Instant Movie questions

[angelah100]

I am creating an 'instant movie' with some selected clips from old, silent 8mm home movies. I have to ship it out tomorrow so it can be played at a July 4th party this weekend, thus I am using 'instant movie' instead of my own labored process.

According to the Help file, I can customize the music by selecting multiple clips within the instant movie customize area and they will be played in the order selected. However when I select 'my music' and 'browse' to select clips, I can only select one music clip and not multiple clips. I don't see any method of selecting more than one clip. The Help file also says that I can alternatively just add the music clips to the show and they will be used in the instant movie. However, should I then select 'no music' in the customize part of 'instant movie'? There doesn't seem to be adequate instructions in the help file!

I am editing this post because I"ve already run into another problem. The home movies are in several gigantic .mov files. For my elements movie, I've selected parts of the movie that contained our friends and neighbors that will be at the party so my elements project now contains about 20 clips strung together. I thought I could apply the instant movie to this set of clips but it appears that instant movie wants me to pick clips from the organizer and I can't apply it to the edited clips that I've already strung together. Is there any way to apply instant movie to my already-created set of clips? It was pretty time consuming to find all of these particular clips from within the big movie files and I won't have time to redo it if that's what instant movie requires.

Thanks for any advice....

[Steve Grisetti]

I'm not sure what you mean by your clips being "all strung together" -- but certainly Themes (which are what create InstantMovies) can be applied to clips on your timeline as easily as to clips in your Organizer.

By the way, I've got a Steve's Tips article on creating InstantMovies that you can download and print from our products page. Just do a products search on "InstantMovie".

Is that what you're telling me? That you just have the clips laid out on your timeline? If so, you can just drag across them to select them all and then select a Theme to apply to them. From there on out, it's just like creating an InstantMovie.

I am concerned though that your clips are all "gigantic MOVs". Again, I'm not quite sure what that means, but it might well be worth converting them to something more like standard definition DV-AVIs before you try to create an InstantMovie with them. Doing so will certainly save you a lot of possible last-minute headaches when you try to create your InstantMovie.

As for the music question -- yes, I think you're limited to just adding one song to your InstantMovie. Unless your InstantMovie has options for adding more than one.

But there's a simple solution there too! You can always output your InstantMovie with no audio (or create it and delete the audio later) and just add whatever songs you'd like manually to your timeline after!

[angelah100]

What I was trying to explain, and not very well, was that I have 6 huge files and I've used each file multiple times within the movie. EAch time I used it, I edited it so it only displayed a different part of the file (I split it, if I remember correctly but that really just adds a set in and set out in the right places I think). I don't want to selectd these large files in their entirety for the instant movie because parts of them should be omitted from the movie.

I think I was trying to apply the instant movie while in scene view instead of timeline and I kept getting a prompt that I needed to select video clips from the organizer. I am going to try and do it from timeline view and think it will work. Instant movie will use the beats of the music in the movie which is a nice effect, so I would like to have it used while the instant movie application does its thing. I have been googling forums and there was a post about creating a project with just the music and rendering(?) it as an audio file and then using that file for the instant movie. That will work, I think altho I have never rendered just audio before.

[angelah100]

other questions -
1 -will instant movie keep my clips in the order in which they appear on the timeline ? I read somewhere that it will move them around unless I assign time/dates to them and select 'time/date order' on the instant movie customization
2 - if I have audio files (music) on my timeline, what happens to that music if I select 'none' on instant movie customization?

ARGH! It is asking me to select clips from the organizer again, altho I am in timeline mode and have all of my clips on my timeline selected. This must have something to do with one of the customizations I've selected, like use all clips. Does anyone know? I want to use my clips the way they are currently arranged.

[RJ Johnston]

If the clips are already on the timeline, don't use Instant Movie, use Themes.

I don't have version 8 on my machine here, but in version 7, Themes is under the Edit tab.

[Steve Grisetti]

Once you apply your Theme, the clips should appear in the same order they are on your timeline. (Robert is right. If you're working with clips already on your timeline, you apply a Theme to them. Not an InstantMovie.)

But, yes, you will lose the audio.

Although, as I said, once you create your movie file from this Theme, you can always replace its audio with your own on the timeline.

[angelah100]

Thank you! I thought I was going crazy with the instant movie issue. I'm gathering my music files and then will try to create it. The Theme looks just like the Instant Movie, with the same parameters so shouldn't it maintain my music if I add it to the timeline?

REALLY appreciate all the quick responses, I may be able to get this in the mail tomorrow if little ones cooperate!

[RJ Johnston]

To keep the clips in sequence, you need to clear the checkmark next to "Auto Edit."

To keep your music, select "No Music" and move the slider to "My Clips."

[angelah100]

Thanks again. I'm in hour 7 of rendering, only 2 more hours to go. I probably should have taken Steve's advice and rendered the big clips as standard AVIs first but I'll find out by 8am whether it worked or not. I'll have to take a look at his tips, too since I have a couple more of these movies I have to do in the next few weeks. This one is really a rush job -

[angelah100]

Well, something strange happened during rendering so I won't be sending out any DVDs today. My clips totalled over one hour and perhaps that made it render strangely - the first effects were practically in slow motion even though the music had a fast beat to it. Anyway, I've watched Steve's tips on breaking apart the instant movie so I think I'll do some experimentation and do the project right rather than burn a DVD that I would be embarrassing.... Thank you all for your help!

[Steve Grisetti]

Make sure you render your movie after you add your theme, Angela! (Press Enter on the keyboard so that the red line above the clips in your movie turns green.) This will make the playback look much more like your final output.

And please do resize those photos. It will cut down on your render time significantly -- and may resolve a lot of the bugginess youre seeing in the process!

[angelah100]

The program told me that I had to render it, probably b/c of the size.

I actually did try to resize the video (this was before the last try that I described above). I rendered the video in its entirety to an AVI file so that it was one clip w/o sound. I then tried Instant Movie with the AVI clip and my Audio clip (which was also rendered as one long audio file) but the result of that experiment was a bit strange, too. The video "shrunk". Instead of having the vido fill the preview window, it was in a much smaller window within the preview window. I was in a hurry so when I rendered to AVI I just used whatever settings were default. The original MOV clips were high def. I didn't have time to investigate why it came out the way it did but will when I have time. I would have thought the resulting AVI file would be the same size dimensionally but reduced resolution. I'll have to make sure I know how to properly render these clips as AVI files.

[Steve Grisetti]

If you're trying to keep it in hi-def, use the MPEG Share option with the 1440x1080 output rather than the AVI.

Then open a new HDV project and the file should work in it perfectly!

[angelah100]

Another question -

I exported my .MOV file into several smaller AVI files. I'm using the AVI files to create a movie in standard def that is about 1.5 hrs long. I tried to apply a theme to the entire movie, selected 'all clips' and no music and left the other options in their default state. The results were strange, possibly due to the length of the movie. The theme was 'Family Memories'. Previously when I applied this theme to a five minute clip, the beginning started with a pan & zoom of an intro page, a camera click sound, then the movie started within the intro frame. That all took about five seconds. With the long movie, this same intro takes over 15 minutes (maybe even longer, didn't look for the exact end of it). This happened once before when I tried to apply a theme to a long duration movie but I thought it was probably due to the size (high def MOV files, many GB each) of my clips but maybe that wasn't the problem. Is there some kind of limit to the length of the movie to which a theme or instant movie can be applied?

Add'l info:
I applied the theme again, this time instead of leaving the theme defaults I changed the 'speed of transitions' to 'faster'. The intro part is now 10 min instead of 15+ so it made a difference but not much. The intro sshould be 5 sec.

[Steve Grisetti]

Sorry, Angela. I don't know. I never heard of applying a theme to a 1 1/2 hour movie, so it's certainly possible that the length is the issue.