Part III

I noticed the other day that my Toaster board must be one of my oldest pieces of equipment, yet it is still the center of my system. It sure was a "revolution" when it released. Ah, how sweet is was, hooking up your Toaster for the first time... seems like years ago. $100,000 of programs in one box. Wow!

Now we've added the Flyer, hard drives and more. Tremendous growth, yet occasionally, something we loved got left out of the next update. Certain effects might disappear, and techniques we've developed get put aside.

One technique that I refused to give up was "Flying Keys" -- CG titles that "flew" on and off the screen dynamically, rather than simply fading on and off. While many of the Toaster's effects are a bit too obvious to use constantly through a project, these same effects often look great with superimposed titles.

The Flyer (at the present) will not sequence "supers" in a project. We can however manually run the "flying" CGs while digitizing the background video. Let's say I start to digitize my "stand-up" host... just as he begins to talk I trigger his CG to fly-in, pause and then fly-out. The flying title is now recorded into the video clip and is ready to be placed in a project, perhaps even with extra effects or CG overlays.

You could use supers over rolling video, a frozen image on a TBC, the Toaster's color background, or sometimes even another Framestore. By recording them into a video clip, you often accomplish the seemingly impossible, add potential for more "layers", and permanently eliminate any loading time delays.

Let's create a couple of images and then try running them.

Many folks used these techniques in the pre-Flyer days. Well it's time to use them again. You could use TPaint or the CG to create the images, the same principals apply. First, go into the CG program, to a new blank page and type a few lines of text

Note: If you have Aussie's Fast Frames program, simply select OZ-BlackKey from the CG ARexx menu (Left Alt + F1). You can also paste these settings to a large range of CG pages with OZ-CopyBackground.

1. Change CG page type to Framestore (not a key page)

2. Set CG colors

When we superimpose, we will remove anything in the Framestore that is pure black. Therefore we set the background to black. Since we still want shadows and borders around our text to be visible, we must raise their black color to at least a dark gray, and also give up any transparency (new tip here shortly.)

• Highlight the text and open the palette controls
• Change the BACKGROUND color to pure black (colors 0, 0, 0)
• Set the text SHADOW color to dark gray (color 25-35 for red, green and blue) and set the shadow's transparency to full opaque (255).
• Set the text BORDER color to the same dark gray and opaque transparency settings. The border setting and size is critical to having a sharp edge to your supers.

3. Reset Shadow direction

When we use the Toaster's lumakey, it usually adds (i.e. leaks) a dark edge down the right side of the keyed image, in this case the right side of our letters. We can't change that, so we use it instead.

• Click on shadow direction once, to aim shadows straight down.

If we left the shadow settings as set, then the dark edge would be emphasized even more. Instead we change our shadows to point straight down, which works in harmony with that dark edge for a good looking, diagonal drop shadow.

• Save the page, and then copy it to a new page for another experiment.

You'll notice that we killed all transparency settings. This was because they will not super correctly (rats!) I like transparent shadows, so I add a solid graphic behind the text, such as a brush or box. Since this graphic "cuts" the key, we can use transparent shadows for text on top.

1. Change your text to look like a sub-title near the bottom
2. Add a graphic box behind the text
3. Set box color as desired, but set shadow & border as dark gray and opaque, and box shadow direction should also point straight down
4. Reset text color so that the shadow is 50% transparent and that the shadow direction is back to the original, diagonal setting. Shadow and border color must still avoid pure black.

- Save this page too.

Note: Co-Pilot Video includes a routine called Disk Recorder. This program prepares the hard drives for digitizing and then waits for a simple hotkey press to pause and unpause the recording. It also leaves the user with full access to the Switcher and project while recording. Both Control Tower and Navigator also include a disk recording command.

To digitize a super into a clip we follow the following procedure...

1. Place the Framestores and Effects you desire into the project screen
2. Start the Disk Recorder, leave it in 'pause'
3. Go to Project/Switcher view and set 'main' buss to your video source
4. Roll tape and practice your manual 'supering' moves
5. Re-start tape, start Disk Recorder rolling
6. Record manual moves and then stop Disk Recorder

Let's see what we can do...

Start with an empty project screen in the Projects/Files view

First we want to bring any elements we need onto the project screen. This will give us access to the effects or Framestores we desire when we are working in the Project/Switcher view. Bring into the 'project':

• the 2 CG pages that we created, and from the Effects/Trajectory drawer:
• 3 "Fly On" effects
• 3 "Fly Off" effects
• and the very last effect named "Tumble to Matte" (has a darker gray background)

Actually, you are welcome to drag up 20+ effects for experimenting. See how they behave with supers. Note: the effect "Flip Out Bottom" won't key. There are also many other effects in other drawers that will work with supers. Experiment.

Start the Disk Recorder in pause (if desired) and go to the Project/Switcher view.

Feed a signal from your main video source and select that source on your main switcher buss (probably input 1). You could feed in either a camera signal, a VCR or a image frozen on the TBC. To super, do the following

1. Click once on the CG crouton (it loads into the preview buss) - note whether it loaded it into DV1 or DV2
2. Set the Superimpose buss in the corner
   • Select the same DV1 or DV2 channel
   • Click on the Black key button
   • Set the lumakey level to about 30-35, wherever the image looks best

3. Double click on a "Fly Off" effect (or click once to load and then press the spacebar). Once the effect has left the screen you are ready to start.
4. Now you can experiment. Start your background tape rolling (and Disk Recorder when happy). Just click on a "Fly On" effect and press the spacebar to trigger the action... then click on a "Fly Off" effect when it's time for the CG to leave the screen.

It took a lot of work to get to this point, but I think it's worth it. Many of the effects that sit idle in my folders have new value. All of those slide-in and stretch effects are fine for CG. Kicked puppy is cute. And some of the bouncy fly-ins add a good "button" and cut nicely to music. Since the effect is applied to the CG layer only and not the background screen, they add "snaz" without cluttering the project.

After all, look at most news or magazine shows. Most reporter's names slide-in at the bottom instead of just fade.

We have two DV channels and we can use them both for supers, (except for certain effects that take over one of the DV's). To use these:

1. Select Input 1 (probably) on the main switcher buss (background video)
2. Click once on the first CG Framestore (pre-loads into a DV buss)
3. Click once on the second CG Framestore (pre-loads into other DV buss)
4. Set up Superimpose buss (pick Black, and either DV1 or DV2)

Notice how you can switch which DV is supering (the "t" and "y" keys also control the superimpose buss). You could... Fly-on DV1, then switch the super to DV2, then Fly-off DV2... all in one move.

While displaying DV1, you can pre-load DV2. If you had a series of supers and you want them all to cut directly together (we did Chinese subtitles this way), simply...

1. display the first title
2. click once on the next CG to load it,
3. press "t" or "y" to switch DV channels
4. repeat steps 2 & 3 ad infinitum

If you do desire a black space between 2 titles, select "o" or "super off"

Some effects have a medium gray background in the crouton image. We loaded one called "Tumble To Matte". These effects can switch DV channels in the middle of the effect. Works great for supers.

To use these, pre-load both DV1 and DV2 with CGs and set up a super

1. Set the PREVIEW buss to the opposite DV channel selected on the Super buss. In other words, if the super is showing DV1, then we want the Preview set to DV2.
2. Double click on the "Tumble" effect.

At last, one CG super directly into another with an effect in-between. Combine this with the earlier idea of loading a series of CG titles and you are up and running. Have fun looking for other effects with this medium gray background.

Our program "Aussie's Fast Frames," sequences Framestores, effects and CG into Flyer video clips while leaving out any hard drive loading times.

Recently I have been adding new features to this program to also sequence Fly-in keys. Practically all of the steps in this tutorial are automated into a simple Flyer sequence providing you with manual step-thru as well as timed sequences.

This technique will work while digitizing your background video with superimposed sequences on top. If you also have ProWave's RenderFX program, then Fast Frames expands both programs by supering two existing video clips together. Yet more forms of layering!

These new features will be shipped shortly to all registered Fast Frames owners direct from OZware. Send in registration cards!!! Co-Pilot saves you time... now Fast Frames gives you things to fill that time. (ha ha)

Cheers all. Lots of steps... I hope you like the results.

Aussie

Michael Holten is an Emmy award winning video editor, a theatrical Sound Designer, and a third party Flyer programmer. His Seattle based company, OZware, has released three programs for use with NewTek's Video Flyer: Co-Pilot Audio, Co-Pilot Video, and Aussie's Fast Frames. Watch for more.