View Full Version : Best way to implement effects in VidBlaster Pro
I have been playing with the concept of effects in VidBlaster Pro and would like to have your thoughts on this. In VidBlaster Studio, implementing effects is a no brainer as it can be done in the same way as in a real tv studio: setup your preview and program video, select the effect and do a take. In VidBlaster Pro however there is no preview and program bus, and many find this a blessing. So I'd like to come up with a way to implement effects here in a different way. One of the things I am experimenting with is to attach an effect to every module.
Here's an example: we have two cameras, one shows Cali Lewis, the other one an iPhone. The effect for camera 1 is 'full frame', for camera 2 it is 'PIP'. Select camera 1 to show Cali, then select 2 to PIP the iPhone (1 will not be deselected). Unselect 2 to go back to Cali, etc. This saves time, as you don't have to change effects while being live. As long as your effects are linked to a camera (or player), this will save you valuable time fine and I even worked out how to do this with the numeric keypad. However, if effects need to change, you will need to grab your mouse and change the effect. At that point the advantage over using a seperate Effects module (think studio) has pterry much disappeared.
I can give lots of other examples, which I am sure you can come up with yourself, but in the end it comes down to this: can you gain something when effects are locked and preset to a camera or player, or do you prefer the studio setup (preview & program bus, effects panel)? Or do you have a better idea?
Your input is welcome. Please limit your discussions to the question above. If you like to discuss another feature, please find the appropriate topic or create a new one.
cyntax01
27 Aug 2008, 17:08
personally i've always been more comfortable with a program/preview setup, but I can see for most users of VidBlaster, this option would be too cumbersome to accomplish live especially if you are the talent and director at the same time. I really like the idea of attaching effects setups to the players themselves, and I can see it implemented a few different ways:
1. You could add another set of players to the interface. More like a proxy or a dummy player for effects. From the player setup menu you tell vidblaster it was an "Effect" player and could set up an Effect In, the Source video/camera and an Effect Out. This would trigger automatically when the player is selected [effect in], and again when the next event is selected [effect out]. Since you're essentially creating a new player this way, it would free your sources from being locked to a particular effect as you could just select the original source Camera or Video clip for a hard cut.
2. Another way i see this happening is leaving your players alone and adding a Mix/Effects panel to Vidblaster, from which you'd select your transitions and sources. You'd only need to add one "Effect player" to the source selection panel. When the Effect player is selected it will trigger the effect preset in the panel. This might be a little more time consuming but it would keep you from adding full program/preview support to the interface as you'd only be doing program/preview-style switching when an effect is needed. The benefit to this though is that you could add an option to save those source/transition setups to a hotkey or preset drop-down menu. (i.e. "Camera 1 PIP")
just some thoughts I had on how this could be accomplished. would this be feasable?
I think an effect "player" as you suggest is an excellent idea! I will have a fresh look at it tomorrow morning and see if I can shoot any holes in it. Thanks.
I also like the idea of an effect player. In case of PIP, you must easily be able to switch between the PIP and one of the two sources in full frame. You'd need to see the iphone in fullframe also. A easy knob on a player may also be a possibility. I think the use of the mouse is no big deal.
But for those who don't want to, a effect player (however, where talking about effects on a livecamerastream here) may be great!
raygun01
27 Aug 2008, 20:13
The effect player sounds like a great idea. Just some food for thought: I've been using Wirecast for the past few months. Effects are dealt with in a drop down menu/preset sort of way. For example, you have 3 repositories for selecting the effects you intend to use. You can change these at any time without them activating in the show. So let's say you select left-right wipe in one of the repositories. Then you activate that specific effect at will. You can then change the effect to match whatever else you intend to do as you go along. This sounds similar to what you are talking about with the effect player. Select the effect you want at any time. Then apply the effect in real time at will. Makes sense to me. And it's not overly complicated for the host/producer on the fly.
As for activating PiP for a camera with the keyboard, a simple shift-# might do the trick pretty easily (or some other modifier)... That would alleviate the need to use the mouse to use it. PiP is a pretty popular need for things like this, so making it easy through the keyboard would be ideal. For example, camera 1 - host, camera 2 - iPhone close up... When we're on the host full screen, we want the iPhone in PiP, hit Shift-2, it appears in PiP. To remove the PiP we can either hit shift-2 again, or simply hit 1 to restore 1 in full screen mode.
It sounds like you are using the definition of "effects" to cover features that are not currently in VB: PIP and transitions. I'm not sure you should lump these two things together and provide one implementation solution because in my opinion they have different needs.
For example, transitions are something I would use when switching video sources and I would generally set and forget it. If I set it up for a wipe transition, than it would stay that way for most of my show. I'm not sure I would need a preview or effects window to preview it. Having a pull-down menu to select the transition and maybe a hot key to toggle it on and off would be good.
PIP is another story. To do it right you need to be able to configure it before making it live. You may want to crop the video to chop out the background and also position it correctly in the main camera window. I could also see where you don't want PIP but instead you want to have two video camera displays side-by-side. In this case I would think you would use the full video from each camera but you need to configure which one is on the left and which one is on the right in the output stream.
One possible way to create a preview window (to view the effects) is make the Program window double purpose. The Program window would work as it does now until you click on the "preview" button on the window itself. The Program window would change color (border) or somehow indicate that it was in Preview mode and now you can select cameras and video players along with effects and see the results in the Preview window. This could be happening while recording/streaming from another player (e.g., while a video is playing). The Record/Streamer window is showing the true video stream.
Another possible way to view the effects would be in the camera windows themselves. You could select PIP for a specific camera and do the cropping and positioning within it's own window. You could also combine this with the suggestion above and preview the results in the Program window.
Just some of my thoughts.
-Tom
Well, I thought it over and still think the "effect player" is a brilliant idea. I dubbed it the Video Effect module and have started working on it.
@Rieks: you can go back to full frame by selecting the original Camera module
@raygun01: I am concentrating on the use of the numeric keypad only
@Tom: I'm only discussing effects here, I will be discussing transitions later and in a new topic.
Thanks all for your input!
i would rather have the preview window and a broadcast to at least make sure it's set right like a regular editing program or broadcast. or a place for the effect and when the mouse is over it it gives a preview of the effect...
Version 0.34 (http://vidblaster.com/?p=38) now supports up to 3 Video Effect modules as we discussed here, giving you a chance to play a bit with this new module. Especially notice how the select status behaves when switching between camera, effect and player. When commenting, keep in mind one of the sources eventually can also be a player!
Mike,
I've played with the Effects features and found some things which I'm not sure are features or bugs:
1. I created two effects modules but they both seem to be using camera 1 as the main source and using camera 2 for the effects (i.e. PIP). Is this what you meant when you said the effects are currently tied to camera 1 and 2? The Camera 1 and Camera 2 buttons in the effects module don't seem to do anything.
2. If I have effects enabled (i.e. PIP), starting a player doesn't turn off the current camera (in the video output stream) -- it only plays in the player window. If I turn off the effect, the player works as expected.
3. The Effects: Split H/V don't use the full video source -- only half. If I selected Split Vertical, I expected to put the full framed video from camera 1 and camera 2 within the same window. Currently, I only get half my face when I select the Split Effect.
I also didn't see anything in the Help screen that would give me any clues about how it was intended to work.
I do think the Effects Module implementation is a good one and heading in the right direction.
-Tom
1. Correct, sources 1 and 2 are fixed for now to cameras 1 and 2. I did not have time to implement other sources.
2. Correct. If starting a player would turn off the effect, how would you then do a PIP with one or more sources be a player? You would have to start the player(s) first and then start the effect. Food for thought here!
3. This is how I thought a split would work (and I've seen this on TV, of course proper camera alignment is needed to make this effect work). If I make both sources small, to me it would look more like a PIP. Any experts around to correct me or confirm this? And if I am right, what would Tom's effect be called? I can then add that too.
2. I would think a camera or player can be used alone or tied to an effect through an Effects Module. I can see not switching the current video source when a player that is tied to an effects is started but not if the player will be played full screen. Currently the way Effects is implemented if one of my cameras is screen capture and the other is a camera on me and my camera is PIP, the only way I can play a video clip is turn off PIP and start the player or turn off screen capture and start the video (resulting in a black screen while I switch). What I think would be better is if starting the video clip switch the video output to the player and when it was done, my screen capture and PIP would return.
3. As for the split effect, I've never seen split screen implemented with only half of the camera frame on TV. I watch a lot of business shows and they do the split screen a lot. They have two cameras, one on the host and the other on the person they are interviewing. Each person is full frame and they switch from one person to another as they talk. They also do a split vertical screen where they take the full frame feed from each camera and place them side-by-side in the picture. The side-by-side is the same full frame shots except scaled down to fit together in the frame. This is how it's done on the Tricaster and Leo (TwitLive.tv) uses it all the time.
Neil and Cali did this using VB a few weeks back with a Ustream video they did. They had Cali on camera one and the person they were interviewing on camera two. Then they had a side-by-side shot that looked like a screen capture of camera 1 and camera 2 video monitors from VB. I thought it looked pretty good.
I don't know when I would use the split vert/horz if it only used half the source video frame. It seems like it would be tough to line up the cameras to get a good shot and it may not be a good shot if you wanted to send it full frame.
Just my two cents and would like to hear what others think.
-Tom
i also thing the split screen should be just that and not one screen take over half of it. they should resize them both to fit in the window.
Is there a common programming language to script visual effects? Something like
PIP camera 2 @ 0,0,100,100
pause 2000
PIP camera 2 @ 0,0,100,100 grow full in 1000
I don't like to reinvent the wheel..
Is there a common programming language to script visual effects? Something like
PIP camera 2 @ 0,0,100,100
pause 2000
PIP camera 2 @ 0,0,100,100 grow full in 1000
I don't like to reinvent the wheel..
lazy hahah i mean for the screen split to be properly proportioned like they would do on say face the nation where they have two people on screen plit.
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