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About Mike Shaw
Mike is a long time Pinnacle Studio user, going all the way back to the Studio 400. He's been a long time friend of the Videoguys and can be found participating in many on line forums.Mike runs a really cool UK based website for Pinnacle users. http://www.mikeshaw.co.uk It began as a Studio users site, but he has recently added several excellent articles on Pinnacle's new Liquid Edition software. His Edition for Studio users article is a MUST read for anyone migrating up from Studio. We are very fortunate to have Mike as the author for our first Videoguys' Insider Power User Story. I think old, new and future Studio users will find this article very informative. |
What are you going to do? You've heard about video editing on a computer, but those programs are far too expensive and way too complicated to even think about, aren't they? You're nodding. Don't.
The good news is, there's one program that is neither expensive nor difficult to use - it has been designed specifically for the home user with a low budget, and perhaps an even lower know-how when it comes to computers. Nevertheless, it has the power and capability to produce videos of 'Hollywood' standard with all the trimmings you're ever likely to want... professional looking titles, professional links (transitions) between scenes, sound effects to add humor or atmosphere, smart background music that fits scenes down to the last frame, and, most importantly perhaps, built in gizmos that will automatically take out the camera wobbles, correct for poorly colored video, and generally provide a number of special whiz-bang effects to make your movie look as though Steven Spielberg himself had been at the helm. Oh, and I should mention that as well as making tapes, it also lets you save your made movie to a DVD complete with menus and things, so viewers can select individual scenes if they want, and you can save it in a form suitable for emailing to friends and family on the internet or playing back as streaming video on a website.
It's called Pinnacle Studio 9. And, unsurprisingly, it is winning accolades and awards all over the world.
Sounds good? It is. And in case you're now thinking, "Nah, it can't be that easy", we're going take a look at how simple it really is. Children 6 years old have created movies with it, and at the other end of the spectrum, it has been used to create sophisticated amateur movies that have won international awards. I know. I've won them.
You have such a machine already? You're ready for the experience...
Fig 1: Pinnacle Studio 9 makes capturing movies easy This bit is easy peasy, because all the real donkey-work is done for you. Pinnacle Studio 9 has three working 'modes' - 'Capture', 'Edit', and 'Make Movie'. You start by connecting your DV camcorder to the PC using a firewire (or, if you have an analog camcorder, using the Blue Break-Out-Box connectors - see the Studio 9 version selector at the end of this article). Then select 'Capture' by clicking the appropriate tab at the top, shown blue in the picture here. Actually, this shows a DV capture screen: the analog capture screen looks a little different. Next task is to select how you want to capture - full quality DV, full quality MPEG, or preview quality. If you have one of those micro DV camcorders, you'll want to choose MPEG, otherwise you'll choose DV - that's best for editing. What's the Preview quality setting for? Well now, sometimes you may have more video to capture than you have space for on your hard drive. So, then you'd capture in Preview quality, which takes up a lot less room (I mean a heck of a lot less), and edit your movie as normal. Then - and this is the really clever bit - when you come to make your movie, Pinnacle Studio 9 starts off by going back to the camcorder and the original tape(s) to capture *only* the exact scenes you want, trimmed the way you want. What's more, it is clever enough to capture them in the order that they were shot on the tape - and sort them out into the order you have edited them! It takes a bit longer, obviously, and you still need enough space for the final capture, but nevertheless, this clever Studio 9 trick allows you to squeeze bigger movies out of less computer memory.
The next really difficult task is to set the tape in the camcorder to the point where you want to start the capture - and you can do that from the screen (with DV firewire controlled camcorders) by clicking on the simulated camcorder controls! Start, stop or pause your camcorder by simply clicking the corresponding control button on the 'virtual' on-screen camcorder! How hard can it get? (Mike's Tip No. 1, for shooting: Always shoot blank or rubbish for the first 20 seconds of a new tape - Studio 9 needs time and space to line up your camcorder for the shots you want, and it has difficulty getting a 'run-in' if the first shot is too near the start of the tape. 20 seconds will give you more than enough leeway here).
And now, you're ready to start ... click on the 'Start Capture button - and up pops a dialog dialog.
Fig 2: Type in the name of the capture. Yep. It's tough stuff. Not!
Type in the name of your movie (Mike's Tip No. 2: Use the name written on the tape! It makes finding the tapes you used easier later on). You can elect to stop the capture after a particular amount has been captured, if you want, or just set it to the length of your tape and capture the lot, or you can stop the capture when you think you have everything you want, by clicking 'Stop Capture' or pressing the Escape key on your keyboard. Then, click on Start Capture ... go and make a cup of coffee, and relax. Watch in awe, if you like, as your movie is captured onto the computer *and all the scenes detected for you at the same time!* You can determine just how the scenes are captured if you want (there are lots of things you can set up to work the way you want), but the usual way is to have a new clip (scene) created for every time you stopped and started the camcorder when shooting. You can always join the clips together afterwards, or split them even further if you want.
That's it. Like I said. Easy. Analog captures are slightly different. You have to control the camcorder - get it running - before clicking on 'Start Capture', and the scenes are (by default) detected by changes in the picture.
Now you're ready to turn your movie into a masterpiece...
OK. First thing to mention is that there are in fact three types of editing screen - all have the same stuff available in the top part, but the bottom bit changes. The first screen you're likely to use is called the 'storyboard' view, because it let's you quickly sort your scenes out and put them in the order you want. That's known as 'storyboarding'.
Fig 3: The Edit storyboard view quickly gets you up and running
How does this work? Well, you simply click on the scene you want (you can watch it play in the viewer to check), and drag it down to the frames below, in the required order. You can drop them in front of or behind existing scenes, and juggle around with them until you get the order you want. Scenes you don't want, you don't drag down. Only the scenes in the bottom part are going to make it into your final movie.
See all those tabs down the left-side of the album (in Fig. 3)? They're for doing things like adding titles, transitions, still pictures, sound effects and so on ... we'll come to those in a minute. Thing to notice here is that every clip you've selected has a nice little tick in the *picon* - the picture representing the scene - in the album. No need to keep a note of what you have used and what you haven't used. Studio does it for you. You can also change the album view to show details of each scene - and you can add your own comments to those, and even search for a scene based on your added comments. Cool, huh?
The next editing screen available is the Timeline view (these views are selected by clicking on one of the three view selectors immediately under the viewer controls).
Fig 4: The Edit timeline view - this is the most popular way to work.
To be honest, many Studio users quickly get to using this view all the time for their edits. You drag your clips down exactly as before, and move them around as you would in storyboard view. The big differences are you get to see your clips or scenes represented also by their length, and you can add sound effects, overlay titles (Q: what's an overlay title? A: One that uses your video as a background), music and so on, and see what you are doing.
OK, lets have a quick look at these timelines - the symbols on the left indicate what they're for, so, from the top, the first one is your video pictures, the next one is the video sound, recorded as you captured your movie, the next one is for the title overlays (full screen titles go on the top video track), and next two down are for sound effects or music that you want to add from CDs and so on, or for *SmartSound* music (that's really clever. We'll talk more about that a bit later). By default, sound effects will go on the first of the two sound tracks, and SmartSounds on the bottom track - but you can drag any sound file to the other track if you want.
On the right side of the timelines you'll see icons that allow you to 'lock' tracks - so any changes made to the video leaves those unaffected - and to 'mute' them or switch them off. Being able to lock the tracks enables you to do 'insert editing' for example, where the sound of one scene carries on playing during the picture from another scene. You've seen it at the movies. You can do it at home, with Studio 9.
The top bar of the timelines shows the time segments. Want to see more of the movie - or maybe to see the scale show individual frames for real precision work? Simple. Click on the scale and drag it to show what you want. Or right click and select what you want. Options, options. It's all designed to help you work the way you feel most comfortable with.
That vertical line on the scale (the 'scrubber') shows the current position of the movie playback. Drag it backwards and forwards and you 'scrub' through the movie - a quick way to watch it or find a particular part. There are also the controls under the viewer, of course - these will play back from either the album or the timelines, depending on whichever is currently chosen.
By the way, while you're working, Studio will automatically save your work every so often (you can determine just how often), so if a disaster happens - the electric company decides its time for a power failure, for example - you don't lose everything. But that is not a substitute for you saving your work ... do it frequently!!
OK, you've got all the scenes you want to use on the timeline now, and you've excluded all those shots of the grass and the blurry moving bits. Things are looking up already! Next, you want some scenes to be a bit shorter. You want to chop a bit off the front, or the end.
No problem. You have two easy ways to trim a clip. You can either click on the end of the clip to be changed on the timeline, and drag it to the new start or end point you want (Studio automatically moves all the other clips so there's no gap). Or you can select a special Trim Album, which provides more precise control over what you are doing. How do you get to that? Easy. Double click on the clip you want to trim.
So far, so good. You now have all the scenes you want, trimmed to the length you want. But ... one is a bit shaky (must get a tripod) ... and another one is a bit dingy. Studio 9 to the rescue!
Just above the timelines, to the left, is a toolbox icon, which when clicked on brings up a load of video or sound options.
Fig 5: Clean up your video or add special effects ... it's button-clicking easy!
The video options are shown on the left in Fig 5, and the bottom one of those available - the icon looks like an electric plug - is for video plug-ins (plug ... get it?). When that one is selected, you get a variety of options to clean up the picture, or to add special effects - such as slow motion, or make it look like a scratchy, sepia-colored old time movie. Two of the 'standard' clean up options cover stabilization, and automatic color correction. Select the clip to be corrected, select the required options ... bingo! Job done. You have a little control over the brightness of the color correction, but generally speaking the default sorts out your poorly exposed clips perfectly. The stabilization 'cure' works in much the same way as the 'steadycam' option in some camcorders.
You may also want to add a few sound effects to add a bit of atmosphere - crowds cheering when little Johnny takes his first steps, maybe. To add a sound effect, you just click on the sound FX icon, choose what you want from all of the different folders available, and drag it down to one of the sound timelines, positioned exactly where you want. You can also add music - but that's best left till the end.
So ... now you've selected, ordered and trimmed the required clips you want for your movie, corrected a few mishaps that occurred while shooting, added a few effects for, umm, effect, what's next?
Titles. You can make these full screen, by adding them to the appropriate place on the video timeline, or as titles that appear over your video, by adding them to the overlay line. Studio has a pretty comprehensive titler - with a vast range of styles built in, just waiting for you to use. You can use any font on your machine for any of these styles, and of course, you can create your own custom styles - and save them for future use.
Fig 6: Open the built in Titler, and create professional looking titles that can scroll up or across the screen, if you want. This screen shot shows the 'customizing' section of the Titler.
You can also add still pictures as backgrounds or insets, and there is a way to add moving picture insets (picture in picture)... but that's another story.
Nearly there. Next thing to do is add in some 'transitions' where suitable, to help with the flow of the story. This is where a lot of newcomers to video editing go a bit awry. They see the myriad of transitions available, and want to use as many different ones as they can between practically every scene. Well, that's not necessarily the best way to do it.
Watch any movie, and you'll see mainly 'straight cuts' from one scene to another, or dissolves, or maybe a fade to and from black. So why are all the transitions there? Well, they can help at times with the story line. For example, you want to show the passage of time between two scenes ... for that, a 'clock wipe' could be a good choice, if you don't want a fade to/from black. You can also use the transitions on overlay titles - so with a 3D transition say, your title could fly in, and then roll off. And, when you get a bit more experienced, you'll find that some of the transitions can be used to create some pretty stunning effects. But that's for your next movie ... we're still working on the first one.
Right. Now all that's missing is some music. You can use music from your favorite CD or you can select SmartSound music. You get a small selection (about 20) of SmartSound 'tunes' with Studio, but you can add to these and so build up a great music library. Point is ... the music you add from CDs is copyright protected, so you shouldn't copy it without paying a royalty - particularly if you'll be selling your movies. SmartSound music is royalty free, so you can sell your videos without having to pay a bean. You can use the timeline sound tracks to adjust the sound levels (click and drag), or you can open up a sound volume control panel. Either way, you can adjust the sound levels throughout your movie, so that music volumes for example, can be reduced when someone is speaking.
Fig 8: With a few SmartSound CDs added to Pinnacle Studio 9, you can find a piece of music that complements any scene or movie perfectly - and it is automatically tailored to fit!
How does SmartSound work? Simple. You select the scene or scenes you want the music to play, double click the bottom sound track on the timeline, and the SmartSound window opens. (Alternatively, you can select the 'music' icon in the Sound Tool Box). You'll then get a table like that shown in Fig 8, with all the selections available on your PC. In the left column you choose the style you want. That gives you a variety of options in the central column - pick the piece you want. You can preview it if you like. Then in the right column, you'll see there is a choice of versions. Remember - SmartSound is tailored to fit exactly the clips you have selected for music, right down to the last frame. In this column, the music is played in various ways, maybe with a dramatic intro, maybe with a dramatic end, maybe with both. Listen to them, and choose. Then click 'Add to movie'.
All the 'hard' work is done. All the time you're editing, you can play back the way it looks so far in the edit previewer. You can also watch it full screen (but at low quality resolution) to get a better idea of how it will look. When you are totally over the moon with your creation (and you will be), it's time to go to the next stage ... Make Movie.
OK - I see lots of hands waving in the air now... People want to ask some edit questions - "what about that 'third' editing screen mentioned way back?" The third editing screen is all text - chances are you'll look at it once, and never look at it again unless you want to sort out a particularly complex edit at some time. (Mike's Tip No. 3: If you want a print out of your edit instructions, choose this third screen, highlight it, copy it (CTRL+C), and paste it (CTRL+V) into a word processor or spreadsheet. ).
Another hand is waving ..."What about DVDs - don't they have menus and things?"
Good point. Thanks for the reminder. Yes they do - and with s9, you can create those, to look and work just like the pro DVDs, very easily. One of the icons to the left side of the album brings up a host of menus devised especially for creating DVDs. You can also design your own of course, but first time round, best bet is to use one that is already available. When you select one of the menus, the timeline - and the viewer - take on a slightly different look.
Fig 9: DVD authoring on the timeline - notice that menu and 'chapter' points are shown. You can have menus linking to other menus, too, for more sophisticated DVD movies.
The timeline becomes a DVD authoring tool, along with the titler. You can move or add buttons - the things people will click on to select scenes and so on in your made movie. The buttons can be still pictures representing the scenes they link to, or they can be a moving selection from the scene. You choose (hey - that's going to be the hard part ... making decisions). When the DVD is made, the menu will keep playing in a loop until a choice is made. Just like the pro DVDs. The background can be moving, just like the buttons. And if you want, you can use some of your own video as the background to the menu. And of course, using the special DVD controls beneath the viewer, you can try out your DVD menu, see if it works the way you want.
Here's what you do. You select the music you want, placed on one of the two lower sound tracks. You drag all the scenes you want onto the video track - Pinnacle recommends that the video clips last twice as long as the sound track (to give scope for the automatic creation process). You then select 'SmartMovie', choose the style you want, choose whether the clips you placed on the timeline should be used in the same order or selected at random, type in the titles ... click the 'Make' button ... and literally just a few moments later, your music video is created. Don't like it? Click again - and a new movie edit will be created. When you see what you like you can make a few final adjustments if you want - and you're ready to go to the final stages!!
Fig 11: A music movie is just moments away - created for you by yet another superb Studio 9 feature - SmartMovie.
Fig 13: When it comes to Make Movie, all you have to do is select what you want to make, make sure the appropriate media is selected, and click the 'Create...' button.
The Make Movie screen provides information about what space is available for your movie on the selected medium. When you're ready, click 'Create...(whatever)...', and go take a rest. If you're burning a VCD or a DVD, it can take a long time - every frame in the movie has to be rendered, and it all has to be burned onto the disc. Six to eight hours for an hour long movie is not unusual. But ... Studio 9 is doing the work, not you. You've done your bit. And you will get all the kudos when you show your masterpiece around.
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Fig 14: Choose your video format, and what type of movies you will want to make. Then look across to see which Studio packages will suit your purposes in this rough guide.
If you have any questions or want advice about which Pinnacle Studio to choose, the Videoguys will be only too pleased to help. For a wealth of tips and workarounds on shooting movies and using Studio, make my website - http://www.mikeshaw.co.uk - your first port of call!
Enjoy!
Mike Shaw.
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STUDIO 9 SOFTWARE $88.00
Studio 9 software $88.00
 8x DVD Burner Bundle! Studio 9 Software, Pioneer DVR-A07, 3-Pack Verbatim DigitalMovie 4x DVD-R $184.95! after rebates: Studio 9 & A07 bundle $234.95
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STUDIO 9 AV/DV $95.00 Includes Studio version 9 software and a video capture card that supports both analog and digital camcorders. Studio 9 AVDV $95.00
8x DVD Burner Bundle! Studio 9 AVDV, Pioneer DVR-A07, 3-Pack Verbatim DigitalMovie 4x DVD-R $189.95! after rebates: Studio 9 AVDV & A07 bundle $239.95
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Studio Deluxe w/ Studio 9 $188.00 Includes Studio version 9 software, a video capture card that supports both analog and digital camcorders, a professional breakout box and Hollywood FX Plus. Studio 9 Deluxe $188.00
8x DVD Burner Bundle! Studio 9 Deluxe, Pioneer DVR-A07, 3-Pack Verbatim DigitalMovie 4x DVD-R $279.95! after rebates: Studio 9 Deluxe & A07 bundle $329.95
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MovieBox USB w/ Studio 9 $188.00 Includes Studio 9 software and an external box for converting video from analog camcorders to a digital signal that can be read through your computer's USB port. MovieBox USB 9 $188.00
8x DVD Burner Bundle! MovieBox USB 9, Pioneer DVR-A07, 3-Pack Verbatim DigitalMovie 4x DVD-R $184.95! after rebates: MovieBox USB 9 & A07 bundle $334.95
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MovieBox DV w/ Studio 9 $235.00 Includes Studio version 9 software and an external box for converting video from analog camcorders to a digital signal that can be read through your computer's FireWire port. MovieBox DV 9 $235.00
8x DVD Burner Bundle! MovieBox DV 9, Pioneer DVR-A07, 3-Pack Verbatim DigitalMovie 4x DVD-R $329.95! after rebates: MovieBox DV 9 & A07 bundle $379.95
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