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thefilmchick's Dumb Vegas Questions ;)

 
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:21 pm    Post subject: thefilmchick's Dumb Vegas Questions ;) Reply with quote

Running Vegas 7.0.

In WMM, I have a third-party 'skip frames' effect. When you put it on the clip, it samples the frames and deletes roughly half, producing an intentionally choppy, flickering, slow-motion effect.

Is there a way to replicate this effect in Vegas? A general Google search was unhelpful. I'm thinking it can be done with keyframes and saved, but I'm not sure how.
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Last edited by thefilmchick on Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:21 am; edited 1 time in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do you have an example of what that skip frame effect looks like? I started to answer you one way but then got to thinking that might not be what you meant. So I figured better off to actually see it myself first, just to be sure!
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It works best on frames with quick action, so, Aislynn, here's a clip from 'The Substitute.' The first clip is without the effect; the second clip is with it. (And multiple applications of the effect chop the picture up even more.)

Thanks for any help!
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah-hah, cool! Thanks for the clip example!

I know of two ways to replicate that sort of effect, either by screencapping or by jump cuts. I don't know if you can see either of these examples right now but if you can here's an example of either of those:

Screencapping: "3 Years" at :44 - :50

Jump cuts: "Prelude 12/21 - Sayid" pretty much the whole way through.

Gotta step out right now but I'll be back in a bit to give more info on how to do either of them, if you're interested.
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't see either--dialup! (It took me close to half an hour to upload my example.) But I can guess from the names, anyway.

I don't think screencaps are quite what I'm looking for, as the action is moving, just in bits and pieces. Nonetheless, how do you do that and the jump cuts without just chopping away at the clips every 5 frames or so? There's got to be a way to do it as an effect, anyway. Thanks again.
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 12:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wasn't sure if you were home at the time, so that's why I went ahead and gave you the full vids.

Anyway, try this little bit of "3 Years;" I rendered it out in a teeny size so it's only 280kb and should hopefully be something you'll be able to see:

http://www.zshare.net/video/73597348cb1476b3/

Anyway, I wanted you to see a little more what I meant by screencapping it, because that was the first thing I thought of when I saw your example. By taking a series of screencaps, you can get a sort of stop-motion effect. I have an additive dissolve on my example because I wanted to flash as well but without it and by controlling the size of the screencaps, you can get a more similar effect to your example.

How to screencap (from the All-In-One Vegas help thread) --

Aislynn wrote:
Cue your clip up to the moment you want it to pause at, then screencap it. There's a little button over the preview window that says Save snapshot to file.



You just click that and give it a name when prompted and it'll put that into your Project Media bin. I usually either split my vid clip at the point where I'm making the cap or go ahead and trim it to that point, then cap it so that when you just put the screencap on the timeline right after it, it'll look like the motion in the video paused. (You can try to find that exact same moment in the clip again and trim it after you've moved the cursor off of it but if you don't get the right one the video will "jerk" and the still pic will look like it suddenly snaps into another position. So I've found it's best to try and catch that exact moment rather than try to edit the clip to find it again later! )


For doing a series of screencaps, I took the scene of Kate helping Sawyer up and went slowly through the clip and split it every time the action noticeably changed. Then I separated the clips a bit so I could see where the end of each one was and put the cursor right at the very end, then capped it following the method outlined above. I saved each and imported them back into the project, then moved the video clips down the timeline so I could still take more screencaps later if I needed (rather than deleting them right away).

I dragged each screencap up to the timeline then shortened them up until I could fit in each of the caps I wanted in the time span I was working with. Like I said, I also wanted it to flash so I crossfaded them together and put the additive dissolve transition onto each of the fades. But if I would've wanted just a more stop motion type of look, I would've left each cap a bit longer. You could also intersperse the screencaps with the full motion clip to give it a sort of stop and start effect by playing around with the length of the caps, etc.

Jump cuts work well for something that looks like it's in continuous motion but doesn't have that pause between motions. Jump cuts are what a movie/show often uses if they have a long section of somebody walking to give the scene interest they might show you the person far away walking towards the camera, then suddenly he's about mid-way to the camera, then he's suddenly right at the camera. The sections are sometimes slightly crossfaded together so that you get the look of seeing the farther away section fading into the mid-way and etc. Or you can do them without the crossfade to get a very hard jump between motions that looks good with something with a hard beat.

http://www.zshare.net/video/73597653113da035/

208kbs again so hopefully viewable. Mainly just talking about the section where Sayid comes in the door, then he's ahead a bit, then his head is in the other direction, etc.

Jump cuts are done in a somewhat similar manner except you just cut the scene into pieces and then I've found it works best to make your cuts then take the second clip and trim it back from left to right a bit and then go down the line of each clip that you've made in a similar fashion and just adjusting them until you get the effect you're looking for.

Sadly, no, I don't believe that there's just an effect that does that. The closest one I can think of would be Film Effects, though it'll get a grayscale or tinted overlay on top of the herky-jerky motion, along with scratches and lines etc.

A very last resort would be to take your clip and stretch it out until it's as slowed down as it can possible be. However, I don't recommend that just because, well, it doesn't look very good, in my opinion!
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry for the slow reply; I've spent the night knitting, since I need to have a hat made by Tuesday. Anyway, you hit on the word I couldn't find: stop-motion is the idea I had in mind. Thanks for giving it the right name!

When I called this an 'effect,' though, I didn't necessarily mean the premade stuff in the bottom rows: I was more wondering if there was a way to do the stop-motion stuff with keyframes (and save it under video event fx: filter packages) so that it would automatically clip out every other five frames or so, instead of having to manually do it for each clip I wanted to use the stop-motion effect upon: Can you somehow 'blackout' parts of a clip in the keyframes so that they won't play?

(To maybe help you visualize a little more: In the song I'm using for my March contest entry, there are a lot of long 'oh-oh-oh-oh's, and I wanted to use this sort of look on them. I didn't want to have to go through and clip-clip-clip on each, and was trying to expedite it if at all possible.)
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No problem at all! Hope you get your hat done in time! And good on you for being able to knit; I can crochet passably when I'm in practice but I turn into all thumbs when I loose that handy little loop on the end of my needle...

Ahem, anyway! As far as I know, nope, there's no way to rig Vegas to do the sort of stop motion effect without having to do it by hand each time. Maybe somebody knows about a Vegas plug-in or something that does the trick but, to my knowledge, the only way to do it is manually.

However, you might find that it really isn't as time consuming as it might sound at first, especially once you get the hang of splitting/capping/importing. It goes pretty quickly and gives you total control over what scenes are included or not.
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 6:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While I was away from the computer today, I realized I forgot an easier answer. You can import the scene you want the skip frame effect on into WMM, apply the effect, render it in good quality, then just import that into Vegas and voila!
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 7:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd figured out the WMM porting already: Used some of it for the Shannon scenes in 'Mohammed's Radio,' since I don't have any clips from 'Abandoned' at the moment. But yeah, I'll try figuring out the clipping stuff tomorrow. At the moment it's sounding like a lot of effort, and since the 'oh's are repeated, I'm still going to try to figure out a way to expedite it. I found a javascript that cuts things down into frames, but it applies the frame time as milliseconds, so it's way too short-cutting (so to speak) to be any quicker than just clipping things down into separate frames.

The hat's going well: Working on the rolled-brim cloche style at the bottom by now, so I should easily finish it by the end of this weekend. Never start up a craft publicly, though: I can never escape my mom's requests for things!
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some other notes w/r/t this method:

* I cannot load screencaps in from the trimmer, correct? I have to do it from the working window? When I try to load them in from the trimmer, the save snapshot button is greyed out.

* Is there a way to automagically (heh) adjust the length of the screencaps? When I load them in from the project media window, they are 5 seconds long or thereabouts by default, and that is obviously defeating the purpose of why I'm using the screencaps. I'd like them to load in at only 15 frames' worth or so by default.

* How do I set it so that the snapshots take at 720x480 by default without changing the preview quality and screwing up my view each time?

* (Not related) Is there a way to set the event pan/crop's default (which does 4:3, and which I'd like to change to academy 1.85:1?

Thanks!
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eloramoon
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, Kate!

I'll take a quick shot at some of your questions, though hopefully someone else can either confirm or correct my answers.

Quote:
* I cannot load screencaps in from the trimmer, correct? I have to do it from the working window? When I try to load them in from the trimmer, the save snapshot button is greyed out.


Yeah, as far as I know you can only make screen shots from the working window. Not sure why that is or how to get around it.

Quote:
* Is there a way to automagically (heh) adjust the length of the screencaps?


Once the screencap is on the timeline, you can just drag it (or pull it in) to whatever the desired length is.

Quote:
* How do I set it so that the snapshots take at 720x480 by default without changing the preview quality and screwing up my view each time?


Ooo... good question. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that, but I'm sure there must be a way. If no one else knows, I'll fiddle aorund with it later and see if I can figure it out.

Quote:
* (Not related) Is there a way to set the event pan/crop's default (which does 4:3, and which I'd like to change to academy 1.85:1?


Yeah, when you're in the pan/crop window, there should be a drop-down menu right above it which has several pre-sets in there, which I believe does include academy.

I hope this helps!
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey Julia, some clarification:

I'd like the screencap length to automatically show up as, say, 5 frames before I load it into the timeline/working window, as opposed to adjusting it in the timeline.

I'd also like the academy to be the default view, instead of having to change it from the default view to academy in pan/crop, which I have to change for each section and which is kind of a pain to do, particularly with the screencaps where I have close to 50 sections thus far and am not even a minute into the song.
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thefilmchick
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adding to this per the 'academy' question above:

I found and figured out Track FX. Is there a Track Pan/Crop that would use the Academy pan/crop setting as mentioned above? Thanks!
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