Pinnacle STUDIO 9 User Manual

Studio 9

Professional Quality Movie-Making

Special thanks to Mike Iampietro, William Chien, Richard Edgley, Ivan Maltz, Jon McGowan, Keith Thomson, Jörg Weselmann, and Chris Zamara.

Documentation: Nick Sullivan

Copyright © 2003 Pinnacle Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Pinnacle Systems is a registered trademark, and Pinnacle Studio, SmartCapture, SmartMovie, Hollywood FX, RTFx and VST are trademarks, of Pinnacle Systems, Inc.

QDesign MPEG-1 Layer 2 Fast Encoder/Decoder copyright © 19962002 by QDesign Corporation. The RealProducer is included under license from RealNetworks, Inc. RealProducer version 8.0. copyright 1995-2002, RealNetworks Inc. “RealProducer”, “RealVideo”, “RealServer”, and “Real” logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc. All rights reserved. SmartSound is a registered trademark of SmartSound Inc. Pro Logic is a registered trademark of Dolby Laboratories Inc. Windows Media is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. You agree not to remove any product identification or notices of the property restrictions from Pinnacle Systems' products or manuals.

No part of this manual may be copied or distributed, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any human or computer language, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, manual, or otherwise, without the express written permission of Pinnacle Systems, Inc.

Pinnacle Systems, Inc.

280 North Bernardo Avenue

Mountain View, CA 94943

Printed in the USA.

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Table of contents

BEFORE YOU START..................................................	XI
Equipment requirements.........................................................................	xi
Abbreviations and conventions.............................................................	xiii
On-line help...........................................................................................	xv
CHAPTER 1: USING STUDIO .......................................	1
Undo, Redo and Help ..............................................................................	2
Setting options .........................................................................................	4
Edit mode ....................................................................................................	5
The Player................................................................................................	6
Playback controls.....................................................................................	8
Further editing topics.............................................................................	11
CHAPTER 2: CAPTURING VIDEO..............................	13
The Capture mode interface....................................................................	14
The Diskometer .....................................................................................	16
The Camcorder Controller.....................................................................	18
The capture process..................................................................................	19
Capture hardware...................................................................................	19
Capture step-by-step..............................................................................	21
Scene detection......................................................................................	23

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Digital capture ..........................................................................................	25
SmartCapture: Preview-quality capture.................................................	26
Full-quality capture................................................................................	28
Audio and video levels – digital ............................................................	29
Analog capture..........................................................................................	30
Capture quality options..........................................................................	31
Audio and video levels – analog............................................................	31
CHAPTER 3: THE ALBUM..........................................	33
The Video Scenes section .........................................................................	36
Opening a captured video file................................................................	38
Viewing captured video.........................................................................	42
Selecting scenes and files ......................................................................	43
Displaying scene and file information...................................................	44
Comment view.......................................................................................	45
Combining and subdividing scenes .......................................................	46
Redetecting scenes.................................................................................	49
The Transitions section............................................................................	50
The Titles section......................................................................................	51
The Still Images section ...........................................................................	52
The Sound Effects section........................................................................	53
The Disc Menus section............................................................................	54
CHAPTER 4: THE MOVIE WINDOW...........................	55
Movie Window views................................................................................	57
Storyboard view.....................................................................................	58
Timeline view........................................................................................	58
Text view...............................................................................................	62
The toolboxes ............................................................................................	62
The Video toolbox.................................................................................	64
The Audio toolbox.................................................................................	66
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CHAPTER 5: VIDEO CLIPS ........................................	69
Video clip basics .......................................................................................	70
Adding video clips to your movie .........................................................	70
Working with multiple capture files ......................................................	71
Interface features ...................................................................................	72
Trimming video clips................................................................................	73
Trimming on the Timeline using handles..............................................	74
Clip-trimming tips .................................................................................	77
Trimming with the Clip properties tool.................................................	78
Resetting trimmed clips .........................................................................	80
Splitting and combining clips ..................................................................	81
Advanced Timeline editing ......................................................................	82
Insert editing..........................................................................................	83
Split editing ...........................................................................................	86
Using video effects ....................................................................................	90
Working with the effects list..................................................................	91
Changing effect parameters ...................................................................	92
Fading effects in and out .......................................................................	94
Previewing and rendering......................................................................	94
Video effects – the basic set......................................................................	95
Cleaning effects.........................................................................................	96
Auto color correct..................................................................................	97
Noise reduction......................................................................................	97
Stabilize .................................................................................................	98
Time effects ...............................................................................................	99
Strobe.....................................................................................................	99
Speed ...................................................................................................	100
Color effects ............................................................................................	101
Black and white ...................................................................................	101
Color correction...................................................................................	101
Posterize ..............................................................................................	102
Sepia ....................................................................................................	102

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Fun effects ...............................................................................................	103
Lens flare.............................................................................................	103
Noise....................................................................................................	104
Water drop...........................................................................................	104
Style effects..............................................................................................	105
Blur......................................................................................................	105
Emboss ................................................................................................	106
Mosaic .................................................................................................	107
Old film ...............................................................................................	107
The SmartMovie music video tool.........................................................	108
CHAPTER 6: TRANSITIONS.....................................	111
Transition types and their uses ............................................................	112
Previewing transitions in your movie ..................................................	115
Audio transitions .................................................................................	116
The Ripple Transition command .........................................................	117
Trimming transitions .............................................................................	118
Trimming with the Clip properties tool...............................................	118
CHAPTER 7: STILL IMAGES ....................................	121
Editing still images .................................................................................	124
Trimming with the Clip properties tool...............................................	125
The Frame Grabber ...............................................................................	125
The Frame grabber tool .......................................................................	126
CHAPTER 8: DISC MENUS.......................................	129
Disc authoring in Studio ......................................................................	131
Using menus from the Album..............................................................	133
The DVD Player Control.....................................................................	135
Editing menus on the Timeline............................................................	136
Editing with the Clip properties tool ...................................................	138
The Disc menu tool..............................................................................	144
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CHAPTER 9: THE TITLE EDITOR ............................	145
Launching the Title Editor...................................................................	146
The Title Editor controls .......................................................................	147
Title-type buttons.................................................................................	147
Object toolbox .....................................................................................	148
Editing-mode selection buttons ...........................................................	151
Object layout buttons...........................................................................	153
Clipboard and delete buttons ...............................................................	155
Text-styling controls............................................................................	155
The Title Editor Album .........................................................................	157
The Looks Browser .............................................................................	157
The Backgrounds section.....................................................................	160
The Pictures section.............................................................................	161
The Buttons section .............................................................................	161
CHAPTER 10: SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC........	165
The Timeline audio tracks ...................................................................	167
The CD audio tool ...............................................................................	168
The SmartSound tool ...........................................................................	170
The Voice-over tool .............................................................................	172
Trimming audio clips .............................................................................	175
Trimming with the Clip properties tool...............................................	175
Audio volume and mixing......................................................................	177
Anatomy of an audio clip ....................................................................	178
Adjusting audio on the Timeline .........................................................	180
The Volume and balance tool..............................................................	182
Audio effects............................................................................................	187
Noise reduction....................................................................................	188
Equalizer..............................................................................................	190
Leveler.................................................................................................	191
Reverb .................................................................................................	191
CHAPTER 11: MAKING YOUR MOVIE.....................	193
Outputting to a camera or video recorder... .........................................	195
Output your movie to videotape ..........................................................	197
Save your movie as an AVI file...........................................................	199

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Save your movie as an MPEG file.......................................................	202
Save as RealVideo or Windows Media ...............................................	203
Share your movie via the Internet........................................................	205
Output your movie to DVD, VCD or S-VCD......................................	207
Copying an AVI file to tape.................................................................	210
APPENDIX A: SETUP OPTIONS ..............................	211
Capture source settings........................................................................	212
Capture format settings........................................................................	216
Edit settings .........................................................................................	221
CD and voice-over settings..................................................................	225
Make tape settings ...............................................................................	226
Make AVI file settings ........................................................................	228
Make MPEG file settings ....................................................................	230
Make RealVideo file settings...............................................................	232
Make Windows Media file settings .....................................................	235
Make disc settings ...............................................................................	236
APPENDIX B: TIPS AND TRICKS ............................	239
Hardware .............................................................................................	239
Software...............................................................................................	242
Increasing the frame rate .....................................................................	244
Studio and computer animation...........................................................	245
Smart Capture Tips (DV only) ............................................................	245
APPENDIX C: TROUBLESHOOTING .......................	247
Technical help on-line ............................................................................	248
Studio crashes in Edit mode ................................................................	251
Capture error occurs on starting capture..............................................	256
Studio hangs when rendering...............................................................	259
CD or DVD burner is not detected ......................................................	262
Studio hangs on launch or does not launch..........................................	263
HollywoodFX transitions are still watermarked after upgrading.........	264
“Cannot initialize the DV capture device” error appears in Capture mode
.............................................................................................................	265
Installation problems .............................................................................	269
Operation problems ...............................................................................	270
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APPENDIX D: VIDEOGRAPHY TIPS ........................	277
Creating a shooting plan ......................................................................	278
Editing .................................................................................................	279
Rules of thumb for video editing .........................................................	282
Soundtrack production.........................................................................	284
Title .....................................................................................................	286
APPENDIX E: GLOSSARY........................................	287
APPENDIX F: LICENSE AGREEMENT ....................	303
APPENDIX G: KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS................	307
INDEX ........................................................................	311

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Before you start

Thank you for purchasing Pinnacle Studio. We hope you enjoy using the software.

If you have not used Studio before, we recommend that you keep the manual handy for reference even if you don’t actually read it all the way through.

In order to ensure that your Studio experience gets off on the right foot, please review the three topics below before continuing to Chapter 1: Using Studio.

Equipment requirements

In addition to your Studio software, here is what you need to make a Studio editing system.

Computer

•Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon 800 MHz or higher (1.5 GHz or higher recommended)

•Microsoft Windows 98 SE, Windows “Millennium”, Windows 2000 or Windows XP (recommended)

•DirectX-compatible graphics card (ATI Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce 2 or higher recommended)

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•DirectX-compatible sound card

•256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended)

•CD-ROM drive

•Speakers

•Mouse

•A microphone, if you want to record voice-overs

•300 MB of free hard drive space to install software

•Optional CD burner for creating VideoCDs (VCDs) or Super-VideoCDs (S-VCDs)

•Optional DVD burner for creating DVDs

The hard drive

Your hard drive must be capable of sustained reading and writing at 4 MB/sec. All SCSI and most UDMA drives are capable of this. The first time you capture at full quality, Studio will test your drive to make sure it is fast enough. Video in the DV format occupies 3.6 MB of hard drive space for every second of video, so four and a half minutes of DV video consume a full gigabyte of hard drive space.

If disk space is a concern with your DV captures, use SmartCapture to capture your video at preview quality (see “SmartCapture: Preview-quality capture” on page 26). This feature uses much less disk space. An entire tape can fit in as little as 360 MB.

Tip: We recommend using a separate hard drive dedicated to video capture. This avoids competition between Studio and other software, including Windows, for use of the drive during capture.

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Video capture hardware

Studio can capture video from a variety of digital and analog sources. Please see “Capture hardware” on page 19.

Video equipment

Studio can output video to:

•Any DV or Digital8 camcorder or VCR. This requires an OHCI-compliant IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port (as provided by Pinnacle Studio DV). The camcorder must be set up to record from DV Input.

•Any analog (8mm, Hi8, VHS, SVHS, VHS-C or SVHS-C) camcorder or VCR. This requires Pinnacle Studio DC10plus, Studio AV, or another Pinnacle card with analog outputs. Output to analog camcorders or VCRs is also possible using a Pinnacle Studio DV or other OHCI-compliant 1394 port if your DV or Digital8 camcorder or VCR can pass a DV signal through to its analog outputs (see your camcorder manual and Chapter 11: Making your movie, for more information).

Abbreviations and conventions

This guide uses the following conventions to help organize the material.

Terminology

Studio: “Studio” refers to the editing software.

DV: The term “DV” refers to DV and Digital8 camcorders, VCRs, and tapes.

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1394: The term “1394” refers to OHCI-compliant IEEE-1394, FireWire, DV or i.LINK interfaces, ports and cables.

Analog: The term “analog” refers to 8mm, Hi8, VHS, SVHS, VHS-C or SVHS-C camcorders, VCRs and tapes, and to Composite/RCA and S-Video cables and connectors.

Buttons, menus, dialog boxes and windows

Names of buttons, menus and related items are written in italics to distinguish them from the surrounding text, whereas window and dialog names are written with initial capital letters. For example:

Click the Edit menu button to open your menu in the Title Editor.

Choosing menu commands

The right arrowhead symbol (¾) denotes the path for hierarchical menu items. For example:

Select Toolbox ¾ Generate Background Music.

Keyboard conventions

Key names are spelled with an initial capital and are underlined. A plus sign denotes a key combination. For example:

Press Ctrl+A to select all the clips on the Timeline.

Mouse clicks

When a mouse click is required, the default is always a left-click unless otherwise specified:

Right-click and select Go to Title/Menu Editor.

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On-line help

Two kinds of immediate help are always available while you are working in Studio:

•On-line help: Click the help button in the Studio main menu bar, or select the Help ¾ Help topics menu, or press F1 to open Studio’s on-line help file.

•Tool tips: To find out what a button or other Studio control does, pause your mouse pointer over it. A “tool tip” appears explaining its function.

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CHAPTER 1:

Using Studio

Creating movies with Studio is a three-step process:

1. Capture: Import source video material to your PC hard drive. Possible sources include analog videotape (8mm, VHS etc.), digital videotape (DV, Digital8), and live video from a video camera, camcorder or webcam.

Capture mode is covered in Chapter 2: Capturing video.

2. Edit: Arrange your video material as desired by reordering scenes and discarding unwanted footage. Add visuals, such as transitions, titles and graphics, and supplementary audio, such as sound effects and background music. For DVD and VCD authoring, create interactive menus that give your audience a customized viewing experience.

Edit mode is the arena for most of your work in Studio. See “Edit mode” later in this chapter (page 5) for a fuller introduction.

3. Make movie: When your project is complete, generate a finished movie in your choice of format and storage medium: tape, VCD, S-VCD, DVD, AVI, MPEG, RealVideo or Windows Media.

Make Movie mode is covered in Chapter 11: Making your movie.

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Setting the mode

Select which step of the movie-making process you want to work on by clicking one of the three mode buttons at the top left of the Studio window:

When you switch modes, the Studio screen changes to display the controls needed for the new mode.

Undo, Redo and Help

The Undo, Redo and Help buttons are always to be found in the top right

corner of the Studio window, no matter which of the three modes you are currently working in.

•Undo allows you to back out of any changes you have made to your project during the current session, one step at a time.

•Redo reinstates the changes one by one if you undo too far.

•The Help button launches Studio’s on-line help system.

All other controls on the Studio screen are dedicated to tasks within the current mode.

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Setting options

Most options in Studio are set using two tabbed dialog boxes.

The first lets you control options related to Capture mode and Edit mode. It has four tabs:

The other dialog box is concerned with options relating to Make Movie mode. It has six tabs, one for each of the six movie output types:

Each panel of both dialog boxes can be opened individually with a corresponding command on the

Setup menu (e.g. Setup ¾ Capture Source). Once either dialog box is open, however, all of its panels are available through the tabs.

For simplicity, we generally refer to the different options panels independently, as in “the Capture source options panel”.

Detailed explanations of the options in both dialog boxes are contained in Appendix A: Setup Options.

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EDIT MODE

Studio opens in Edit mode each time it is launched, because that is the mode you use most often. The Edit mode display includes three main areas.

The Album stores resources you will use in your movies, including your captured video scenes.

The Movie Window is where you create your edited movie by arranging video and sound clips, and by applying transitions and effects.

The Player provides playback and previewing for whichever item is currently selected in Studio. That may be an Album resource – such as a video scene, title or sound effect – or your edited movie, complete with transitions, titles, effects and three audio tracks. The Player is covered below.

See Chapter 3: The Album and Chapter 4: The Movie Window for detailed information on those topics.

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The Player

The Player displays a preview of your edited movie, or of the item currently selected in the Album.

It consists of two main areas: a preview window and playback controls. The preview window displays video images. The playback controls allow you to play the video, or go to an exact position within it. These controls come in two formats: standard and DVD.

Standard mode

The standard playback controls are similar to those on a camcorder or VCR. They are used for viewing ordinary video.

DVD mode

The DVD playback controls emulate the navigation controls on a DVD player or remote control. Use them for previewing your DVD, VCD or S-VCD disc productions, including menu interaction.

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The preview window

This is a point of focus in Studio because you use it so often, especially for previewing your movie. It can also be used to display:

•Any type of Album content.

•Still images or titles from your movie.

•Changes to video effects in real time while you adjust the parameter controls for the effects.

•Still frames from your video.

When viewing a still frame, you can advance by a single frame in either direction with the “jog” controls.

Note: When 16:9 (widescreen) video is previewed, the Player is proportioned somewhat differently than in our illustrations, but its general appearance is the same.

The DVD toggle button

Switch between the two playback modes with the DVD toggle button at the bottom right-hand corner of the Player. This button is only available when

your edited movie contains at least one menu.

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Playback controls

The Player presents either of two sets of playback controls depending on the playback mode you choose.

When you play your movie back as ordinary video, you will be using the standard playback controls. If your movie uses disc menu navigation, you can play it back as an optical disc with interactive on-screen menus by using the DVD playback controls. Both groups of controls are covered below.

The full-screen preview button: This button, just below the bottom right-hand corner of the preview window, switches to a full-screen preview. It is available in both playback modes. The full-screen display ends when your movie ends, or you doubleclick the screen or press the Esc key.

Standard playback controls

These buttons control playback in the Player.

Play / Pause: The Play button previews the movie from the current position. Once preview begins, Play becomes Pause. When playback is paused, the Album scene or Movie Window clip at which previewing stopped remains selected.

The [Space] key can also be used to start and stop playback.

Fast reverse, Fast forward: These buttons let you preview your movie at two, four or ten times the normal speed, in either direction. Use them to scan for a particular piece of video you want to

work with. Click the buttons repeatedly to loop through the speed factors.

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Go to beginning: This button halts playback and skips back to the first frame of the material being previewed.

Jog buttons: This pair of controls lets you step your movie forward and backward by one frame at a time.

The Player scrubber

Use the Player scrubber to quickly traverse your captured video or edited movie in either direction. The scrubber position corresponds to the position of the current frame in the captured video file (not just the current scene) or in the edited movie (not just the current clip). Thus the scrubber bar always represents the entire length of the content being viewed.

As you move the scrubber, the preview window shows the current frame.

The ability of the preview to keep up with the scrubber depends on the speed of your computer. If you move the Player scrubber slowly, the preview display responds smoothly. As you increase the rate at which you move the scrubber, the preview will jump frames. The point at which it does so depends on your hardware. The smoothness of the preview also diminishes as the overall length of the material being scrubbed increases.

The counter

The counter displays the current playback position in hours, minutes, seconds and frames. You can directly modify the counter fields to select an

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exact frame to view or at which to start playback. Simply click on the number you wish to change and type a new value. After you click within the counter, you can also control it from the keyboard:

•Step through the fields: Tab, Shift+Tab, Left, Right

•Raise and lower field values: Up and Down. Hold the key down to continuously change the value.

The master volume slider

This control sets the overall audio volume during preview playback. It is equivalent to turning up the master volume on your sound card using the system volume tool. It does not affect the volume of the final movie Studio creates in Make Movie mode.

The small loudspeaker icon at the right of the control serves as a master mute button during playback.

DVD playback controls

These controls include the four standard transport buttons detailed above (Play/Pause, Fast reverse, Fast forward, Go to beginning) plus the DVD Player

Control, which is described under “The DVD Player Control” on page 135.

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Further editing topics

Please see the following for details on specific editing topics:

•Chapter 5: Video clips

•Chapter 6: Transitions

•Chapter 7: Still images

•Chapter 8: Disc menus

•Chapter 9: The Title Editor

•Chapter 10: Sound effects and music

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CHAPTER 2:

Capturing video

Capture is the process of importing video from a video source such as a camcorder to a file on your PC’s hard drive. Clips from this “capture file” can then be used in Studio as ingredients of your edited movies. You can open capture files into the Album in Studio’s Edit mode (see Chapter 3: The Album).

Capture is the first step in using your video footage.

Studio is able to capture from both digital (DV, MicroMV) and analog video sources. See “Capture hardware” on page 19 for details on configuring Studio to capture from your equipment.

Switching to Capture mode

The very first step in capturing is to switch into Studio’s Capture mode by clicking the Capture button at the top of the screen.

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This opens the Capture mode interface, enabling you to set up and carry out video capture. The details of the interface are somewhat different for analog than for digital video sources.

Topics in this chapter

•“The Capture mode interface” (below) introduces the controls and displays for both analog and digital captures.

•“The Capture Process” (page 19) covers setting up for your hardware, gives step-by-step capturing instructions, and describes the automatic scene detection feature.

•“Digital capture” (page 25) and “Analog capture” (page 30) cover topics specific to each type of source.

THE CAPTURE MODE INTERFACE

The tools and controls you see in Capture mode are different depending on whether your capture hardware is digital or analog.

Digital capture

If your video source is digital, your Capture mode screen will look like the illustration on the opposite page.

The Album, at the top left of the screen, displays icons representing the video scenes as they are captured. The Player, at top right, lets you view the incoming video

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