Quick Demo of Still/Video Mix for Effect

[Lin Evans]

Just a little 4 megabyte file to demo one way of using video with a still to create a special effect. This was done by taking a still photo of a mountain near my home with clouds, etc., during daylight and using a video of a lightening storm. The video was "inverted" to get rid of some unwanted reflections of objects and opacity was adjusted on the night scene with the lightening to make it appear as if the mountain scene was taken at night. Just a quick and dirty example of something which, when better executed, might be used as an intro to a slideshow about lightening or such....

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demo/lighteningdemo.zip (about 4 meg)

Lin

[colin hill]

Lin,

That was excellent. This is the effect I would like to go for, when I get to start dabbling with video.

I first need to obtain a programme that will extract portions of a video. At the moment do not know what

programme will do this.

Colin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Colin,

Any decent video editor will let you choose a start and ending position and let you export what is between them as an independent video clip. There are numerous choices for that. You might want to start with a freeware video editor then later you could go to something more sophisticated such as CyberLink Power Director or Adobe Premier Elements. Here's a link to Adobe Premier Elements - watch the video's which shows you what you can do.....

http://www.adobe.com...cts/premiereel/

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

That was excellent. This is the effect I would like to go for, when I get to start dabbling with video.

I first need to obtain a programme that will extract portions of a video. At the moment do not know what

programme will do this.

Colin

[thedom]

Very nice Lin!

How did you do to only keep the lightening storm in the video ??

Thank you for your explanations.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dom,

Thanks!

First you need to find a video which has lightening with a minimum of intrusive objects in the frame. Ideally, lightening over the ocean or where there are no buildings or tall objects which are illuminated during the flashes.

Next, you bring in your own still image which you want to apply the lightening effect to. If it's already an evening or night scene you can leave it as is, but if you want to make an image taken during the day "look" like it was taken at night, then using the opacity control can work wonders.

Next you will want to "invert" the scene with lightening (rotate it 180 degrees) so that whatever "was" on the bottom, now is on the top where you can pull it up outside the viewable area of the screen. I find that using "Shift" plus dragging the control points can help in two ways. First you can move objects outside the viewable area and second, you can "stretch" the image to help position the lightening strikes where you want them in the image.

Check your messages for some more information....

Best regards,

Lin

Very nice Lin!

How did you do to only keep the lightening storm in the video ??

Thank you for your explanations.

[colin hill]

Hi Lin,

Thanks for the information and explanations, very interesting. Have checked on internet for video editors and Adobe seems to be the one.

Will do a bit more research and see what happens.

Colin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Colin,

I agree, but you may want to start with the free version of VideoPad here - then once you understand the benefits and limitations, move to either the professional version of VideoPad or Adobe Premier Elements...

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multimedia_and_Graphics/Video_and_Animation_Tools/VideoPad_Video_Editor.html

Lin

Hi Lin,

Thanks for the information and explanations, very interesting. Have checked on internet for video editors and Adobe seems to be the one.

Will do a bit more research and see what happens.

Colin

[colin hill]

Hi Lin,

Have downloaded the free version of VideoPad and find it to be fine for what I will need to do.

Thank you for posting the link.

Regards,

Colin