Time-lapse video fun reloaded
Posted on April 10, 2007 | Filed Under Local Happenings, Streaming Media, Video Production, Website Development
I’ve revisited the time-lapse video I did for the gymnastics facility that 2 of my kids attend. We’ve completed the setup and the gym is now open for team members, so I needed to add the remaining setup efforts to the original video. This time, I threw in a little special sauce―some animated titles and a bit of image keying. Read on to see the new version and for a making of explanation of the work on this round.
I started off with a handy little program called SWiSH Max. I bought this app a couple of years ago, considering it to be the poor man’s Flash app (as in Macromedia, er, Adobe Flash) at the time. One thing it beats Flash hands down at though is canned/stock animated effects.
SWiSH Max is typically used to create Flash SWF files. For some reason, I was unable to import the SWF file generated by SWiSH Max in the other apps I was using for this project. So, I exported the needed titles as an AVI video file. SWiSH Max doesn’t support alpha channel export when creating an AVI video file, so I created the titles as simple white text on a black background and planned to key the background at a later stage.
Once I had the text AVI file ready, I fired up Adobe After Effects and created a layer containing the time-lapse video and another layer just above it for the text video.
The next cool tool on the list was some selections from Digital Juice’s Jump Backs series of animated backgrounds. I inserted a variety of them in layers between the time-lapse video and text video layers.
Next, I set up each of the Jump Backs layers to use the text video layer as a Luma Track Matte. A Luma Track Matte uses the video content of its target layer to dynamically create a mask. Any pixel that is black in the matte track will be completely transparent, while fully white objects will allow the Jump Backs video to show through.
I then added dynamic AE Bevel Alpha and Drop Shadow filters and voilà! The titles were done.
The last video trick on this iteration was slipping some text under the kids while they were laying/standing on a gymnastics spring floor. They laid in various positions to spell out “Legacy” (the name of the gym), but it was difficult to make out due to the angle I had to shoot the video from. I figured it would help to have plain text spelling it out, but I wanted it to look like it was stamped on the carpet so the kids wouldn’t be obscured.
Luckily, the floor is covered with red carpet and none of the kids had red clothing on. This made it really easy to key out the floor (making it transparent) in After Effects. I created a new text layer and made it a 3D layer in AE. I then adjusted the X, Y and Z position, rotation and orientation values to correctly position the text on the floor. At this point, the text completely obscured the time-lapse video below it.
The next step was to create a new layer on top of the text layer that contained a second copy of the time-lapse video. I added a Color Range effect filter to the new layer and used its eye dropper tools to select the ranges of red found in the carpet. The carpet areas in the top layer are now transparent, allowing the text layer below it to show through. The original video layer fills in the missing red carpet in the top layer but doesn’t obscure the text layer between them.
I finally added a few keyframes on the scale and opacity settings for the text layer to make it zoom/fade in, hold for a couple of seconds, then zoom/fade back out and I’m done with the video for this round.
Next up was the audio. I needed to replace the original audio track with a royalty-free selection, so I turned to SmartSound. You can download a free app from their site called “QuickTracks for Adobe Premiere Pro” that allows you to create a custom arrangement of their songs that are within a half second or so of the length you specify. I located a track I liked and, $14.95 later, I was on my way.
Despite trying multiple arrangements, I couldn’t come up with a version that I was happy with. I needed a piece that was almost 5 minutes long and every arrangement wound up with segments that had a crescendo followed by silence of a second or more. Since my “really fast volunteers” (see video to understand) would still be running around the screen at 1,000 mph, I knew this wouldn’t jive. So, time for a little custom mixing with Sony’s Sound Forge.
It’s difficult to describe the steps I took in Sound Forge. It involved a lot of chopping and rearranging, adding my own sound effects to bridge/blend pieces, a little bit of mastering/level compression, etc. Maybe I’ll throw another entry up specifically about Sound Forge someday.
I still have some tricks up my sleeve for this video but they’ll have to wait for a week or two. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy it and have learned something from my “how to” explanation. I’ll also explain the whole “streaming media” stuff in the next (hopefully last) visit to this project.
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