Part 2 Isaac's Birthday video

[Maxine370]

Part 2 is up...

http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... p?pos=-717

Again, please make your suggestions and criticisms as I want to go back and make changes before I finalize.

Beth

[GPauba]

AWESOME!

Thanx for sharing!

G

[ed]

The only suggestion I could offer would be to adjust the levels on some of the darker clips. The image quality is good, but some of the detail seems to get lost. Indoor lighting can be a pain with miniDV.

[Maxine370]

Thanks, what do you suggest best for upping the lighting. I usually use gamma correction otherwise the image tends to get washed out.

[ed]

I start with the auto levels, then amnually adjust them. Alter the gamma and them increase the color saturation if needed. I just try and bring out the detail of the darker images a little.

[momoffduty]

Great job! Hope you don't mind a few questions, I would like to learn how you created a few things. The circle cut out of the video - was this a track matte? Color circles created in Photoshop? And, the flip down transition, where the top half of video then flip lower left third-flip lower center third-last lower right third...PE3 transition/keyframing?

I probably have another dozen questions, but will stop at 3.

[Maxine370]

MomOD

The circle is actually not a track matte but a circle image (created in titles) laid over the video with Alpha Adjust (invert) applied.

The color circle were the same image laid over the aforementioned, resized and given a tint and then keyframed for movement.

The last is the card flip transition. One track has the top half of the video (cropped to reveal only upper portion). The lower track has the lower portion of the video. The transision applied is card flip (customized to be 1 row, 4 columns, not sure if it was scan line or spiral). I had to fiddle with the transision timing to make it match the music beat.

[momoffduty]

Thanks Maxine/Beth! I have a future tennis video in mind and was thinking about tennis balls along with circles. And, I didn't know that you can customize the card flip on the number of columns, have to try that one.

Your Isaac is so sweet. Mine were little too long ago, now I have 'pretend' grandkids next door. Not that I am ready to be a full time gma!

Cheryl

[Cinde]

Beth I am very impressed with both of Issaac's birthday videos. Seeing your work sure makes me want to move forward from memorial videos where I am working with only still photos. That will come later.

The only suggestion I have for part 2 concerns the audio near the end of the video. I was confused by hearing the background audio from the party and the music track you added. Is there a way to lower the volume of the party goers (except when someone was actually speaking) so that the music can be heard better?

Isaac is so adorable. Thanks for sharing.

[Maxine370]

Thanks Cinde and MOD.

Isaac is almost 2 now but we think he's still precious , even when he's up to trouble which is almost always.

I agree, it was on my list to adjust the volumes...once you start working with video you'll see it's very tricky to balance the soundtrack and audio.
I'd say the audio end of editing is one of the places I have the most trouble.

Thanks for your comments.

Cinde PS...I caught your latest video and left my comment in the gallery but to sum up my comments there.. a very professional and polished job. You should be proud of your work.

[Gerry]

Wow. I'm blown away.

This is absolutely tremendous!

My only comment: I could almost see the ending (during the Beatles' "All Together Now") being music only with no natural sound, or at least the natural sound WAY down. As it stood, I didn't know what to focus on -- the music or the talking -- they were fighting each other and fighting for attention.

But that's a minor thing. I'm just really, really impressed with this!!

[momoffduty]

Beth, another question please. When there is video scaled down over a backdrop (PIP), how did you get the white frame on the small video image?

Just saw the thread on the gradient wipes, Thanks for the info!

Cheryl