picture-in-

picture tool” below if you want the second video to

appear at reduced size so that only part of the main

video is obscured.)

122 Pinnacle Studio 9

An insert edit on the overlay track. The main video is

obscured while the B clip is playing.

In the J-cut and the L-cut, the audio portion of a clip

begins a little before (J) or a little after (L) the video.

They are often used together to soften the start and end

of an inserted clip.

Split editing on the overlay track. The overlay video

track has been locked, allowing the B clip’s audio to

be trimmed. The main audio can be reduced or

muted as needed.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 123

The Picture-in-picture tool

Picture-in-picture (often abbreviated to “PIP”) – the

inclusion of an additional video frame within the main

video – is a versatile effect familiar from its use in

professional TV productions.

Picture-in-picture with optional border, shadow and

rounded corners (left). Split-screen effects, like the

vertical split at right, are among the variations that

show off the versatility of the PIP tool.

To use picture-in-picture, start in the usual way by

dragging some video clips onto the Movie Window

Timeline. Drop the clips you want for background

video onto the video track. The foreground clip – the

PIP clip – goes on the overlay track underneath the

main clip.

Note: If you are planning a split-screen effect, like the

one shown at right in the illustration above, it doesn’t

matter which of the two clips goes on which track.

With the clips in place, select the foreground

clip and open the Picture-in-picture and

Chroma key (PIP/CK) tool. It is the sixth tool in the

Movie Window’s video toolbox. We usually refer to

124 Pinnacle Studio 9

the two aspects of the tool separately as the Picture-in-

picture and the Chroma key tools.

The Picture-in-picture and Chroma key (PIP/CK)

tool is really two tools in one. Because they are used

independently, we treat them as separate tools. This

illustration shows the PIP side of the tool. Click the

Chroma Key tab at the top of the tool to switch.

Picture-in-picture tool controls

Most of the left-hand side of the PIP tool is taken up

with an interactive layout area where you can both

view and modify the dimensions, placement and

cropping of the overlay video. The adjustments that

you make are reflected in the Player preview as you

work.

The layout area has two modes, selected by the Scale

and Crop radio buttons.

Scale mode: The gray, checked region in the layout

area represents the transparent portion of the overlay

frame, through which any underlying video can be seen.

In typical PIP usage, this accounts for most of the

screen, the overlay being sized small enough that the

main video is not unnecessarily obscured. You can

modify the PIP frame in three ways:

• Click on the PIP frame and drag it within the layout

area to reposition it within the main video frame.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 125

• Use the center control points on the edges of the PIP

frame to change its dimensions arbitrarily.

• Use the control points at the corners of the PIP frame

to change its size but not its proportions (“aspect

ratio”).

Crop mode: In this mode the layout area represents the

entire overlay frame, regardless of its actual

dimensions as set in Scale mode. The rectangle defined

by the control points shows which portion of the frame

is visible. Outside the visible area, the frame is semi-

transparent, letting the checked pattern show through.

As in Scale mode, the side control points allow for free

adjustment of the crop rectangle, whereas the corner

control points preserve its aspect ratio.

The PIP tool in Scale (L) and Crop (R) modes.

Presets: Choose a preset name to set up all the PIP

controls at once to the predetermined values associated

with that name. You can choose a preset as a first

approximation to your desired settings, then adjust

them manually until you get exactly what you want.

Transparency: Use this slider if you want the

underlying video to show through the overlay itself.

Moving the slider to the right makes the overlay, with

its border and shadow, increasingly transparent.

126 Pinnacle Studio 9

Border: These controls set the

color, width and transparency of

the border that will be drawn

around the overlay frame. Set the

width to zero (slider all the way to

the left) if you don’t want a border

at all. See page 135 for

information on how to use the

color controls.

The Softness slider controls the

amount of blurring on the outside edge of the border.

Move the slider left for a hard edge, or right to blend

the border with the background video. Check the

Rounded corners box if you want to round off the

corners of the PIP rectangle.

Shadow: These controls set the

color, width, angle and trans-

parency of the drop shadow effect

that gives the illusion of the

overlay frame floating above the

background video. Set the width

(using the Distance slider) to zero

if you don’t want a shadow to appear.

The dial-shaped shadow-angle control gives you eight

choices for the placement of the shadow relative to the

frame.

Enable picture-in-picture: This checkbox allows you

to turn the PIP effect on and off.

Apply to new clips: This option is handy when you

want to set up the same PIP settings for a number of

different clips. As long the option is checked, PIP will

automatically be applied to each new clip that you drag

onto the overlay track, using the same settings that

were displayed the last time the tool was open.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 127

The PIP effect interface

If you prefer to enter your PIP parameter settings

numerically rather than graphically, you can turn to an

alternative interface provided by the Video effects tool.

You can also combine the two methods, using the PIP

tool’s graphical interface to specify the initial settings,

then fine tuning them with the numerical effect

parameters.

The Picture-in-picture effect is found in the Overlay

Effects group. The available parameter settings are

almost identical to those offered by the PIP tool:

Parameter settings for the Picture-in-picture effect.

Position: The Horizontal and Vertical sliders set the

offset of the center of the PIP frame from the center of

the background frame.

Size: The Width and Height sliders set the size of the

PIP frame as a percentage of its original dimensions.

Cropping, if used, can further reduce the final size of

the PIP frame on the screen.

Cropping: The four sliders in this group trim away a

percentage of the original PIP video frame, allowing

you to remove unnecessary portions of the image and

focus on the main subject.

128 Pinnacle Studio 9

Video: The Transparency slider lets the main video

show through the PIP overlay to any desired degree.

Border: The parameters in this group are equivalent to

the Border settings on the PIP tool, allowing you to set

the overlay border’s color, thickness, transparency and

edge softness, and to select the rounded corners option

if desired. One bonus of the effect interface is that there

are separate Width and Height controls to control the

border thickness, rather than the single setting provided

by the tool.

Shadow: As with the Border group, these parameters

are essentially the same as those on the PIP tool, except

that the Horizontal offset and Vertical offset parameters

afford slightly more flexibility in positioning the

shadow than the tool’s Distance and Angle settings.

The Chroma key tool

Chroma key is a widely-used technique that allows

foreground objects to appear in a video scene even

though they were not present – and often could not

have been present – when the scene was shot. When an

action star tumbles into a volcano, or battles a giant

cockroach, or saves the crew with a daring space-walk,

the chances are that chroma key or a related technology

was involved in the scene.

Chroma key effects are often called “blue-screen” or

“green-screen” effects because the foreground action is

shot in front of a uniform blue or green background.

The background is then electronically removed, leaving

only the foreground action to be superimposed on the

actual background of the final scene, which has been

separately prepared.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 129

Blue and green are the generally-preferred colors for

chroma key use because their removal from an image

will not affect human skin tones, but in principle any

hue can be used with Studio’s chroma key tool.

Creating a scene with chroma key: A clip on the

video track (L) is chosen as the background for a

green-screen clip on the overlay track (C). Chroma

keying removes the green to complete the scene (R).

As with picture-in-picture, the first step in using

chroma key is to drag some video clips onto the

Timeline. Drop the clips you want for background

video onto the video track. The foreground clip, which

should have a uniform, highly-saturated background

like the center clip in the illustration above, goes on the

overlay track below the main clip.

With the clips in place, select the foreground

clip and open the Picture-in-picture and

Chroma key (PIP/CK) tool. It is the sixth tool in the

Movie Window’s video toolbox. Select the Chroma key

tab to display the controls you will need.

The chroma key side of the PIP/CK tool.

130 Pinnacle Studio 9

Chroma-key tool controls

The chroma key tool constructs a “mask”, shown in the

Key channel graphic on the left side of the tool, where

the transparent part of the frame is drawn in black, and

the opaque part – the part you will see in the final video

– is drawn in white. Most of the remaining controls are

used to define exactly which areas of the frame will be

included in the transparent part of the mask by setting

the “key color” and related properties.

Transparency: Use this slider if you want the

underlying video to show through the normally opaque

overlay. Moving the slider to the right makes the

overlay, with its border and shadow, increasingly

transparent.

Presets: The tool provides two presets, called “Green

screen key” and “Blue screen key”. These provide good

starting points for setting up the tool if you are using

one of the standard chroma key colors.

Key color: Use the color swatch or eye dropper buttons

to select the color that will be removed from the video

frame leaving only the desired foreground. See page

135 for information on how to use the color controls.

Rather than an actual color, you are really selecting

only a hue, without regard to the other properties –

saturation and intensity – that in combination with hue

make a complete color specification. The chosen hue is

shown by the position of the highlighted region on the

circumference of the color circle display.

Color tolerance: This slider controls the width of the

range of hues that will be recognized as belonging to

the “key color”. Moving the slider to the right increases

the angle of the arc covered by the highlighted region

on the color circle.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 131

The color circle on the Chroma key tool highlights a

range of hues (around the circumference) and color

saturation values (along the radius). Any pixel in the

overlay frame whose hue and saturation fall within

the highlighted region will be treated as transparent.

Saturation minimum: Saturation is the amount of hue

in a color. A pixel with zero saturation (corresponding

to the center of the color circle) has no hue: it falls on

the “gray scale”, whose extremes are white and black.

Chroma key works most effectively when the

background is highly and uniformly saturated, allowing

a high setting of this slider. In the real world, vagaries

of lighting and apparatus often result in a background

that falls short of the ideal. Moving the slider left

allows a wider range of saturation values to be matched,

indicated by a highlighted region that extends farther

towards the center of the color circle.

Softness: This slider controls the density of the

underlying video. When it is positioned all the way to

the left, the main video is entirely black. As you move

the slider to the right, the main video approaches full

density.

Spill suppression: Adjusting this slider may help

suppress video noise or fringing along the edges of the

foreground object.

Enable chroma keying: This checkbox allows you to

turn the chroma key effect on and off.

132 Pinnacle Studio 9

Apply to new clips: This option is handy when you

want to set up the same chroma key settings for a

number of different clips. As long the option is checked,

chroma key will automatically be applied to each new

clip that you drag onto the overlay track, using the

same settings that were displayed the last time the tool

was open.

The chroma key effect interface

If you prefer to enter your chroma key parameter

settings numerically rather than graphically, you can

turn to an alternative interface provided by the Video

effects tool. You can also combine the two methods,

using the chroma key tool’s graphical interface to

specify the initial settings, then fine tuning them with

the numerical effect parameters.

The Chroma key effect is found in the Overlay Effects

group. The available parameter settings are almost

identical to those offered by the chroma key tool, but

provides one more option, Invert Key. When this option

is activated, the normally opaque parts of the key are

treated as transparent, and the transparent parts as

opaque, so that the underlying video shows through

only where the foreground object in the overlay video

is not.

Parameter settings for the Chroma key effect.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 133

Chroma key tips

No matter how good your software may be, successful

use of chroma key depends on carefully setting up your

shot, and may require experimentation to get the details

just right. Here are some tips to get you started:

Light the backdrop as evenly as possible: Very often,

background coloring that looks flat to the naked eye

will prove on playback to have areas that are too dark

or too washed out to work well for chroma keying,

which favors even, saturated color. Use multiple lights

on the backdrop to ensure that it is well-lit across its

whole area and without hotspots. Diffuse sunlight, as

produced by a light overcast sky, can work well when

shooting out of doors is an option.

Note: A professional background cloth for chroma key

work is available as an inexpensive purchase at the

Pinnacle web-site.

Don’t let the subject shadow the screen: Arrange

your subject and foreground lighting so that no

shadows fall across the backdrop. The subject should

be not less than one metre (three feet) in front of the

backdrop.

Choose foreground colors carefully: Don’t have your

subject wear green if you are shooting on a green

screen, or blue for a blue screen; those areas will be

removed if they are taken to match the key color. You

have to be especially careful about this when working

with less even backdrops that require you to set a wider

color tolerance in the chroma keyer.

134 Pinnacle Studio 9

Make a smooth profile: Chroma keyers do better with

a smooth edge than a jagged or complex one, so try to

have your subject present a smooth profile to the

camera. Hair is particularly tricky, and should be

slicked down if possible. If the subject can wear a hat,

so much the better.

Setting up a chroma key shot. The backdrop is well

and evenly lit, and positioned well behind the subject

so that shadows do not interfere. The lighting of the

subject should be arranged to suit the background

that will be keyed into the shot.

Use tight framing: The wider your frame, the larger

your background needs to be, and the more difficult it

is to control your shot. One way to keep things simple

is to shoot your subject from the waist up rather than in

full view.

Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus 135

Selecting colors

To select colors in tools and effects that

provide a color parameter, click either on the

color swatch (left) or the eye dropper button. The first

opens a standard color picker dialog; while the second

lets you choose a color by clicking anywhere on the

screen.

Two ways to set colors: The Windows color picker

dialog (L) opens when you click the color swatch

button provided in some tools and effects. Click the

eye-dropper button to select a color from the Player

preview window or elsewhere using a mouse pointer

in the form of an eye-dropper (R).

Chapter 7: Transitions 137

CHAPTER 7:

Transitions

A transition is an animated effect that eases – or

emphasizes – the passage from one clip to the next.

Fades, wipes and dissolves are common types of

transition. Others are more exotic, and may even

involve sophisticated 3-D graphics.

Transitions are stored in their own section of the

Album (see “The Transitions section” on page 50). To

use a transition, drag it from the Album into the Movie

Window and drop it beside any video clip or still image.

A series of transitions (the icons between the video

clips) in Storyboard view.

In Timeline view, you can drop the transition on either

the main video track, the overlay track, or the title track.

On the video track, the transition provides a bridge

between two full-screen clips (or between one clip and

blackness if the transition has only one neighbor, as at

the beginning of the movie). On the overlay and title

tracks, the transition bridges two neighboring clips (or

one clip and transparency).

138 Pinnacle Studio 9

Diagram: Five snapshots from the life of a 2-second

diagonal wipe transition.

If a transition is to last for two seconds (the default

transition duration in a fresh Studio installation), the

second clip begins to run two seconds before the first

clip is finished. At the outset, only the first clip is

visible; by the end, the second clip has completely

replaced the first. The details of what happens in

between, as the first clip is gradually removed and the

second gradually appears, depend on the transition type.

Since the video clips overlap, the total duration of the

pair of clips is reduced by the duration of the transition.

Here is the same transition as above, this time using

actual video. For clarity, the transition boundary in

the three center frames has been emphasized in white.

Both clips continue to run while the transition is in

progress.

Transition types and their uses

Like all effects, transitions should be used not for their

own sake but to serve the overall needs of your movie.

Well-chosen transitions can subtly reinforce the

meaning of the movie and how it plays without

drawing attention to themselves. Observing the way

transitions are used in professionally-produced video

on television will suggest many ways to improve your

Chapter 7: Transitions 139

own movies. Generally, it is advisable to refrain from

overusing transitions that cause abrupt changes or

otherwise draw attention to themselves: there’s a big

difference between a subtle dissolve and a heart-shaped

wipe.

The basic transitions discussed below – fades, dissolves,

wipes, slides and pushes – are all among the first group

of transitions (the Standard Transitions) in the Album.

A set of more elaborate transitions is found in the

Alpha Magic group, which is the second entry in the

dropdown list of transition groups in the Album.

The many other groups on the list all belong to the

Hollywood FX, a large set of complex transitions

featuring three-dimensional graphics. The Hollywood

FX transitions are discussed at the end of this section

(page 140).

Cut: A cut is the minimal transition – an instantaneous

shift from one scene to the next. In Studio, it is the

default transition. A cut is appropriate when there is a

strong inherent connection between one clip and the

next; for instance, when the camera changes position or

angle within a scene.

Fade: This transition fades into the beginning of

a video clip from a black screen, or from the end

of a clip to a black screen. A fade dropped between two

clips creates a fade down followed by a fade up. The

fade transition is the first transition icon in the Album.

A fade is usually used at the beginning and end of a

movie, or when there is a large break in continuity, as

when a new section begins. For example, a movie of a

play might benefit from inserting a fade between acts.

140 Pinnacle Studio 9

Dissolve: A dissolve is similar to a fade, except

that the new scene begins to fade up even while

the old one is fading down. The visual overlap

this produces is less dramatic than a fade, but less

abrupt than a cut. A short dissolve can take the edge off

a cut, while a long dissolve is useful to suggest the

passage of time.

Wipe, slide and push: In each of

these standard transition types, the

incoming video is gradually

revealed behind an edge that moves across the frame in

a certain direction. The Album icons shown with this

paragraph represent a leftward wipe, a down-and-left

slide and a rightward push respectively.

In a wipe transition, both the old and new video occupy

their normal position in the frame throughout the

transition. The new video comes into view as the

transition edge crosses the frame, rather like new

wallpaper being rolled on over old.

A slide is similar to a wipe, but in this case the frame of

the new video slides across the screen until it reaches

its home position. The effect is reminiscent of a blind

being pulled down over a window.

A push is similar to a slide, except that the old video is

pushed out of the frame as the new video enters, like

advancing a filmstrip from one frame to the next.

Hollywood FX for Studio

Pinnacle Systems’ Hollywood FX includes a

large number of dramatic 3-D transitions and

effects. These are ideal for opening sequences,

sports and action footage, or music videos. Hollywood

FX satisfies professional expectations for quality

without sacrificing ease of use.

Chapter 7: Transitions 141

A basic set of fully-functional Hollywood FX is

included with Studio, along with “watermarked” demo

versions of many others. Apart from the watermark (a

special graphic superimposed on part of the video), the

demo effects can be previewed normally within Studio.

If you like the demo versions, you can purchase them

in the same way as other locked content in Studio. For

more information, see “Expanding Studio” on page 11.

Also available for purchase on-line is the HFX Creator

editing tool for Hollywood FX. This software lets you

customize your Hollywood FX, or create new ones

from scratch. HFX Creator includes advanced

keyframe editing for flight paths and all parameters,

powerful warp plug-ins, and a 3D text generator. You

can also create a wide range of 3D

MultiWindow Effects using external video

sources, and add real-life 3D objects and

lighting.

To initiate the purchase of HFX Creator, click

the Edit button in the Clip properties tool for

any Hollywood FX transition.

Previewing transitions in your movie

Studio lets you preview transitions in the Player. Just

drag and drop a transition into the Movie Window,

click the Play button (or hit [Space]) and see how the

transition works with your material.

You can also preview transitions by scrubbing through

them in the Player or on the Timeline of the Movie

Window.

142 Pinnacle Studio 9

Background rendering of Hollywood FX

Background rendering is an optional feature in which

the computation needed to create a detailed preview of

Hollywood FX transitions is carried out as a “back-

ground task” with no interruption of your workflow.

Options affecting background rendering, including the

option of disabling it altogether, are provided by the

Edit options panel (Setup ¾ Edit). See “Edit settings”

on page 256 for details.

Until the rendering of a transition is

complete, the Player will preview it at

reduced resolution and frame rate.

Studio gives you feedback on the

progress of background rendering with

a temporary progress bar graphic in the

Timescale. The bar gradually changes color as the

rendering operation progresses.

3-D acceleration for Hollywood FX

Studio can use the 3-D accelerator hardware on your

graphics board to speed up the computation of

Hollywood FX previews. If you have 3-D acceleration,

select it in the Edit options panel (Setup ¾ Edit).

If you don’t have hardware 3-D acceleration, the 3-D

calculations are performed in software, which generally

takes longer.

Audio transitions

Video clips in the Movie Window normally have

synchronous audio. In the absence of a transition, both

video and audio cut from one clip to the next. When a

Chapter 7: Transitions 143

transition is placed between two clips, the audio cross-

fades (the audio equivalent of a dissolve).

The only exception to this rule is the Fade transition,

which takes the audio completely out then back in

again.

Normal transitions cause a cross-

fade in the audio (left). In a Fade

transition (right), the audio fades

down then up along with the video.

The Ripple Transition command

This Studio feature is especially useful for creating a

quick slideshow from a set of still images, or a video

pictorial from a set of short clips. Such a presentation is

more interesting if you connect each pair of clips with a

transition. Ripple Transition gives you a quick and easy

way of achieving that.

Begin with a set of a clips on the Timeline, then add a

transition of the desired type between the first two clips.

Now select all the clips except the first, click on any of

them with the right mouse-button, and select Ripple

Transition from the pop-up menu.

144 Pinnacle Studio 9

Studio inserts a duplicate of the original transition

between each pair of selected clips.

TRIMMING TRANSITIONS

Although transitions are not true clips, they are handled

very similarly to clips within Studio’s editing

environment. Like clips, you can trim transitions either

directly on the Movie Window Timeline, or by using

the Clip properties tool.

See “Trimming on the Timeline using handles” on page

78 for a discussion of the first method. The maximum

allowed duration of a transition is one frame less than

the shorter of the neighboring clips.

Chapter 7: Transitions 145

Trimming with the Clip properties tool

The Toolbox ¾ Modify Clip Properties menu command

invokes the Clip properties tool for the selected clip.

For all transition types, this tool provides previewing

controls, and the ability to set two properties:

• To set the duration of the transition, change the value

in the Duration counter. A transition’s duration must

always be less – if only by a single frame – than the

shorter of its neighboring clips.

• The Name text field lets you assign a custom name

to the clip to replace the default one assigned by

Studio. The Name field is provided on the Clip

properties tool for all clip types. Clip names are used

by the Movie Window’s List view, and can also be

viewed as fly-by labels when your mouse hovers

over clips in the Storyboard view.

Many transition effects also support a “reverse

direction” option, which causes the transition animation

to run backwards, allowing a rotary wipe, for example,

to be either clockwise or counterclockwise. The

Reverse checkbox is enabled when the current

transition supports this option.

If you have purchased the HFX Creator application,

you can open it within Studio by clicking the Edit

button on the Clip properties tool for Hollywood FX

transitions. HFX Creator is an external editing program

with many options, whose use is described in its

accompanying documentation.

146 Pinnacle Studio 9

Previewing in the Clip properties tool

The Clip properties tool provides previewing controls

for transitions similar to those for video clips. See

“Trimming with the Clip properties tool” on page 83

for more information.

The preview areas show the last full frame of the

outgoing clip and the first full frame of the incoming

one. The preview frames update as you edit the

Duration field.

The transport controls let you preview the transition

effect in the Player either frame by frame or at full

speed. The Loop play/Pause button cycles through

the transition repeatedly at normal playback speed.

Both the counter (with its associated jog buttons) and

the scrubber give you direct access to any desired point

within the transition.

Chapter 8: Still images 147

CHAPTER 8:

Still images

Video usually means images in motion, but most

productions also include stationary titles or graphics,

and may include other types of still image as well.

The still images you can use in your movies include:

• All types of text captions and graphics, including

scrolling credits and “crawled” messages.

• Photos or drawings stored in disk-based image files.

• Individual video frames obtained with the Frame

grabber tool.

• “Disc menus” for DVD and VCD authoring. These

specialized images are covered in Chapter 9: Disc

menus.

Any of these still image types can be treated in either of

two ways, depending on which track you drop them

onto in the Movie Window Timeline:

• To add a full-screen image with a solid background,

add the image to the video track.

• To add an image so that it appears in your movie

with a transparent background, superimposed over

the clips on the video track, place it on the title track.

The color of the pixel in the top-left corner of the

image will be treated as transparent when the image

148 Pinnacle Studio 9

is placed on this track. For optimum results, you may

need to prepare the image in an image-editing

application beforehand.

Note: Studio Plus users have an additional option, the

overlay track, for adding their images to the Timeline.

See Chapter 6: Two-track editing with Studio Plus, for

details.

The Album has separate sections for titles, bitmapped

images and disc menus. All these resources are stored

as separate files on your hard drive. You can also create

titles and disc menus of your own in Studio’s Title

Editor and add them directly to your movie without

first saving them as separate files (see Chapter 10: The

Title Editor). Similarly, still video frames can be added

directly from the Frame grabber tool (see “The Frame

Grabber” on page 158).

Full-screen images

A full-screen image is one that is placed on the video

track. It fills the entire screen, replacing the video.

When the preceding video clip ends, Studio plays the

still image clip. The visual effect is that the video ends,

and is replaced by the graphic until the next clip begins.

Overlay images

An overlay image is one that is placed on the title track.

It is superimposed on the current video clip, without

replacing the video.

Chapter 8: Still images 149

Controlling transparency in overlay images

Viewed in the Album, or in a graphics editor, an

overlay image appears to have a solid background.

When you place it on the title track, however, the

background disappears, allowing the video to show

through.

Studio uses the color of the top-left pixel of the image

to determine which areas will be transparent. Pixels

that match this color are not drawn when the image is

rendered over video.

This scheme works well for still images that have

consistent solid background colors. Sometimes, you

may have to edit the top-left pixel of a bitmapped

image to get the transparency effect you want. Any

image-editing program – even the Windows Paint

accessory – will do the job.

The automatic transparency feature applies to images

that are imported into Studio via the Title Editor as

well as those that are accessed through the Album.

Making a slideshow

If you would like to assemble a quick slideshow of still

images or video clips, you may want to take advantage

of Studio’s Ripple Transition feature to quickly insert a

chosen transition between each pair of clips or images.

See page 143 for details.

150 Pinnacle Studio 9

Applying effects

Most of Studio’s plug-in video effects can be applied to

still images. (The exceptions are effects like Speed and

Strobe that only make sense for moving video.) See

“Using video effects” on page 95 for detailed

information.

EDITING STILL IMAGES

As with other types of clip, you can trim still images

directly on the Movie Window Timeline, or by using

the Clip properties tool.

See “Trimming on the Timeline using handles” on page

78 for a discussion of the first method. The difference

with a still image clip is that you can extend it to any

duration you choose, whereas a video clip can be no

longer than the original Album scene.

Effects like Blur, Posterize and Color correction can

be applied to still image clips of all types in the same

way as to video clips. See “Video effects – the basic

set” on page 101.

Editing image clip properties

The Toolbox ¾ Modify Clip Properties menu command

opens a version of the Clip properties tool appropriate

for the type of the currently-selected clip. The topmost

tool icon in the video toolbox can also be used.

Chapter 8: Still images 151

With bitmapped images, including ordinary photos and

image files, and with disc menus, double-click the clip

for a third way to access the tool. Double-clicking a

title, however, opens it directly into the Title Editor

instead.

All versions of the Clip properties tool allow you to set

the duration and name of the current clip, as follows:

• To set the length of time the still image is displayed,

change the value in the Duration counter.

• The Name text field lets you assign a custom name

to the clip to replace the default one assigned by

Studio. Clip names are used by the Movie Window’s

Text view, and can also be viewed on the fly-by

labels that appear when your mouse hovers over

clips in the Storyboard view.

See The Clip properties tool for disc menus is

described in Chapter 9: Disc menus. See Chapter 10:

The Title Editor for details about editing the properties

of titles.

Editing photos and graphics

The Clip properties tool for editing bitmapped images

allows you to perform several important image-

processing tasks:

• Zoom in on your pictures and photos in order to crop

away unneeded material and focus on only the

essential part of the image;

• Rotate the image in 90-degree increments to permit

the use of photos taken in “portrait” mode;

• Remove the “red-eye” effect that can occur when the

subject of a photograph looks directly into the

camera when the flash goes off;

152 Pinnacle Studio 9

• In Studio Plus, put together “pan-and-zoom”

animations in which a high-resolution image is

viewed as a succession of smoothly-connected close-

ups at various degrees of magnification. This

technique is closely associated with the well-known

documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

The Clip properties tool for photos has pan-and-

zoom controls for focusing on an area of interest. In

Studio Plus, pan-and-zoom can be animated to

create the effect of traversing the image from one

focus to another. In other versions of Studio,

animated pan-and-zoom can be “unlocked”, if

required, by purchasing an activation code.

If an image needs rotating by 90 degrees to

bring it into “landscape” mode (wider than

high), start by clicking one of the image

rotation buttons. If needed, click the button more than

once until the clip is properly oriented.

If you want to reframe the image, click directly on

the tool’s preview window and, while holding the left

mouse down, drag the image in any direction until it is

properly positioned. Release the button to complete

the operation. Next, use the Zoom slider to magnify or

reduce the image size as desired. Adjust the position

Chapter 8: Still images 153

and magnification with these controls until the image is

cropped and framed to your satisfaction.

The Reset button removes all your position and zoom

changes, restoring the original framing of the image.

The red-eye reduction feature helps restore

a natural appearance to photos in which the

subject’s eyes are tinged with red. (This

problem is caused by light from the flash unit bouncing

off the retina of the eye when the subject is looking

directly into the camera.)

To activate red-eye reduction, click the left button in

the red eye group. The button stays down when clicked.

Now click the image preview with the left mouse

button above and to the left of the area in which red-

eye should be applied. While holding the button down,

drag down and to the right until the area is fully

enclosed. When you release the mouse button, the red-

eye reduction effect is instantly applied within the

rectangle you have outlined.

It is usually not necessary to be highly precise when

marking out the red-eye reduction area. In fact, a larger

rectangle may even yield a better result than a smaller

one that encloses the eyes and no more. If the red-eye

reduction does not clear up the problem entirely on the

first attempt, try again with a different rectangle size.

Studio’s red-eye reduction algorithm provides excellent

results with a wide variety of photos. However, some

photos are better-suited to the process than others.

To remove red-eye reduction once applied, click the

right-hand button in the red eye group.

154 Pinnacle Studio 9

Animating Pan-and-zoom in Studio Plus

If you own Studio Plus, or purchase an activation key

by clicking the unlock button on the pan-and-zoom

controls, you can create effective animations from your

photos and graphic images. Use the highest-resolution

images available with this technique, since they allow

greater magnification levels before there is perceptible

loss of quality.

Start creating a pan-and-zoom

animation by clicking the

Animate from start to end

checkbox to activate the animation feature for the

current clip. This enables the Set start and Set end radio

buttons, with Set start initially selected. Use the pan-

and-zoom controls to set the framing you want to see at

the start of the clip. Finally, click the Set end button,

then use the controls to set up the framing you want for

the end of the clip.

When the clip is played back, Studio will generate the

intervening frames to connect your start and end views

in a smooth animation.

The procedure above describes the simplest form of

pan-and-zoom animation. Effective uses include:

• Moving from a full-frame photograph to a detail

view of a person or thing somewhere in the image.

This gives a similar result to zooming in while

shooting video. This might be used to prepare the

viewer for a sequence of shots exploring the same

close-up subject in multiple views, or providing

further close-ups of different parts of the same scene.

• Moving out from a detail to the full-frame view, as

though zooming out with the video camera. In the

Chapter 8: Still images 155

above scenario, this returns the viewer to the original

context, perhaps closing a chapter or episode within

your movie.

• Panning across a wide scene to absorb its details one

by one. This technique can be used to impart a sense

of discovery when a dramatic or humorous detail

finally comes into view.

Complex pan-and-zoom animations

When you apply pan-and-zoom to a number of copies

of the same image in succession, it is as though you are

taking your viewer on a guided tour. In effect you are

telling a story, one that gradually unfolds as you draw

attention to one detail after another.

Story-telling may be difficult or not, but implementing

your story in Studio is very simple. Once you have set

up the first clip, with the first pan-and-zoom “camera

move”, simply copy it as often as necessary, and

change the end setting for each clip.

You almost always want the start framing of a new clip

in the sequence to match the end framing of the

previous clip, in order that the sequence of moves will

be smoothly connected. On the second clip, and all

those that follow, click the Match previous clip button

wherever you want continuity.

In order to allow the movie to dwell on each detail for a

while after you pan to it, insert a non-animated copy of

the image between each move. Connect these static

clips into the sequence as usual with the Match

previous clip button.

156 Pinnacle Studio 9

The pan-and-zoom controls are used here to focus in

turn on four vignettes in the satirical painting “An

Election Entertainment” by English artist William

Hogarth. A fifth view pulls back to show as much of

the entire canvas as will fit in a wide-screen frame

without black sidebars. The tool automatically

generates smooth motion from one view to the next,

panning and zooming simultaneously as needed.

The pan-and-zoom effect interface

As an alternative to setting up your pan-and-zoom

animations with the Clip properties tool, you can enter

the start and end framing properties numerically with

the Pan and zoom video effect. This alternative

interface is provided by the Video effects tool. You can

also combine the two methods, using the tool’s

graphical interface to specify the initial settings, then

fine tuning them with the numerical effect parameters.

Chapter 8: Still images 157

The Pan and zoom effect is found in the Fun Effects

group. Most of the available parameter settings are

exactly parallel to those offered by the Clip properties

tool: you can set Zoom, Horizontal position and

Vertical position in both the Start and End parameter

groups.

You have an additional option in the Speed dropdown,

which sets a “velocity envelope” for the traversal from

the start to the end positions. With “Speed-up and

slow-down”, “Speed-up at start” and “Slow-down at

end”, the moving frame gradually accelerates to

“cruising speed” near the beginning of its motion, or

decelerates towards the end rather than stopping

abruptly, or both. The motion usually appears more

natural when one of these is applied than with the

remaining choice, “Constant speed”.

Parameter settings for the Pan-and-zoom effect.

158 Pinnacle Studio 9

THE FRAME GRABBER

The Frame Grabber can capture a still image from any

video capture source supported by Studio, or extract a

single frame from any video clip in your current project.

The grabbed frame can be added directly to your movie

or saved out to disk in any of a number of standard

graphics formats.

Once you have saved a grabbed frame to disk, you can:

• Use it in other software applications.

• Manipulate it in image-editing software.

• Import it back into your movies as a still image via

the Album or the Title Editor.

The Frame grabber tool

Use the Frame grabber tool in conjunction with

the Player. To access it, open the Toolbox and

click the Frame grabber button.

Play the movie or source video until the frame you

want is displayed in the Player, then click the Grab

button. The grabbed frame appears in the tool’s

preview area, ready to be added to your movie or saved

as a file on disk.

Grab from: Select a source for the frame grabber by

clicking either the Movie or the Camcorder button at

the top of the tool. Choosing Camcorder means that the

frame grabber will use your current video source, as

Chapter 8: Still images 159

configured in the Capture Source options panel (page

248) and the Capture Format options panel (page 252).

The Frame grabber in grab-from-movie mode. When

you grab from an external source (e.g. a camcorder),

the Camcorder Controller is displayed. With DV

equipment, you can navigate the source tape from

within the tool.

Transport controls: If your source video is a DV

camcorder, MicroMV camcorder or VCR connected to

a 1394 port, Studio provides convenient on-screen

transport controls for locating the frame you wish to

grab. For a description of these controls see “The

Camcorder Controller” on page 20.

Reduce flicker: If the source video of the frame grab

contains a large amount of motion, the grabbed frame

may show flickering, which can be reduced or

eliminated by checking the Reduce flicker option.

Because Reduce flicker also reduces resolution

somewhat, you should not use the option if the overall

result is undesirable for a particular image.

Grab: Click the Grab button when you have located

the frame you want to grab in the Player and

configured the Reduce flicker option. The grabbed

160 Pinnacle Studio 9

frame is displayed in the tool’s preview area, and the

two output buttons (Add to Movie and Save to Disk) are

enabled.

Add to movie: This button inserts the grabbed frame

into the Movie Window video track ahead of the

currently-selected clip.

Save to disk: This button opens a Save As dialog so

that you can select a folder, file name and image format

for the file in which the grabbed frame will be stored.

The dialog also provides controls that let you set the

resolution of the saved image to any of several standard

sizes, to the original size of the grabbed frame, or to a

custom size that you enter.

If the “aspect ratio” (the ratio of the width to the height)

of the size you choose is different from that of the

grabbed frame, the image is stretched as necessary.

This can introduce visible distortion of shapes; for

instance, people may appear either unnaturally thin or

unnaturally squat.

Chapter 9: Disc menus 161

CHAPTER 9:

Disc menus

With the advent of the DVD, VCD and S-VCD disc

formats, video has become an interactive medium, with

new possibilities for both videographer and audience.

Developing – “authoring” – a disc in one of these

formats means going beyond the old idea of creating a

movie to be viewed in strict sequence from beginning

to end. Now the audience can decide which parts of the

movie to view, and in what order.

The essential new feature that makes disc authoring

possible is the menu. A particular disc may have one, a

few or many menus, each consisting of a still image or

short video sequence. Areas within the menus, called

buttons, can be selected by the viewer to activate links

to other content on the disc. Activating a link causes an

immediate transfer to any of:

• A normal video sequence, which in this context is

called a “chapter”. Chapter buttons often show a

thumbnail frame from the video to which they link.

• Another page of the same menu. Multiple pages are

used when a menu has too many buttons to fit on a

single page.

• A different menu.

162 Pinnacle Studio 9

Unlike any other kind of clip, menus automatically

loop. When the end of a menu clip is reached during

disc preview or playback, it is immediately restarted.

This produces a jump in the playback position affecting

all clips that run simultaneously with the menu,

regardless of type – video (if the menu is an overlay),

audio or still image.

The following diagram is patterned after the Movie

Window storyboard. It shows how the menu pictured

above, which appears in the diagram as M1, might fit

into the overall scheme of a simple movie with two

menus.

Each menu is followed in the movie by several chapters,

all but one consisting of a single clip. Our menu, M1,

Chapter 9: Disc menus 163

has links to five chapters. Our menu is designed to

display two chapter links per page, so three pages are

required to accommodate all the links. (The second

page is the one appearing in the illustration.) We’ve

also given each page a link to the M2 menu.

The simple layout of this short movie can easily be

extended to organize large numbers of clips. Much

more complex movies are also constructed from the

same elements: multi-page menus with links to

chapters and to other menus.

Availability: Discs with multiple menus are not supported in the SE

and QuickStart versions of Studio.

Disc authoring in Studio

For the purposes of editing in Studio, a disc menu is

just one more type of clip. As with titles, you can use

or adapt the menus provided in the Album, or construct

your own from scratch in the Title Editor (see Chapter

3: The Album and Chapter 10: The Title Editor).

To get a feeling for what is involved, try creating the

pair of “instant” projects described below. You don’t

have to go as far as making discs, but you can preview

your movie using the DVD playback controls on the

Player (see “The DVD Player Control” on page 167).

Instant video scene catalog: In an empty project,

multi-select a good number of scenes from the Album

and drag them onto the video track. Now switch to the

Disc Menu section of the Album (the bottom tab) and

drag any of the menus to the beginning of the Timeline.

When Studio asks if you would like to “automatically

164 Pinnacle Studio 9

create links to each scene after the menu”, click Yes

(see “Using menus from the Album” on page 165). A

new track appears at the top of the Timeline, and a

small “flag” appears over each of your clips. These

represent links from the menu you just added. And

that’s it – sit back and watch the show.

Instant slideshow: This time, start in the Still Images

section of the Album. Drag as many images as you like

onto the video track of an empty project, then drag in

any disc menu as the first clip on the Timeline, and

again click Yes when asked if you want links

automatically created. Turn next to the Transitions

section of the Album, pick any transition, and drag it

between the menu and the first of your still images.

Finally, select all of the still images (click the first,

then shift-click the last), click with the right mouse

button, and choose Ripple Transition from the pop-up

menu. Instant slideshow!

Menus and titles

The similarity noted on page 163 between titles and

disc menus is not just on the surface: a menu is

essentially “a title with buttons”. In fact, any still image

type can be used as the basis for creating a menu within

the Title Editor.

Like titles, menus can be used either in full-screen

mode on the video track or as overlays on the title track.

When a menu is used as an overlay, its background

image is suppressed: only buttons, captions and

graphics are displayed. This allows the menu to have a

moving video background.

Chapter 9: Disc menus 165

Using menus from the Album

The Disc Menus section of the Album contains a

collection of menus that have been designed for

particular occasions, authoring styles and chapter

counts. Each menu provides a background picture, a

title, a set of chapter buttons (generally with spaces for

thumbnail frames), and a pair of Next page and

Previous page buttons.

The number of chapter buttons per page varies from

one menu design to another, so one criterion for

selecting a menu is the number of clips you want it to

handle. It is generally more convenient for the viewer

to browse a few menu pages with many buttons per

page than many pages of a few buttons each.

During editing, you see all the buttons that the menu

provides. During playback, the only buttons visible are

those to which you have assigned links.

Menus with fewer buttons have more space for

captions; those with many buttons will have abbrevi-

ated captions or none at all. Whether you need captions,

and if so whether they should be simple (“Chapter 1”)

or descriptive (“Cutting the cake”) is a matter of your

authoring style and the content of your movie.

In the VCD and S-VCD formats, the viewer must select

chapters numerically (by keying numbers on the remote

control), so it is usual to provide button captions that

include the chapter number when authoring for these

formats.

166 Pinnacle Studio 9

Dropping menus on the Timeline

When you drag a menu from the Album and drop it

onto the video track or the title track, Studio gives you

the option of automatically generating links to all video

clips to the right of the menu on the Timeline. Multiple

clips are combined into chapters if necessary to achieve

the minimum chapter length you specify.

This is the quickest, easiest way to link in a disc menu,

but may not be what you want in a particular authoring

situation. If you check the Don’t ask me again

checkbox, your choice of Yes or No becomes the

default action when you drag in a menu in future. You

can also set the default action, or reinstate the

confirmation window, in the When adding a menu area

of the Edit options panel (see “Edit Settings” on page

256).

To create your chapter links manually, rather than

using the automatic linking feature, use the Set disc

chapter command on the pop-up context menu for each

video clip you want to add, or use the Set chapter

button on the Clip properties tool for disc menus.

Chapter 9: Disc menus 167

The DVD Player Control

Studio’s Player provides a specialized

set of controls for previewing movies

that contain menus, patterned after the button layout on

a typical DVD remote control. Switch the Player to

DVD mode by clicking the DVD toggle button at the

bottom right corner of the Player.

A grouping of DVD controls appears and activates

below the Player preview screen:

Here are the functions of the individual DVD controls:

Main menu: Jumps to the first menu in your

movie and begins (or continues) playing.

Previous menu: Jumps to the most recently

active menu and begins (or continues) playing.

Clicking the button again jumps back from the menu to

the most recent clip.

Previous chapter, Next chapter: Clicking the

Previous chapter button takes you to the start of

the current chapter if you aren’t there already.

Click again to move on to the previous chapter. The

Next chapter button takes you forward to the next

chapter in the movie. Within a menu, these buttons step

backwards and forwards respectively through the menu

pages.

168 Pinnacle Studio 9

Button selection: The four arrow

controls in this cluster move the on-

screen cursor within a disc menu to

select one of its buttons. The oval

button in the middle of the cluster activates the

currently-selected on-screen button, which is indicated

by highlighting.

Activating menu buttons directly

One feature of the Player that set-top DVDs don’t have

is the ability to click the buttons directly on the screen.

Whenever a button is visible in the Player preview area

in DVD mode, you can click it to follow the button link.

Editing menus on the Timeline

Menus can be trimmed on the Timeline just like any

other still image clip (see “Trimming on the Timeline

using handles” on page 78).

Setting the clip duration is generally less crucial for

menu clips than for other types, since menus cycle

during playback while waiting for user input. If you

want a looping video background or looping audio with

your menus, though, you will want to match the menu’s

duration to that of the clips involved.

The menu track

Menu buttons link to particular points within your

movie. Those points are marked by flags on the menu

Chapter 9: Disc menus 169

track, which materializes above the video track the first

time a menu is added to your movie (and vanishes

again if all menus are removed).

The menu itself is marked by a colored rectangle in the

menu track (M1 and M2 in the illustration above). Each

link to a chapter is shown by a “C” flag. Here is a

close-up of the first part of the Timescale, showing the

rectangle identifying the first menu, and the chapter

flags for three of the clips it links to.

The next part of the Timescale in the overview

illustration above includes the fourth chapter link from

M1, and a link (the left-pointing arrow) from the end of

the previous clip back to the menu. A result of setting

this link is that the C4 clip can only be reached from

the menu. The C4 clip is followed by menu M2, which

– along with the flags that belong to it – is

automatically drawn in a new color.

Availability: Discs with multiple menus are not supported in the SE

and QuickStart versions of Studio.

Editing on the menu track

Flags on the menu track can be moved by dragging

them with the mouse, thereby changing the location at

which the link takes effect in the movie. When a video

clip is moved, any flags attached to the clip are moved

along with it.

170 Pinnacle Studio 9

To create a link:

Right-click the menu track or the video track and

choose either Set Disc Chapter or Set Return to Menu,

depending on the kind of link you want to create.

Return to menu links are always created at the end of

the current clip, rather than at the exact point where

you click. You’ll rarely want to return from the middle

of a clip, but you can drag the link flag to a new

position if the occasion arises.

To reposition a link:

Click the flag for the link and drag it along the menu

track to its new position.

To delete a link:

• Right-click the link flag and choose Delete from

the pop-up menu; or,

• Select the flag, highlighting it, then press the Delete

key.

Editing with the Clip properties tool

The Clip properties tool for disc menus allows

you to create, edit and fine-tune chapter links,

and provides access to the Title Editor for adjusting the

visual content of the menu.

Like the Clip properties tool for other clip types, this

tool lets you set a custom name for the menu by editing

the Name field and trim the clip by editing the

Duration field.

Chapter 9: Disc menus 171

The Edit menu button at the top right of the tool opens

the menu in the Title Editor. There you can change

every visual aspect of the menu: its background and

button images, the appearance and contents of its

captions, and more. For full information about the

many capabilities of the Title Editor, see Chapter 10:

The Title Editor.

The preview area on the left side of the tool shows how

the menu looks and also has interactive features you

can use when establishing chapter links. (These are

described on page 174 under “Chapter-editing

controls”.) The other controls are in four groups:

• Menu-previewing controls

• The Menu type options

• Link property controls

• Chapter-editing controls

Menu-previewing controls

These controls are located below the preview area.

Page selector: For menus with multiple

pages (those with more links than a single

page can accommodate) the arrow buttons let you

select which page is active in the preview area. You

can select any page in the menu for which links have

been defined.

172 Pinnacle Studio 9

Alternative methods of selecting menu pages:

• Step through the pages by clicking the page link

buttons in the preview area.

• Use the Button selector control (described on page

172) to choose a button on any page of the menu.

Show link numbers checkbox: Check this

box to cause link numbers to be displayed in

the preview area over every button in the menu. The

link numbers match the format and color of the chapter

flags on the menu track.

The Menu type options

This pair of options determines whether you or Studio

will organize the chapter links for this menu.

If you choose Auto scene index, Studio will ensure that

your chapter links are in the same order on the menu as

they are in the movie itself, even if you shuffle the

order of the clips in the Movie Window. With the

Manual setting, the order in which chapters are shown

on the menu is up to you.

Tip: If you want to sort your chapter links yet still

retain future control of their order, you can click Auto

scene index first (to sort the links), then Manual.

Link property controls

The controls in this area set the display properties of

the chapter links on the menu.

Button selector: Every link button in your

menu, no matter which page it is on, has a

unique sequence number. Use the arrow buttons on this

Chapter 9: Disc menus 173

control to select the menu button you want to work on.

The selected button is highlighted in the preview area.

You can also select a button by clicking on it in the

preview area.

Button caption text field: Edit the text

for the current button without going to

the Title Editor. The “#” character in button captions

has a special meaning: Studio replaces it with the

button’s sequence number. Use this feature to ensure

that your buttons are correctly numbered regardless of

changes in the layout of the menu. To edit other

characteristics of a button caption – its position, font,

and styling – click the Edit menu button to invoke the

Title Editor.

Set thumbnail button: By default, the

thumbnail frame displayed on a menu button is

the frame to which the button links. You can choose

any frame in your movie to be the thumbnail, however.

Just move the Timeline scrubber to the exact frame you

want (as shown in the Player), and click the set

thumbnail button.

Moving thumbnails checkbox: Check this

option if you would like your menu’s

buttons to show moving video from their target

chapters rather than a static thumbnail frame.

Because this feature requires that the moving

thumbnails be pre-rendered, the results won’t

appear immediately when you preview your

movie in the Player. Instead you will see a

“background rendering” progress bar appear

in the Timescale over the menu clip. The bar

gradually changes color as the rendering

operation progresses. Editing is not interrupted –

Studio carries out the rendering while you work.

174 Pinnacle Studio 9

For more on background rendering, see “Hollywood

FX for Studio” (page 140); and “Edit Settings” (page

256).

Chapter-editing controls

The controls in this area select or modify the individual

chapter buttons within a menu.

The Set chapter buttons: These

buttons set or sever the link

between the currently-selected chapter button on the

menu and its target clip.

To set a link: Position the Timeline scrubber within a

menu, video or still image clip, and click the Create

chapter button. For video and still image clips, the

chapter point is set to the exact location of the scrubber

within the clip.

To clear a link: Click the Delete chapter button.

Set return button: This creates a “return-to-

menu” link at the end of the current clip, which

is where you almost always want it. During playback,

the link causes an immediate jump to its menu. To

create a return-to-menu link in the Clip properties tool,

position the Timeline scrubber in the clip where you

want the link, and click Set return to menu.

The Return after every chapter checkbox: Set this

option to add a return-to-menu link after every chapter

in this menu. Clearing the checkbox removes all the

return-to-menu links for this menu, whether they were

added manually or automatically.

Creating links with drag-and-drop

The Clip properties tool for disc menus supports drag-

and-drop as a quick and convenient way to establish

links for menu buttons.

Chapter 9: Disc menus 175

To create a link using drag-and-drop:

• Click the clip in the Movie Window that you want

to link to, and drag it onto a button in the Clip

properties tool preview area. The button is linked to

the first frame of the clip. Or,

• Click the button for which you want to create a link,

and drag it onto a clip in the Movie Window. In this

case you are linking to the point within the clip at

which you “drop” the button – generally not the first

frame.

The Disc menu tool

If you open this tool while a menu is selected, it

is equivalent to opening the Clip properties tool;

otherwise, it provides a Create Menu button that takes

you into the Title Editor to begin the process of

creating a new disc menu.

Because developing a menu is a relatively intricate

operation, Studio takes the opportunity to remind you

that pre-built menus are available in the Album.

When you decide that this reminder is no longer needed,

check the Don’t ask me this again box before clicking

the OK button.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 177

CHAPTER 10:

The Title Editor

Studio’s built-in Title Editor is a powerful facility for

creating and editing titles and other graphics. Its

extensive suite of text and image effects and tools

provides endless possibilities for the visual design of

your movie.

The Title Editor is not limited to creating passive titles.

For disc projects, you can also add and edit the special

buttons needed for handling viewer interaction with the

menus of VCD, S-VCD and DVD movies.

Creating a title in the Studio 9 Title Editor tool. The

large area containing the picture and the text is the

Edit Window, while the panel occupying most of the

right-hand side is the Title Editor Album. Other

controls are in clusters around the Edit Window.

178 Pinnacle Studio 9

Launching the Title Editor

Reflecting the versatility of the Title Editor is the

variety of ways of accessing it from Studio’s Edit mode,

using either one of the tools in the Video toolbox (see

page 69) or a mouse command on one of the Timeline

tracks (see page 63).

• To create a full-screen title or menu: Select Go to

Title/Menu Editor from the right-button context

menu in the Timeline video track.

• To create an overlay title or menu: Double-click

the Timeline title track.

• To create a title or menu from the toolbox: Open

the Create title tool and click Title Overlay or Full

Screen Title.

• To edit a full-screen title: Double-click the title in

any Movie Window view, or right-click the title and

select Go to Title/Menu Editor.

• To edit a full-screen menu: Double-click the menu

in any view and click the Edit Menu button, or right-

click the menu and select Go to Title/Menu Editor.

• To edit an overlay title or menu: Double-click the

clip on the title track or in List View, or right-click it

in any view and select Go to Title/Menu Editor.

• To edit a title or menu from the toolbox: With the

clip open in the Clip properties tool, click the Edit

Menu or the Edit Title button.

If the list seems overwhelming, don’t let it concern you.

In practice, getting to the Title Editor by the nearest

available means will give the result you want. If you do

accidentally create an overlay when you want a full-

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 179

screen title or menu, or vice versa, just drag it onto the

other Timeline track. If you find yourself creating a

title when you wanted a disc menu, you can easily

switch over in the Title Editor.

THE TITLE EDITOR CONTROLS

The main Title Editor controls are laid out in clusters

around the Edit Window (see the picture on page 177).

Title-type buttons

The four buttons in this cluster sit

on the left side of the screen above

the Title Editor’s Edit Window. Only one of them can

be selected at a time. Choose the first button if you are

creating a still title. The second creates a roll, in which

the title text and graphics travel upwards on the screen

as the title displays, like the credits at the end of a

move. The third creates a crawl, in which the title is

displayed as a single line of text moving from right to

left across the screen like the bulletins on a TV news

show.

Availability: Rolls and crawls are not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

The fourth button is for creating disc menus, which you

can usefully think of as “titles with buttons”. In fact, a

180 Pinnacle Studio 9

menu is just like any other title except for two

attributes:

• A menu has at least one button. A title has none.

Adding a button to a title turns it into a menu, and

deleting the last button on a menu turns it into a title.

By the same token, if you click the Menu button

while editing a title, Studio automatically adds a

button to the title.

• A menu cannot have rolling or crawling text. The

Title Editor does not allow you to add menu buttons

to a rolled or crawled title.

Object toolbox

This cluster of four Title Editor tool

buttons is located at left below the Edit Window.

The first tool (the arrow) is used for

all editing operations upon the

currently selected object. A selected

object is surrounded by a number of

control points with which you can

change its size, position, proportions,

and other geometrical features.

The other three tools are for creating objects in the Edit

Window – text boxes, ellipses and rectangles.

Each is used in the same general way.

Click one of the three tools, then click

the Edit Window at the point where

one corner of the object should be.

Drag the mouse to outline the new

object as indicated by the dotted line.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 181

When the object has the size and proportions you want,

release the mouse. Whatever its type, the object is

created with the specified dimensions.

Its other attributes – color, shading,

shadow, etc. – are determined by the

currently selected look in the Title

Editor Album. All attributes can later

be changed at will.

After the object is created, the object tool you used

deselects, and the selection arrow again becomes active.

The object itself is selected – shown in the usual way

by its control points – and can now be manipulated

with the mouse.

Reordering objects in three dimensions

Because objects can overlap

one another, it is easy to get

into situations where an object

that should be completely

visible is partly or wholly

obscured by one or more other

objects. In such cases, use the

four reordering commands on the Title Editor’s Layers

menu. These commands affect the currently-selected

object, symbolized by rectangle “3” in the diagram.

• Bring to Front: The object is moved out in front of

all other objects. In the diagram, object 3 is now in

front of object 1.

• Send to Back: The object moves behind all other

objects. Object 3 is now behind object 5.

• Bring Forward One Layer: Object 3 now lies in

front of objects 2, 4 and 5, but is still behind object 1.

• Send Back One Layer: Object 3 is now behind

objects 1, 2 and 4, but is still in front of object 5.

182 Pinnacle Studio 9

About text objects

Selecting a text object is different in one important way

from selecting a rectangle or ellipse: the object’s text

field is put into a “ready” state in which any keyboard

activity will cause the field to activate and start

displaying the input text.

The activation of the text field is indicated by a text

insertion cursor, the changed appearance of the object

frame, and the disappearance of the control points.

When a text object is not selected, you can activate its

text field directly by clicking in the middle of the

object. If you want the selection frame and control

points to appear, you must click on the edges of the

object. With other types of object, you can click

anywhere in an object to select it.

To deactivate a text field, click anywhere in the Edit

Window outside the text object.

Because text plays a central role in most titles and

menus, the Text Editor will automatically create and

activate a text object in the center of the Edit Window

if you simply begin typing at a time when no text

object already exists.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 183

Advanced text editing features

As in a word processing program, the Title Editor

allows you to format a selected range of characters.

Simply mark an adjacent set of characters with the

mouse and apply the formatting you desire.

Supported operations on character ranges include text

styling (font, style and look), clipboard operations (cut,

copy, paste), delete, and a number of special

positioning, spacing and scaling commands that are

accessible only from the keyboard. For details on these,

please consult Appendix G: Keyboard Shortcuts.

Editing-mode selection buttons

These two buttons form the second cluster

along the bottom of the Title Editor’s Edit

Window. Their function is to govern which of two sets

of editing operations is available for the currently-

selected object.

• The first button is on by default when an object is

newly created. It enables the move, scale and rotate

operations with a selection frame containing nine

control points:

• Clicking the second button enables the skew

operation, which requires only a single control point.

184 Pinnacle Studio 9

With text objects, the second button provides two

further operations, kern and change leading, accessed

by control points in the center of each edge of the text

frame:

Kern (L) and Change leading (R)

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 185

Object layout buttons

The two left buttons in this cluster are

for grouping and ungrouping Title Editor objects. The

first button is available when multiple objects are

selected. Its action is to link the objects into a group – a

composite object that is treated as a single entity by

editing operations. When a group is selected, all its

control points are visible simultaneously, and any of

them may be used to manipulate the group.

A grouping of three objects

The second button, which is available whenever a

group object is selected, separates the group into its

constituent objects.

Although it is possible to “group groups”, grouping is

always just one level deep, so ungrouping a supergroup

will result in all the constituent objects being

individuals again.

The next button opens a pop-out menu of 11 operations

that apply only to groups. The first six let you align a

set of objects along any one of their four edges or either

of their two mid-lines. The next pair of commands

provides for spacing the objects at equal intervals in

186 Pinnacle Studio 9

either the vertical or horizontal directions, and the final

three resize the objects so that they have equal width,

equal height, or both. All of these commands are

particularly useful in menu creation, since you

generally want menu buttons to be laid out in a regular

fashion.

The final object layout button opens

another pop-out menu, this one concerned

with object justification. The nine options

here are in a graphical form resembling a

tic-tac-toe board. Clicking one of the nine

areas moves the object to the correspon-

ding corner of the screen (as defined by the “text-safe”

area delimited by red dashed lines), or to the center.

Multiple selection of objects

The first step in making a group is to select the multiple

objects that will comprise it. This can be accomplished

in either of two ways:

• By clicking and dragging with the mouse to mark out

a selection rectangle (a “marquee”) that encloses all

the objects you want to group; or,

• By clicking the first object you want to group, then

Ctrl-clicking each of the others.

Temporary groups

Any selection of multiple objects functions as a

temporary group, and can be moved, aligned, rotated,

colored etc. as a unit. The temporary grouping loses its

identity as soon as you click elsewhere in the Edit

Window, however, whereas a group created with the

group button persists until explicitly ungrouped.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 187

Clipboard and delete buttons

The buttons in this cluster provide the

familiar editing operations Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete,

all of which operate on groups, individual objects, or

on selected text within a Title Editor text object. The

first three work with the Windows Clipboard, while the

fourth simply deletes the chosen material without

affecting the Clipboard.

Text-styling controls

The controls in this cluster at the top right of the Title

Editor’s Edit Window should look familiar to anyone

who has used word-processing software. The controls

apply both to currently-selected text and to any new

text that may be entered until the settings are changed

again.

At the left are three font style buttons, which select the

bold, italic or underlined styles respectively.

Perhaps surprisingly, the underlined style

button – alone among these controls – can be

applied to any type of object, not just text (try

it!). This makes it possible to use the

underlined highlighting style with buttons

created from graphic objects: rectangles,

ellipses and pictures.

The fourth button opens a pop-out menu of

text-formatting options. Unlike the other

188 Pinnacle Studio 9

controls in the cluster, which govern the appearance of

individual characters, the options on this menu apply to

all the text in a given text box.

The three justification options – Left, Center and Right

– affect the placement of the text within its box (and

not the placement of the box itself within the Edit

Window, which is the function of the object

justification menu ).

Shrink to fit, Scale to fit, Word wrap on and Word wrap

off are options that determine how your text is treated

when you resize a text box. With Word wrap on, which

is the default for a new text box, resizing the box

results in the text being reformatted – word-wrapped –

to the new box width (while the resulting new height of

the text in turn governs the height of the box). Word

wrap off removes all “soft” line breaks (line breaks

added for word wrapping), then makes the box as wide

as necessary to contain the text. Word wrap mode is

automatically turned on again if you type further

characters into the text box.

With Scale to fit, the text is stretched during resizing to

follow both box dimensions. With Shrink to fit, the text

remains its original size unless the box is made smaller,

in which case the text is resized as in Scale to fit.

Neither to fit command changes the line divisions of

the text.

The font dropdown list and the font-size selector

complete the text-styling controls group.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 189

THE TITLE EDITOR ALBUM

The Title Editor Album is the rectangular panel on the

right-hand side of the Title Editor screen. It contains

resources for building menus and titles in the same way

that the main Studio Album contains resources

for creating movies.

The Title Editor Album is controlled by the four

buttons shown at left, which are located between

the Edit Window and the Album itself. Each

button opens one of the four Album sections: the

Looks Browser, the Backgrounds section, the Pictures

section and the Buttons section.

The Looks Browser

This section of the Title Editor Album has three

subsections, accessed by the Standard, Custom

and Favorites tabs across the top.

The Standard tab is a collection of styles that can be

applied to the text and other objects you use in your

titles. Each style consists of a color (or color gradient,

or transparency) for each of the “face” (surface), edge

and shadow of the object to which it applies, plus a

separate blurring parameter for each. A final parameter

is shadow direction, for which there are eight

possibilities.

190 Pinnacle Studio 9

To change the look of an existing object, simply click

on the look you want while the object is selected. New

objects are created with the most recently selected look.

Selecting a look in the Looks Browser: Each button

in the Standard tab is available in eight styles, which

are presented to you as a submenu. Each look has a

numeric ID that displays as a tool-tip under your

mouse. Above, the mouse is on look 23-3.

The Custom tab lets you customize the supplied looks

or create your own by adjusting the parameters listed

above. Three identical sets of controls adjust the

parameters for face, edge and shadow respectively.

Here are the face controls:

The three option buttons across the top select a solid

color, a gradient, or no color (transparency). Clicking

the color swatch beside the first button invokes an

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 191

otherwise standard Windows color-picker dialog to

which an Opacity slider (0-100%) has been added.

The swatch beside the second button

pops up a gradient designer that lets you

define a gradient by assigning the

starting colors to each corner of a square

surface. Click the color swatches in the

corners of the gradient window to set the

color for that corner in a color-picker dialog.

Note: Some of the more elaborate supplied looks em-

ploy special internal features and so cannot be edited.

The Favorites tab lets you save particular

custom looks that you may want to re-use in the future,

to spare you from having to remember or record the

parameters you used. Click the left-hand button to save

the current look as one of your favorites. Click the

right-hand button to delete the currently-selected

“favorite”.

The Backgrounds section

A title or menu can have four types of background:

a solid color, a gradient, transparency (no

background at all) or an image file (such as a drawing,

photograph or saved video frame).

The color and gradient options in the Backgrounds

section of the Title Editor work in just the same way as

192 Pinnacle Studio 9

those described above for the Looks Browser (page

189), except that the color or gradient you select is

instantly applied to the background of the title you are

editing.

If you are working on an overlay title, you may find

interesting ways to use the Opacity setting on the color-

picker dialogs for these buttons, especially when the

overlay is coupled with transitions.

Normally, though, you’ll use a transparent background

for titles, and transparency is the default background

selection for a new title or menu.

The final option for backgrounds is picture – an image

file in any standard format. As with many of the

sections of Studio’s main Album, the backgrounds are

drawn from a source folder that may be changed using

the folder button. The image file you select with the

folder button becomes the new background, and the

image files in the folder are displayed as thumbnails on

the Album panel. If necessary, the Title Editor stretches

the background image until it fills the width or height

of screen but does not change its proportions.

The Pictures section

As with the background pictures just discussed,

the images in the Pictures section of the Title

Editor Album can be of any standard type. Instead of

being stretched to fill the Edit Window, however, these

pictures are added to the title as picture objects and

displayed at normal size with eight control points that

allow them to be repositioned and resized (though not

rotated or skewed).

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 193

Picture objects behave just like text objects and the two

types of graphic object with respect to grouping,

alignment and similar controls.

The Buttons section

Since buttons are the magic ingredient that turns

titles into interactive menus, this section of the

Title Editor Album is mainly of interest for DVD, VCD

and S-VCD authoring.

Broadly speaking, a button is an area of the screen with

which the user can interact in some way. Buttons are

classified according to the action they produce when

the user activates them, and not by their appearance,

which generally should be chosen to give a strong clue

to their behavior, but is not required to. The four types

of button are:

• Normal: Clicking the button causes playback to

jump to a chapter (that is, ordinary video) or another

menu. The link between the button and its target is

created in the Clip properties tool, not in the Title

Editor.

• Thumbnail: This special form of the normal button

type displays a thumbnail frame (or a moving

thumbnail preview) from the part of the movie to

which it links.

• Previous: This button appears on the second and

later pages of multi-page menus (menus with more

links from normal or thumbnail buttons than will fit

on one page). It links to the previous menu page.

• Next: This button appears on all but the last page of

multi-page menus; it links to the following page.

194 Pinnacle Studio 9

The button art supplied with Studio includes several

examples of each type. Each button is an image file in

Targa (tga) format. Examination of the files in an art

program like Adobe PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro will

show that the transparent portion of the button image,

and the special area for the display of thumbnails

(where applicable), are defined by an alpha channel

included with the image.

As usual, a folder button lets you select the disk

directory from which the displayed images are obtained.

To use a supplied button, simply drag it from the

Album into the Edit Window, where it becomes a

button object – essentially an identical twin of the

picture object.

The default action of the supplied

buttons is determined by their file

names, but a new action can be

assigned to the currently-selected

button object from the dropdown

list in the Buttons section of the Title Editor Album.

The first choice on this list, “Not a button”, removes

the action from the object – now it is merely a graphic.

The other choices correspond to the button types listed

above.

Tip: Remember, it’s not the button’s appearance that

determines its behavior, but the button type you select

from the menu.

In fact, you can make any non-group object – whether

text, rectangle, ellipse, picture or button – function as a

button just by selecting it in the Edit Window and

choosing a new button type from the dropdown list.

Chapter 10: The Title Editor 195

Would you like to make a button that says “Grandma”

and link it to the video of Grandma’s birthday party?

Just create a text object, make it as fancy as you like

with text stylings and the Looks Browser, and assign it

the normal button action. Back in the Clip properties

tool, link the new button to the chosen video clip and

the job is done.

Button highlighting

DVD menus (but not VCD and S-VCD

menus), give visual feedback by high-

lighting the current button as the user

scrolls around the menu. Special active

highlighting distinguishes a button that is

in the process of being actuated, just before the action

is performed. (You can preview this highlighting effect

in the Player, and interact with the menu using either

the mouse or the Player’s DVD controls.)

The Title Editor lets you assign the color that will be

used for each type of highlight, and a style option that

governs how the highlights will be drawn. The controls

for these settings are located below the button-type list:

Click the Active and Selected color swatches to set the

highlight colors that work best with your menu. It may

help to make your menus clearer if you use consistent

highlighting colors for all the menus on a disc.

The three highlight style options, from left to right, are:

• Box: The highlighting is drawn as a rectangle

enclosing the button.

• Follow shape: The highlighting covers the visible

area of the button, whatever its shape.

• Underline: The button is underlined.

196 Pinnacle Studio 9

These highlight options can be applied to any type of

button made from any type of object, not just the button

images brought in from the Album. Clear the Highlight

style checkbox if you want to disable button

highlighting while working in the Title Editor.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 197

CHAPTER 11:

Sound effects and music

Video may be thought of as primarily a visual medium,

but the role of sound in your movies is often no less

important than that of the images on the screen.

Feature film and television productions include

numerous types of audio, beginning with the dialog and

other sounds created during live action. In your movies,

that raw soundtrack is brought in along with the video

during Capture mode. It appears in the Movie Window

Timeline view on the original audio track below the

video track. In Studio Plus, original audio may also

appear on the overlay audio track.

Most commercial productions also require sound

effects – slamming doors, crashing cars, barking dogs,

etc. – and incidental music, which may consist of music

created especially for the production, songs taken from

recordings, or both. Voice-overs and other customized

audio are also often needed.

You can use all these types of add-on sound in your

own movies:

• A good starter set of effects in wav format is

installed with Studio, and others are available from

many sources.

198 Pinnacle Studio 9

• The SmartSound tool automatically creates a music

track of any desired duration in a variety of styles.

• You can drop mp3 files from the Album onto the

Timeline or import CD audio tracks with the CD

audio tool.

• The Voice-over tool lets you add narration or

commentary as you preview your edited video.

Audio, whatever its type, is added to your production

as clips in the Movie Window. These can be moved

around, trimmed and edited in much the same way as

video clips and still images.

Once a sound clip is part of your movie, you can

modify it with fades and other volume adjustments.

You can adjust the positioning of your clips within a

stereo or surround mix, and even change that

positioning arbitrarily within the clip. You can also

apply Studio’s audio effects, including noise reduction

and reverb among others.

Availability: Surround sound is not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

About surround sound

A “surround” mix goes beyond standard two-channel to

provide a theater-style enveloping sound field for your

DVD productions. Studio lets you set the apparent

position of each audio track independently within the

mix, and to “pan” the track (reposition it, whether

smoothly or abruptly) in any desired direction as often

as necessary over the course of your movie.

To preview surround sound while editing in Studio,

your PC’s sound card must be connected to one of:

• A sound system that includes a decoder with Pro

Logic or Pro Logic 2 compatibility, such as a

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 199

powered speaker system with Pro Logic support or a

Pro Logic-compatible AV receiver.

• A sound card and speaker system with Dolby Digital

5.1 compatibility.

For best results a digital audio connection (RCA or

optical) is recommended.

Note: Even if you cannot hear your surround mix when

previewing, it will still appear on your DVDs, but a

surround preview allows more accurate mixing.

A surround soundtrack can be output to the DVD in

either of two forms:

• In Dolby Digital 5.1 format, each of the six surround

channels is stored discretely on the disc and will be

routed directly to the corresponding speaker when

played back on a full 5.1 surround playback system.

• In Dolby Digital 2.0 format, the surround mix is

encoded onto two channels. When your DVD is

played back on systems with a Pro Logic or Pro

Logic 2 decoder, and a 5.1 or better speaker layout,

the original surround information is recreated. On

other systems, the encoded soundtrack will be heard

as conventional stereo.

The Timeline audio tracks

The Movie Window’s Timeline view contains several

audio tracks:

Original audio track: This contains the audio captured

along with your video clips. It is sometimes called

200 Pinnacle Studio 9

“synchronous” audio because it is recorded

simultaneously with the video track.

Overlay audio track: The original audio for video

clips on the overlay track.

Sound effect and voice-over track: Sound effects and

voice-overs are the typical content on this track. Sound

effects are brought into your project from the Sound

Effects section of the Album (see “The Sound Effects

section” on page 54). Voice-overs are created with the

Voice-over tool (described on page 205).

Background music track: Use this track to include

mp3 or wav audio files, SmartSound background

music generated by Studio, and music (or other content)

from audio compact disks (CDs). Audio files are

imported via the Sound Effects section of the Album

(see page 54). Create SmartSound clips with the

SmartSound tool, and CD audio clips with the CD

audio tool (see “The SmartSound tool” on page 203

and “The CD audio tool” on page 201).

The Timeline audio tracks: original audio, sound

effect and voice-over, and background music. A

fourth audio track appears when the overlay track is

visible; it contains the original audio for video on

that track.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 201

Switching audio tracks

Although the audio tracks do have their specialized

roles, as described above, these mainly control the

choice of track where new clips will appear. Original

audio will always be placed on the original audio track

when a new video clip is brought in; new voice-overs

will always be created on the sound effects and voice-

overs track; and new CD audio and SmartSound clips

will be added to the background music track.

Once a clip has been created, however, you can move it

to a different audio track if it is convenient to do so:

each track is actually able to accommodate any type of

audio clip. This gives you the flexibility to use two

sound effects simultaneously, for example, simply by

placing one of them on the background music track.

The only audio track with special status is original

audio, either for the main video track or, when it’s in

use, the overlay track. By default, audio clips on this

track are edited in parallel with the contents of the

video track at the same time index. To treat the audio as

a separate clip, lock the video track (by clicking the

padlock icon on the right side of the Movie Window).

See “Advanced Timeline editing” on page 87 for more

information.

The CD audio tool

Use this tool to create an audio clip from a CD

track. You can preview tracks within the tool,

and select either a whole track or an excerpt to add to

your movie.

202 Pinnacle Studio 9

If there is a CD in the drive that you have not

previously used in a Studio project, Studio will ask you

to enter its name before continuing. The controls on the

tool will become available only when Studio can offer

at least one entry on the CD Title dropdown list.

Select the CD from which you wish to capture audio in

the CD Title dropdown list, and a track on that CD

from the Track list. Since CD Title is also an editable

text field, you can change the name by which Studio

refers to this CD, if desired. The name change applies

to both the current and future sessions.

Having selected the CD and track, you can now

optionally trim the clip and give it a custom name using

the other controls on the tool. These controls are

common to most audio clip types, and are used for

editing as well as creating clips. They are covered on

page 208 under “Trimming with the Clip properties

tool”.

Finally, click the Add to Movie button. Studio creates

the new clip on the background music track beginning

at the current time index (as shown by the Timeline

scrubber and the preview frame in the Player).

The first time you preview the portion of your movie

that contains the new clip, Studio will ask you to insert

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 203

the CD (if it is not already in the drive), so that the

audio data can be captured. You won’t need to repeat

this step subsequently unless you lengthen the clip.

CD recording options

Depending on your CD drive, Studio offers a number

of recording options. The choices are found in the CD.

Voice-over and Surround options panel (Setup ¾ CD,

Voice-over and Surround):

The default method is digitally “ripping” from your CD

to Studio. If you have an older CD drive that can’t

transfer the audio digitally, Studio lists alternative

options based on the capabilities of your system’s

audio hardware.

The SmartSound tool

SmartSound automatically creates background

music in the style of your choice. Within that

style, you select one of several songs, and within that

song, any of a number of versions. The list of versions

available also depends on the duration of background

music you specify.

To create music for a particular set of clips, select those

clips before opening the SmartSound tool. (To select

your whole movie, use Edit ¾ Select All or press

204 Pinnacle Studio 9

Ctrl+A.) The total length of the selected clips will

determine the initial setting for the music duration,

though you can modify the value at any time by

trimming on the Timeline or directly editing the

Duration counter in the tool.

In the SmartSound tool, choose a style, song and

version from the lists provided. Each style offers its

own selection of songs, and each song its own selection

of versions. Use the Preview button to audition the

song while the tool is open.

Enter a name for the clip in the Name field and adjust

its duration with the Duration counter, if desired. The

music clip you create will be adjusted to fit exactly the

duration you select.

If you would rather work with SmartSound sound

effects instead of songs, select Sound effects rather than

Music on the Type dropdown list.

You can change the selection of songs available to you

by choosing a different option on the Scope dropdown

list. Choosing All will give you access to the entire

SmartSound catalog, if you have an Internet connection.

You can preview any of the songs, and purchase any

that your movie may require.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 205

When you have made your choice, click the Add to

Movie button. Studio creates the new clip on the

background music track beginning at the current time

index (as shown by the Timeline scrubber and the

preview frame in the Player).

The SmartSound button at the bottom right of the tool

opens a dialog with options and tools for maintaining

your SmartSound library.

The Voice-over tool

Recording a voice-over in Studio is as easy as

making a telephone call. Just open the Voice-

over tool, click Record and speak into the microphone.

You can narrate as you watch the movie play so your

words match the action on the screen. You can also use

the tool as a quick way of capturing ambient music or

home-made sound effects via your microphone.

Before you can record audio using the Voice-over tool,

you need to connect a microphone to the input jack of

your PC sound board. You must also have at least one

video clip in the Movie Window.

206 Pinnacle Studio 9

Review the video scenes in your movie and decide

where you want the voice-over to begin and end. When

you are ready, open the Voice-over tool. Note that the

recording lamp – the dark rectangle in the upper left of

the above illustration – is not lit.

Select your starting point on the Movie Window

Timeline. You may do this by selecting a clip, playing

the movie and stopping it at the desired point, or by

moving the Timeline scrubber.

Position the microphone for use and try speaking a test

phrase to check your recording level (see “Voice-over

level” below). When you are satisfied, click the Record

button (which toggles to a Stop button). Wait for a few

moments as the recording lamp first signals STAND BY

then steps through a 3-2-1 countdown.

When the recording lamp signals RECORDING, and the

movie begins to play back in the Player, perform your

narration.

Finally, click the Stop button. The lamp goes out, and

the voice-over clip is automatically placed on the sound

effects and voice-overs track. Review the clip by

selecting it then clicking the Play button.

Voice-over level

The record level for a voice-

over clip is set when you create

the voice-over and cannot be

changed thereafter. However,

you can adjust the playback

volume at any time. The record

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 207

level is set with the Recording level slider and its

accompanying level meter on the Voice-over tool.

Watch this meter to make sure your recording levels

don’t get too high or low. The indicator changes color

from blue (0-70% modulation), through yellow, to red.

Generally, you should try to keep your audio peaking

in the yellow (71-90%) and out of the red (91-100%).

Voice-over recording options

The Studio setup dialogs include several settings that

affect your recording configuration and quality. This

section provides a brief summary. See “CD, Voice-over

and Surround settings” on page 260 for detailed

information.

To access these options select Setup ¾ CD, Voice-over

and Surround from the main menu bar.

The Microphone dropdown list on this dialog lists the

multiple ways a microphone can be connected to your

particular sound card. The entries on the list should

look something like the following, from a system with

an Avance AC97 sound card:

208 Pinnacle Studio 9

Choose from this list, then connect your microphone in

the manner indicated (e.g. Microphone or Line In).

The Channels and Sample rate adjustments on the

options dialog control the quality of voice-overs or

other recorded audio. Set them at the highest quality

level you anticipate needing, but keep in mind that

increasing quality requires more disk space.

TRIMMING AUDIO CLIPS

As with other clip types, you can trim audio clips either

directly on the Timeline or by using the Clip properties

tool. See “Trimming on the Timeline using handles” on

page 78 for a discussion of the first method.

Most types of audio clip can be trimmed from a

minimum of one frame up to the full original length of

the clip content. SmartSound clips can be trimmed on

the Timeline down to as little as one second, and

upward without limit.

Trimming with the Clip properties tool

The Toolbox ¾ Modify Clip Properties menu command

invokes the Clip properties tool for the selected clip.

You can also access the tool by double-clicking any

audio clip.

To begin with, the tool provides controls that let you

view or edit two properties shared by all clips:

• To set the duration of the clip, change the value in

the Duration counter.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 209

• The Name text field lets you assign a custom name

to the clip to replace the default one assigned by

Studio. The clip name is used by the Movie

Window’s List view, and can also be viewed as a

fly-by label when your mouse hovers over the clip in

the Storyboard view.

The other controls provided by the tool depend on the

type of audio clip you give it.

Original audio, sound effects and voice-overs

The Clip properties tool provides the same kind of

trimming controls for sound-effect and voice-over clips

as for video clips, but displays a graph of the audio

waveform instead of visual preview areas.

To learn how to trim with these controls, see

“Trimming with the Clip properties tool” on page 83.

Remember that clips on the original audio and the

overlay audio tracks can only be edited independently

when the corresponding video track is locked. See

“Advanced Timeline editing” on page 87.

CD Audio

For CD Audio clips, the Clip properties tool uses the

same trimming controls as above, but additionally

provides dropdown selectors for CD Title and Track.

210 Pinnacle Studio 9

You can use these to change the source of the clip at

any time. CD Title is also an editable text field, so you

can enter the actual title of the CD.

SmartSound®

SmartSound clips can be edited to almost any length,

except that very short clips at some particular durations

may not be available in every combination of Style and

Song. This tool is essentially identical to the tool for

creating SmartSound clips (described under “The

SmartSound tool” on page 203), except that the Add to

movie button is replaced by the Accept changes button.

AUDIO VOLUME AND MIXING

The audio levels and stereo positioning of individual

clips can be adjusted either directly on the Timeline, or

with the Volume and balance tool. Each technique

offers its own advantages. Adjusting on the Timeline

gives you a good sense of time versus volume or

balance, whereas the Volume and balance tool

facilitates mixing – separately adjusting the volume and

stereo balance of each of the audio tracks.

For disc authoring, the Volume and balance tool lets

you choose to create a surround soundtrack, rather than

stereo. The tool lets you dynamically position any of

the audio tracks from front to rear as well as left to

right.

Availability: Surround sound is not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 211

Anatomy of an audio clip

An audio clip icon on the Timeline has several parts.

The boundaries of each clip are denoted by vertical

bars. The actual content of the audio is indicated by a

waveform graph:

Waveform graph excerpt from three neighboring clips.

The appearance of the waveform graph tells you

something about the character of the sound. A quiet

sound has a narrow waveform, close to the centerline

of the clip. A loud sound has a waveform with larger

peaks and troughs, reaching almost to the borders of

the clip. A continuous sound, such as a car engine, has

many pulses packed closely together. A staccato sound

has brief pulses separated by silences where the

waveform is a horizontal line.

Adjustment lines

The blue volume line graphically models the volume

changes you have made to the track and clip. If you

have not adjusted the volume at all, the line runs

straight along the clip at about three-quarters of the clip

height. This is the “zero gain” (0 dB) level, where the

clip’s original volume has been neither increased nor

decreased.

If you raise or lower the volume of the entire track, the

volume line remains horizontal, but is now higher or

lower than the zero-gain base level.

212 Pinnacle Studio 9

Finally, if you make volume adjustments within the clip,

the line consists of sloping segments that meet at

volume adjustment handles.

Unlike the waveform graph, or the adjustment lines for

balance and fade (see below), the volume adjustment

line is scaled logarithmically. Perceived volume varies

logarithmically with the strength of an audio signal, so

this feature allows the adjustment line to model more

accurately what you really hear. For instance, an

upward-sloping line segment will produce a smooth,

steady fade up from the starting to the ending level.

The green stereo balance line and the red front-back

balance (“fade”) line work similarly to the volume line,

except that in both cases the neutral position is the

vertical center of the clip, and the adjustment scale is

linear.

Raising the stereo balance line positions the audio

clip’s output further to the listener’s left, while

lowering it positions the clip further to the listener’s

right. Similarly, raising the fade line moves the clip

away from the listener, and lowering it brings the clip

towards the listener.

Note: You can only view and edit a clip’s fade line

when the Volume and balance tool is in surround

mode. The effect of adjusting the line can be previewed

only on systems where surround-sound playback is

available.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 213

To select which of the three adjustment lines is

currently displayed, use the audio clip’s right-button

context menu:

Availability: Surround sound is not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

Adjusting audio on the Timeline

Audio levels can be adjusted directly within a clip on

the Timeline. Use the mouse pointer to adjust the blue

volume line or either of the balance lines (see

“Anatomy of an audio clip” on page 211).

When you add a new audio clip to the Timeline:

• The volume adjustment line of the newly-created

clip connects the lines from the preceding and

following clips if any are present.

• If no volume adjustments have been made to other

clips on the track, the volume line through the new

clip is horizontal. Its height reflects the overall track

volume as set in the Volume and balance tool.

• If no volume adjustments have been made either to

other clips or to the overall track volume, the volume

line through the new clip is at three-quarters height.

214 Pinnacle Studio 9

To adjust the volume of a clip on the Timeline, select it

(by left clicking), then move your mouse pointer close

to the line. The volume adjustment cursor will appear:

Click the left mouse button, and drag up or down

within the clip. The volume line bends as it follows the

mouse.

When you release the mouse, Studio creates an

adjustment handle on the volume line.

When your mouse pointer is positioned over an

adjustment handle on a selected clip, a highlighted

version of the volume adjustment cursor appears. With

this cursor, you can click and drag the adjustment

handle both vertically and horizontally.

Right-click an adjustment handle to access the context

menu command Delete volume setting. This command

removes one adjustment handle. Use Remove volume

changes to remove all the handles from the clip.

Adjusting balance and fade

The left-right and front-back balance lines have the

same editing features as the volume line just discussed,

except that with them the neutral setting is at half the

clip height, instead of three-quarters as it is for volume.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 215

In the case of left-right (stereo) balance, adjusting the

line upwards from the center positions the audio further

to the left. With front-back balance (“fade”), adjusting

the line upwards moves the apparent source of the

audio away from the listener, while adjusting the line

downwards brings the audio closer (towards the rear

speakers).

Removing changes

An individual adjustment handle can be deleted with

one of the Delete setting commands on the handle’s

right-button context menu:

To remove all audio adjustments of one type from a

selected clip, select the appropriate command from the

clip’s context menu:

The Volume and balance tool

Compared to adjusting audio on the Timeline, the

Volume and balance tool offers a greater degree of

adjustment functionality organized into one convenient

location. It also provides both left-right and surround-

sound balance controls. The tool operates in a similar

way to a traditional audio mixer.

Availability: Surround sound is not supported in the SE and

QuickStart versions of Studio.

216 Pinnacle Studio 9

The Volume and balance tool provides individual level

controls for each of the audio tracks: original

audio (left in illustration), overlay audio, sound effect

and voice-over, and background music (right). The

overlay audio controls are displayed only when the

overlay video and audio tracks are open in the Movie

Window.

The balance control, located in the right-hand part of

the tool, can be used in either of two modes, as selected

in the dropdown list above: stereo (one-dimensional)

and surround (two-dimensional.

Each audio track has its own set of level

controls. The set for the original audio track

is shown at left.

The individual controls and displays include a

track mute button n. When this button is in

its down position, no audio clips from the

track will be used in your movie. The track

mute button’s icon has a second purpose: it

identifies which track the level controls apply

to. This is the only visible point of difference

amongst the three sets of controls.

The track level knob o raises or lowers the

overall volume for the track. It therefore

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 217

affects the vertical position of the volume adjustment

lines on all clips on the track, but does not change their

contour. Click on the knob and drag it with a clockwise

rotation (up to the 2 o’clock maximum position) to

increase the volume. Use a counterclockwise rotation

(down to the 6 o’clock minimum) to lower the volume.

Level knobs, full off (L), default (C) and full on (R).

The track’s relative level scale p, with its associated

fader q, are calibrated in decibels (dB). The 0 dB mark

corresponds to the level at which the clip was recorded.

Each increase of 3 dB doubles the perceived volume,

and each decrease of 3 dB halves it.

The position of the fader knob shows the volume level

at the current playback position in your movie, relative

to the level at which the current clip was recorded.

Drag the knob up or down to modify the level. The

knob is “grayed” (disabled) if there is no clip on the

track at the current time index. If the track is muted, the

knob is grayed and set to the bottom of its range.

Adjusting the fader results in a volume adjustment

handle being added to the track as described above.

A track’s playback volume contour, or envelope,

combines the overall track level with the relative level

at each point on the track. This combined level, which

is shown graphically by the volume adjustment lines on

audio clips, is applied to the actual audio data to

produce the track’s output level, as represented on the

level meter r, which illuminates during playback to

show the level at the current time index. To avoid

audio “clipping” – the unpleasant sound produced by

attempting to set volume levels outside the range of a

218 Pinnacle Studio 9

digital signal – ensure that the meter level never quite

reaches the top of the bar.

The fade buttons s produce a fade-in from or a fade-

out to the current position of the movie. For a visual

confirmation of their effect, watch the behavior of the

clip’s volume adjustment line when the fade buttons

are clicked. The fade duration is variable from zero to

fifty-nine seconds. Adjust it in the Edit options panel

(Setup ¾ Edit) under Volume fades. Fades are not

available too close to the beginning or end of a clip.

The balance control

This control has two modes, stereo and surround,

which you select from the dropdown list above the

control.

In either mode, the position of each track at each point

in the movie is shown by a corresponding speaker icon.

The icon matches the one on the muting indicator for

the corresponding track.

In stereo mode, you set the position of the track by

dragging its speaker icon left and right between a pair

of main speakers:

The original audio track (L) and the background

music track (R), on opposite sides of a stereo mix.

The sound effect and voice-over track icon is shown

as a gray outline (left of center), indicating either

that the track has been muted or that there is no clip

on the track at the current time index.

In surround mode, you can position each track from

front to back (“fade”) as well as from left to right

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 219

(“balance”). Each track can be independently placed

anywhere within the rectangular listening area.

Surround mode: Here, the original audio track has

been placed farthest from the listener, near the left

front speaker. The sound effect and voice-over track

is on the right, closer to the listener. The background

music track is centered, and closer still.

There are two ways to set the position of a track’s icon

in the balance control. Either click on any track’s icon

and drag it to the desired position, or move it by

dragging the triangular locator knobs below and to the

right of the control. The locator knob below the balance

control adjusts the left-right positioning of the audio

output from the currently-selected clip, while the knob

on the right adjusts the front-back positioning.

Drag track icon directly (L) or with locator knob (R).

220 Pinnacle Studio 9

Viewing volume and balance contours

Each audio clip in your project displays a contour line

showing one of its volume, left-right balance or front-

back balance. To select which of the three types of line

is displayed, use the commands on an audio clip’s

right-button context menu (see “Anatomy of an audio

clip” on page 211).

The contour lines can be modified directly on the

Timeline using adjustment handles. For details, see

“Adjusting audio on the Timeline” on page 213.

Note: You can only view and edit a clip’s fade (front-

back balance) line when the Volume and balance tool

is in surround mode.

AUDIO EFFECTS

You can modify any audio clip in your project using

Studio’s plug-in audio effects, which are accessed with

the Audio effects tool in the Toolbox.

The Audio effects tool is the sixth tool in the

Audio toolbox. The operation of this tool is

identical to that of the Video effects tool. See “Using

video effects” (page 95) for a complete description.

As with video effects, your library of audio plug-ins is

expandable. Any audio effect using the popular VST

standard can be used in Studio just like the effects

supplied with the program.

Availability: Audio effects other than Noise reduction are provided

as locked, “watermarked” content in the SE and QuickStart versions

of Studio. The watermark graphic, and periodic beep on the

soundtrack, can be removed with the appropriate activation key. See

page 11 for details.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 221

Icons for audio effects

In Timeline mode, any special effects you have

applied to an audio or video clip are indicated

by small icons along the bottom of the clip.

These correspond to the effects groups shown

by the Add new effect browser in the Audio

effects and Video effects tools. You can open the

appropriate tool for parameter editing by

double-clicking any of the icons.

In the illustration, the Noise reduction effect has

been applied to both audio clips. The star icon

below the video clip shows that one or more of

the effects in the “Fun effects” group has been applied

to it.

The basic audio effects

Studio’s basic set of audio effects include the Noise

reduction filter and a variety of VST plug-ins. Some of

the latter use their own parameter editing windows

instead of the parameters panel in the Audio effects tool

and the Video effects tool.

Noise reduction

This advanced filter suppresses unwanted noise in any

audio clip. The filter responds dynamically to the

changing noise conditions within the clip. The preset

you choose provides the starting point from which the

adaptive algorithm proceeds.

You can often further improve your results by adjusting

the Noise reduction and Fine tuning parameters. There

is a lag of about a second before any new setting has an

222 Pinnacle Studio 9

audible effect, so you should make changes in small

amounts then pause to check if there is an improvement.

Noise reduction: When a camcorder is used outdoors

with the actors distant from the microphone, the

“source noise” may be very high, and to make matters

worse the internal noise of the camcorder may be

amplified to intrusive levels. If a lapel microphone

connected to the line input of the camcorder were used

when taping the scene, however, the source noise could

be quite low. Adjust this control to match the noise

conditions of the actual signal.

Fine tuning: This controls the amount of cleaning to

be used. It is only needed when the Noise reduction

level is low, since at higher levels the noise has already

been eliminated.

Auto adapt: When this option is checked, the filter

automatically adjusts to changes in the type or amount

of noise in the clip. The Fine tuning is not used when

Auto adapt is active.

Remove wind: This checkbox engages a filter that

reduces wind noise and similar unwanted background

sounds in the audio clip.

Note: The Noise reduction filter will help with a wide

range of material, but it is not a panacea. Your results

will vary depending on the original material and the

severity and nature of the problems.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 223

Equalizer

This effect is similar in concept to the treble and bass

“tone” controls on audio equipment, but provides a

much finer degree of adjustment. It divides the audio

spectrum into ten bands, each centered on a different

sound frequency.

Note: In musical terms, each equalization band covers

one octave, and the center frequency is close in pitch to

the note B.

The sliders let you increase or decrease the contribution

of each band’s frequencies to the total sound over a

range of 48 dB (-24 to +24). The adjustment to a band

is applied full strength at the center frequency, and

tapers to zero in either direction.

The display above the slider shows the activity across

the audio spectrum as your project is played back.

224 Pinnacle Studio 9

Grungelizer

The Grungelizer adds noise and static to your

recordings. It can make your clips sound as though you

were hearing them on a radio with bad reception or a

worn and scratched vinyl record.

Crackle: This dial adds crackle to create that old vinyl

record sound. The farther to the right you turn the dial,

the more crackle is added.

RPM switch: When emulating the sound of a vinyl

record, this switch lets you set the turntable speed in

revolutions per minute (33, 45 or 78 RPM).

Noise: This dial regulates the amount of static noise

added.

Distort: Use this dial to add distortion.

EQ: Turn this dial to the right to cut off the low

frequencies, and create a more hollow, lo-fi sound.

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 225

AC: This emulates the constant, low hum of AC

current.

Frequency switch: This sets the frequency of the AC

current (50 or 60 Hz), and thus the pitch of the AC hum.

Timeline: This dial regulates the amount of overall

effect. The farther to the right (1900) you turn this dial,

the more noticeable the effect.

Karaoke

Apply this effect to clips such as mp3 songs or audio

CD tracks to remove the main vocal from the

performance. What remains – the accompaniment – can

be used as background music, or as the backing for

your own vocal in a voice-over or video clip.

The Karaoke effect depends on the fact that the main

vocal part in a recording is usually divided about

equally between the two stereo channels. The plug-in

digitally compares the channels and removes the

common part from both. Not all recordings are well

suited for karaoke use.

Volume: This slider lets you adjust for variations in the

total output volume that may be introduced by Karaoke

processing. Move the slider towards the left if the audio

is too loud with the filter applied, or towards the right if

it is too soft.

226 Pinnacle Studio 9

Leveler

This effect helps compensate for a common problem in

recording audio for video productions: the imbalance in

the recorded volume of different elements in the

original audio. For instance, your commentary as you

shoot the video may be recorded at such a high level

that it overwhelms other sounds at the location.

The trick in using the Leveler is to find a target volume

somewhere between that of the loud and soft audio in

the original clip. Below that volume, Leveler acts as an

expander, increasing the original level by a fixed ratio.

Above the target volume, Leveler acts as a compressor,

reducing the original level. With careful adjustment of

the parameters, the internal balance of the audio can be

significantly improved.

Target level: This slider sets the target volume.

Compression: Move this slider to the right to increase

the amount by which the louder sounds are reduced.

Threshold: This slider controls the minimum level at

which expansion will be applied. It is used to avoid

expanding faint background sounds into audible noise.

Expansion: Move this slider to the right to increase the

amount by which the softer sounds are amplified.

Reverb

The Reverb effect simulates the effect of playing back

the source sound in a room of a given size and sound

reflectivity. The interval between the arrival of the

original sound at the listener’s ears and the first echoes

Chapter 11: Sound effects and music 227

is greater for a large room than a small one. The rate at

which the echoes die away depends on both the room

size and the reflectivity of the walls.

The presets for Reverb are named for the type of room

they simulate – from the passenger cabin of a car all the

way up to a huge underground cavern.

Initial Delay: This slider sets the amount of delay from

the start of the sound until the reverb kicks in. For

naturalistic results, a smaller value would be used when

modeling a smaller room.

Room Size: This slider sets the size of the modeled

room. A larger room sounds more spacious because of

the longer interval between reflections of the sound

waves.

Damping: This slider controls a damping factor that

reduces higher-frequency reflections as the sound

waves bounce off surfaces in the virtual room. More

damping generally produces a warmer sound, less

damping a brighter sound.

Duration: This slider controls the length of time it

takes from the onset of a particular sound until the

reverberations die away. It corresponds to the

efficiency with which sound is reflected from the walls

and other contents of the virtual room.

Mix: This slider controls the amount of the original

sound that is mixed into the output from the effect.

When the slider is all the way to the left, only the

original sound is heard.

Chapter 12: Making your movie 229

CHAPTER 12:

Making your movie

Studio gives you a variety of ways to share your video

productions. This chapter explains how to:

• Attach a DV or MicroMV camcorder or a DV VCR

(MicroMV with Windows XP only)

• Connect an analog (VHS or S-VHS) camcorder or

VCR

• Connect a TV set or video monitor

• Output your movie to videotape

• Save your movie as an AVI file

• Save your movie as an MPEG file

• Share your movie via the Internet

• Save your movie as a Windows Media or RealVideo

file

• Output your movie to disc for playback on a DVD,

VCD or S-VCD player

• View a DVD, VCD or S-VCD movie on a computer

All these operations are available in Make Movie mode,

which you access by clicking the Make Movie button at

the top of the screen.

230 Pinnacle Studio 9

Preparing your movie for output

Before your movie is actually ready for output some

preprocessing will generally be required:

• If your movie includes clips that were captured in

preview quality, Studio will prompt you to load your

source tape(s) into your DV camcorder or VCR.

Studio will then recapture the clips at full resolution.

• Studio will need to render (generate video frames for)

any transitions, titles, disc menus and video effects

you’ve added to your movie, unless they have

already been rendered in the background (see “Edit

settings”, page 256). If all or part of the movie was

captured in MPEG format, that footage must be

rendered in its entirety.

The Make AVI status panel before,

during and after rendering.

When Studio has completed its batch capture and

rendering, the Make Movie Status panel will indicate

that your movie is ready for output.

Chapter 12: Making your movie 231

Outputting to a camera or video recorder...

... via IEEE-1394 cable

If your recording device has a DV input, just connect it

to your digital video card with an IEEE-1394 (or

“i.LINK”) cable. The connector at the camcorder end

should be labeled DV IN/OUT.

Note: On machines that don’t support recording back

to the camcorder, including many PAL devices, the DV

connector is called simply DV OUT.

... with analog audio / video cables

If you have a Studio product with an analog (TV or

video) output, such as Studio DVplus or DC10plus,

connect the video outputs of the capture card to the

inputs of the video recorder and the audio outputs of

the sound card (or Studio DVplus) to the audio inputs

of the video recorder.

232 Pinnacle Studio 9

Connecting a TV set or video monitor

Many camcorders have an integrated display, making it

unnecessary to attach a video monitor.

Otherwise, to view your movie as it is recorded, a TV

set or a video monitor must be attached to the video

outputs of your recorder. Video outputs are not always

available on DV camcorders.

Output your movie to videotape

Switch to Make Movie mode, and check that your

camcorder or VCR is connected and ready to record

your movie.

To output your movie to videotape:

1. Click the Tape tab to bring up the controls shown

here:

2. Click the Create button.

3. If you have used preview-quality clips, Studio

displays a dialog box prompting you to insert the

original DV tape(s) into your DV playback device

so that clips can be recaptured at full quality.

Chapter 12: Making your movie 233

It’s good practice to slide the record-

inhibit tab on your master tapes to

“Save” to ensure there’s no accidental recording

over original material.

Note: Studio relies on continuous, uninterrupted

timecode to recapture these clips. If your original

tapes have discontinuous timecode (a zero timecode

at a location other than the beginning of your tape),

you must manually cue to the portion of the tape

that holds the clip(s). Studio will then perform an

accurate recapture of the clip(s) and provide you

with trim handles. (You can see the extra frames by

opening any recaptured clip with the Clip

properties tool.)

4. The parts of your movie that were captured in

MPEG format must now be rendered.

For other captured footage, Studio begins the

process of Intelligent Rendering, whereby it renders

only the parts of your movie that actually require it

– video effects, transitions, overlays and disc menus,

for example – but does not re-render any unaltered

original footage. Intelligent Rendering saves you

time and disk space.

Intelligent Rendering is entirely automatic, except

that you may be asked to insert any audio CDs that

are part of your movie. During Intelligent

Rendering, Studio tells you w