Pinnacle Systems Studio - 17.0 Instruction Manual

Download

Pinnacle Studio

Version 17

Including Pinnacle Studio Plus

and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate

Your Life in Movies

Pinnacle Studio

photos, video and celebrity images are protected by the laws of many

countries. You may not use other people’s content unless you own the rights

or have the permission of the owner. This product or portions thereof are protected in the United States by one or

more of the following United States Patents: 5,495,291; 6,469,711; 6,532,043; 6,901,211; 7,124,366; 7,165,219; 7,286,132; 7,301,092 and 7,500,176; and in Europe by one or more of the following European Patents: 0695094 and

this product were created using LEADTOOLS ©1991-2006, LEAD Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.  Portions utilize Windows Media Technologies ©1999-2005 Microsoft Corporation  MPEG Layer II Audio by QDesign Corp.  This product is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.

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 Corel Corporation.

Corel Corporation 4400 Bohannon Drive Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA

Table of contents

BEFORE YOU START IX

Abbreviations and conventions ........................................................... ix

Help and on-line help .......................................................................... xi

CHAPTER 1: USING PINNACLE STUDIO 1

The Library .......................................................................................... 3

The Movie Editor and the Disc Editor ................................................... 6

The media editors ................................................................ ................. 7

The Player ............................................................................................ 8

Pinnacle Studio Projects ....................................................................... 9

CHAPTER 2: THE LIBRARY 11

Understanding the Library .................................................................. 14

Location tabs ..................................................................................... 16

The Asset Tree ................................ .................................................. 17

Collections ........................................................................................ 19

Managing Library assets .................................................................... 21

The Browser ...................................................................................... 24

Thumbnails and details ...................................................................... 25

Optional indicators and controls ......................................................... 28

The Library preview .......................................................................... 31

Using the Library ................................................................................. 35

SmartSlide and SmartMovie ................................................................ 44

Choosing what to display ................................................................... 35

Tags .................................................................................................. 38

Correcting media ............................................................................... 41

Video scene detection ........................................................................ 42

SmartSlide ......................................................................................... 44

SmartMovie ....................................................................................... 47

Pinnacle Studio

CHAPTER 3: THE MOVIE EDITOR 51

The project timeline ............................................................................. 55

Timeline fundamentals ...................................................................... 55

The timeline toolbar .......................................................................... 60

The timeline track header ................................................................... 67

Timeline audio functions ................................................................... 69

Editing movies ....................................................................................... 69

Adding clips to the timeline ............................................................... 71

Title Editor, ScoreFitter, voice-over ................................................... 75

Deleting clips .................................................................................... 76

Clip operations .................................................................................. 76

Using the Clipboard ........................................................................... 88

Speed ................................................................................................ 89

Movies within movies ....................................................................... 91

Transitions ........................................................................................ 92

Clip effects ........................................................................................ 98

Clip context menus ................................................................ ............ 99

CHAPTER 4: MEDIA EDITING: CORRECTIONS 101

Media editing overview ................................................................... 103

Correcting photos ................................................................................ 108

Photo editing tools ........................................................................... 109

Photo corrections ............................................................................. 110

Correcting video .................................................................................. 115

Video tools ...................................................................................... 116

Video corrections ............................................................................ 119

Correcting audio ................................................................................. 122

CHAPTER 5: MEDIA EDITING: EFFECTS 123

Effects in the media editors .............................................................. 125

Effects on the timeline ..................................................................... 129

The Settings panel ........................................................................... 131

Working with keyframes ................................................................. 133

Video and photo effects ................................................................... 135

Working with transitions ................................................................. 140

Table of contents

Pan-and-zoom ................................................................................. 141

CHAPTER 6: MONTAGE 145

The Montage section of the Library ................................................. 147

Using Montage templates ................................................................... 148

Montage clips on the timeline .......................................................... 149

Anatomy of a template ..................................................................... 151

Montage Editing ................................................................................. 154

Using the Montage Editor ................................................................ 155

CHAPTER 7: THE TITLE EDITOR 157

Launching (and leaving) the Title Editor .......................................... 159

The Library ......................................................................................... 160

The Presets Selector ........................................................................... 162

Preset Looks .................................................................................... 163

Preset Motions ................................................................................. 164

Creating and editing titles .................................................................. 166

Background settings ........................................................................ 168

Look settings ................................ ................................................... 169

The Edit window ............................................................................. 173

Text and text settings ....................................................................... 175

Titles and stereoscopic 3D ............................................................... 180

The Layer List ..................................................................................... 181

CHAPTER 8: SOUND AND MUSIC 191

The Audio Editor ................................................................................ 193

Audio on the timeline ......................................................................... 204

Audio creation tools ........................................................................... 211

Working with the Layer List ............................................................ 182

Working with layer groups .............................................................. 186

Audio corrections ............................................................................ 197

Audio effects ................................................................................... 201

Timeline audio functions ................................................................. 204

Pinnacle Studio

ScoreFitter ...................................................................................... 213

The Voice-over tool ........................................................................ 214

CHAPTER 9: DISC PROJECTS 217

Disc menus ...................................................................................... 218

Adding disc menus .......................................................................... 221

Previewing disc menus .................................................................... 223

Menu editing on the timeline .............................................................. 225

Timeline menu markers 225 Authoring tools 226

The Chapter Wizard ........................................................................ 229

The Menu Editor ................................................................................. 232

Menu buttons .................................................................................. 233

The Disc Simulator ............................................................................. 235

CHAPTER 10: THE IMPORTER 237

Using the Importer .......................................................................... 238

Importer panels .................................................................................. 240

The Import From panel .................................................................... 240

The Import To panel ........................................................................ 243

The Mode panel .............................................................................. 246

The Compression Options window .................................................. 248

The Scene Detection Options window .............................................. 249

The Metadata panel ......................................................................... 251

The Filename panel ......................................................................... 251

Selecting ass ets for import ................................................................. 253

Import from file ............................................................................... 253

Selecting files for Import ................................ ................................. 254

Import from Cloud ........................................................................... 259

Scan for assets ................................................................................. 260

Import from DV or HDV camera ..................................................... 261

Import from analog sources ............................................................. 265

Import from DVD or Blu-ray Disc ................................................... 266

Table of contents

Import from digital cameras ............................................................. 267

Stop motion ..................................................................................... 267

Snapshot ......................................................................................... 269

Table of contents

CHAPTER 11: THE EXPORTER 273

Output to disc or memory card .......................................................... 276

Output to file ...................................................................................... 280

Output to cloud .................................................................................. 289

Output to a device .............................................................................. 293

CHAPTER 12: SETUP 297

Watchfolders ................................................................................... 298

Audio device ................................................................................... 298

Event logging .................................................................................. 298

Import ............................................................................................. 298

Keyboard ........................................................................................ 300

Preview ........................................................................................... 301

Project settings ................................................................................ 303

Storage locations ............................................................................. 304

APPENDIX A: TROUBLESHOOTING ............................... 305

Contacting support ............................................................................ 306

Top support issues .............................................................................. 307

Compatibility with past content ........................................................ 307

Capture hardware compatibility ....................................................... 310

Serial number information ............................................................... 311

Error or crash while installing .......................................................... 312

Hangs or crashes while launching .................................................... 314

Troubleshooting software crashes .................................................... 315

Export problems .............................................................................. 320

Disc playback problems ................................................................... 321

Resources, tutorials and training ...................................................... 323

APPENDIX B: VIDEOGRAPHY 325

Creating a shooting plan ................................ .................................. 325

Editing ............................................................................................ 326

Rules of thumb for video editing ...................................................... 329

Soundtrack production ..................................................................... 331

Title ................................................................................................ 332

viii

Pinnacle Studio

APPENDIX C: GLOSSARY 333

APPENDIX D: KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 347

APPENDIX E: THE INSTALLATION MANAGER 353

The Welcome Screen ....................................................................... 355

Plugs-ins and bonus content ............................................................. 357

Equipment requirements .................................................................. 358

INDEX 361

Before you start

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

If you are new to Pinnacle Studio, 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 movie-making experience gets off on the right foot, please review the topics below before continuing to Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio. We also recommend consideration of the product’s equipment requirements, which are given on page 358 in Appendix E: The Installation Manager.

Abbreviations and conventions

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

Common terms

AVCHD: A video data format used by some high-definition camcorders, and for creating DVD discs that can be read on Blu-ray players. Successful editing of AVCHD files requires more computing power than other formats supported by Pinnacle Studio.

DV: This term refers to DV and Digital8 camcorders, VCRs and tapes.

HDV: A ‘high-definition video’ format that allows video in frame sizes of 1280x720 or 1440x1080 to be recorded in MPEG-2 format on DV media.

Pinnacle Studio

1394: The term ‘1394’ applies to OHCI-compliant IEEE-1394, FireWire, DV or i.LINK interfaces, ports and cables.

Analog: The term ‘analog’ applies 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 Menu Editor.

Choosing menu commands

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

Select File Burn Disc Image.

Context menus

A ‘context menu’ is a pop-up list of commands that appears when you click with the right mouse-button on certain areas of the application interface. Depending where you click, a context menu may pertain either to an editable object (like a clip on an editing timeline), to a window, or to a zone such as a control panel. Once open, context menus behave just like the ones on the main menu bar.

Context menus are available in most parts of the Pinnacle Studio interface. Our documentation generally takes for granted that you know how to open and use them.

Mouse clicks

When a mouse click is required, the default is always a left-click unless otherwise specified, or unless the click is to open a context menu:

Right-click and select Title Editor. (Or, one might say, “Select Title Editor from the context menu.”)

Before you start

Key names

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.

Please refer to Appendix D: Keyboard shortcuts for a comprehensive table of available shortcuts.

Online manual and Tool Tips

Immediate help is available while you are working in Pinnacle Studio, via the User Manual and Tool Tips.

User Manual:

Click Help -> User Manual Tool tips: To find out what a button or other Studio control does,

pause your mouse pointer over it. A ‘tool tip’ pops up to explain the control’s function.

Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio

CHAPTER 1:

Using Pinnacle Studio

For a simple outline of the digital movie-making process, you don’t have to look any further than the central tab group of Pinnacle Studio’s main window. The same steps apply to any type of production, from an unpretentious slideshow with dissolves between each frame to a 3D extravaganza containing hundreds of carefullyarranged clips and effects.

Pinnacle Studio’s main control bar

summarizes the movie-making process.

The Importer

Import, on the left, is a preparatory step. It involves procedures like

‘capturing’ video from your analog or DV camcorder, bringing in photos from a digital camera, and copying media files to your local hard drive from a network location.

The Pinnacle Studio Importer provides tools for these tasks, along with a Snapshot feature for grabbing frames from video files, and a

Stop motion tool for building up video frame-by-frame. See Chapter 10: The Importer for details.

File menu import commands: Choosing Import from the file menu has the same effect as clicking the Import tab: it opens the Importer. The menu provides three other import-related choices as well. Each

Pinnacle Studio

of these opens a Windows file dialog to permit import of files from a hard drive or other local storage.

•

Import previous Pinnacle Studio Projects lets you load movie projects created with earlier versions of Studio.

•

Import Studio for iPad App Projects lets you bring in projects exported from Studio’s companion app for the iPad.

•

Quick Import lets you directly select ordinary media files – photo, video, audio and project – for import.

Principal controls in the Importer’s Snapshot tool.

The Exporter

At the other end of the movie-making process is Export. By the time you get to this stage, the hard part of the task is behind you. The creative energy that went into making your movie has paid off in a production that now lacks only one ingredient – an audience.

The Pinnacle Studio Exporter helps you over that last hurdle with tools for taking your movie to its viewers, whoever and wherever they might be. Create a digital movie file in the format of your choice, burn a DVD, or upload directly to destinations in the Cloud like YouTube and Vimeo, or to your personal Cloud-based storage area in Box.

Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio

Like the Importer, the Exporter opens in a separate window, and returns to the main window after its work is done. Turn to Chapter

11: The Exporter to learn more.

Preparing to create a video file in the Exporter.

The central tabs

The three central tabs, Library, Movie and Disc, are where most of your work in Pinnacle Studio takes place. The first of these opens the main view of the Library, where you can ‘curate’ your media collections.

The other tabs open the two project editors, one for digital movies, and the other for disc projects, which are digital movies enhanced with interactivity in the form of DVD menus.

The Library

The Library is a cataloguing and management tool for all the filebased resources – or assets – that you can draw on when authoring. Almost all of the materials of your movie – video footage, music and audio files, and many specialized resources such as transitions and effects – originate as assets in the Library. Many Library assets are

Pinnacle Studio

supplied with Pinnacle Studio, and are available for royalty-free use. These include professionally-designed titles, DVD menus, and Montages in both 2D and stereoscopic 3D.

The Library uses watchfolders for keeping up automatically with the changing population of media files on your system. On the watchfolders page of the Pinnacle Studio Setup control panel, enter the names of your media directories, especially those that you update frequently. Thereafter the Library will scan those directories regularly for changes, and update itself as needed. See “Watchfolders” on page 298 for details.

Main view: When you click the Library tab, the Library takes over the main window. This ‘main view’ gives you spacious access to a number of cataloguing and search tools, including those for categorizing assets by means of ratings and tags, and those for creating user-defined asset collections.

Compact view: The ‘compact view’ of the Library squeezes virtually the whole functionality of the main view into a panel embedded within certain other windows, such as the Movie Editor and the Disc Editor. The primary purpose of the compact view is to allow assets to be brought into a movie or disc project from the Library by drag-and-drop.

The main view of the Library consists of navigation controls for exploring the catalog structure (left) and a browser for examining and selecting assets (right).

Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio

Player: The tools available from within the Library include the Player, a viewer that works for all media types handled by the application. When used from the main view of the Library, the Player opens in a separate window. When the compact Library is used, an embedded version of the Player appears in the same window. See “The Player” on page 8 for further information.

Previewing a Library video asset in the resizable Player window, with full transport controls including a shuttle wheel. You can work in the main window while the pop-up Player is open.

For comprehensive coverage of the Library and its uses, please see Chapter 2: The Library.

The next step

The next step, once you know your way around the Library and have made any changes needed to the default set-up, is to start creating a movie. There are two ways to go about this.

The usual way: If you want to exert detailed control over the way media assets are used in your production, you will usually start building your movie or disc project from scratch in one of the two project editors. These are described below.

The easiest way: For ultra-quick results, the Library offers another way. Clicking the SmartSlide or SmartMovie tools at the bottom of the Library main view opens an extra tray of controls. With either of

Pinnacle Studio

these you select some visual media assets to serve as the basis of the project, choose music for a soundtrack, and make a handful of other customizations. Then the software takes over, automatically generating a full-scale Pinnacle Studio project containing the media and options requested. You can export the project immediately, or edit it further by hand as you choose. For details, please see “SmartSlide” on page 44 and “SmartMovie” on page 47.

The Movie Editor and the Disc Editor

Once you have gathered your materials together and organized them to your satisfaction in the Library, it’s time to get to work on a video or a slideshow. If you are working on a disc production specifically, you can immediately start work in the Disc Editor, which is just like the Movie Editor but has extra tools for creating and setting up DVD menus. The Disc Editor is described in Chapter 9: Disc projects.

If you aren’t planning on creating a disc, or aren’t sure, or if disc is only one of the output media you are targeting, the Movie Editor is the right place to start. Once your movie is completed, you can export it to the Disc Editor and add the menus.

The Movie Editor and the Disc Editor exist side-by-side, but apart from the export feature just mentioned, they do not interact. If you want, you can have a regular movie project and a disc project loaded simultaneously, and switch from one to another at will.

In both the Movie Editor and the Disc Editor, a multitrack timeline occupies the lower part of the display. Most of the ‘clips’ on the timeline come from the Library; a few types, like automatic background music, are generated with special tools.

Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio

Both project editors include embedded versions of the Library and the Player in addition to the timeline display. To build a project, drag assets from the Compact Library onto the timeline tracks or Storyboard area of the project editor, where they are known as ‘clips’. Both the Movie Editor and the Disc Editor can be used with stereoscopic 3D as well as 2D material.

The preview type control above the Player lets you switch between viewing the current Library asset (‘source’) and the current timeline clip. In the Disc Editor, an additional preview type (‘menu’) lets you use the Player as an editor for linking disc menus to points on the timeline.

Timeline editing, a central activity in project authoring, is covered in detail in Chapter 3: The Movie Editor.

The media editors

Additional windows are often needed for working with particular types of media. In general, you can open an editor window appropriate to any asset or clip by double-clicking the item.

Corrections from the Library: The editors for the standard media types of video, photo and audio are particularly important. When invoked from the Library (by double-clicking an asset), each of these editors provides a suite of correction tools appropriate to its media type. These tools can be applied directly to Library assets in order to remove camera shake from video, trim unwanted material from a photo, or suppress audio hiss, to give just a few examples.

When a correction is applied to a Library asset, the media file is not modified. Instead the correction parameters are saved in the Library database. They can be altered at any time, or removed, as your needs dictate. The corrections you make in the Library are brought with the asset when you add it to your timeline as a clip.

Corrections from the timeline: When you open one of the standard media editors by double-clicking a timeline clip, the correction tools

Pinnacle Studio

are again available, but in this context they apply only to the clip in the project, not to the underlying Library asset.

Transitions and Effects: When they are invoked from a project’s timeline, the media editors also offer a wide-range of enhancements for all three media types in the transition in, transition out, and effects groups.

Transitions let you punctuate the passage of one clip to the next with anything from a barely perceptible dissolve to an audienceawakening flare.

Effects range from the practical (Brightness and contrast) to the theatrical (Fractal fire). They can be animated with keyframed parameters to any degree of complexity, providing innumerable ways to add creative interest to your productions. Some effects are particularly designed for 3D material, and it is even possible to give a 3D appearance to 2D footage (using the S3D depth control).

Pan-and-zoom: The Photo Editor provides one more tool, pan-and- zoom, of its own. Like the effects just discussed, pan-and-zoom can

be animated with keyframes to create any desired combination of simulated pan and zoom camera moves within the boundaries of a single photo.

The Correction tools, and the media editors in general, are the subject of Chapter 4: Media editing: Corrections. The effects, and the pan-and-zoom tool, are described in Chapter 5: Media editing: Effects.

The Player

The Player is a preview screen in which you can examine Library media, play back your movie project, work on disc menus, and much more. In each window or context in which it is used, the Player exhibits somewhat different controls.

For an introduction to the Player and its basic controls, please see “The Library preview” on page 31. The various stereoscopic 3D viewing modes are discussed on page 34. For the use of the Player in

Chapter 1: Using Pinnacle Studio

trim mode on the timeline, see “Clip operations” on page 76. For information on using the Player with Montage, see “The Montage Editor” on page 154. For the use of the Player in editing disc menus, see “Previewing disc menus” on page 223.

Pinnacle Studio Projects

The movies and discs that you create in Pinnacle Studio are distilled from the projects that you build on the timeline of the Movie Editor or the Disc Editor.

To manage projects, Studio must keep track of everything that goes onto your timeline, and all the editing decisions you make with regard to trimming, adding effects, and much more. Much of this information is stored in the project file, which is in axp (Studio Movie) format.

In order to conserve hard drive space when dealing with files that can be very large, the project file does not include the media items in your movie. For these, only their location in the Library is stored.

The axp project file is the default file format for the File Open, File Save and File Save As menu commands. It may be the only one you need.

Sometimes, however, it is convenient to have all the resources recruited for a project gathered into a single, manageable unit for hassle-free archiving, file transfer or upload. This is the purpose of an alternative file format, the axx (Studio Project Package), which contains in a single file all the materials your project uses, including media items. Of necessity, files in this format are considerably larger than standard project files.

Although it is not possible to directly edit a project in the package format, Pinnacle Studio lets you open a project package with File  Open by selecting axx in the file extension box. Studio seamlessly unpacks the project, creates a new Library entry for the unpacked version, and opens it for editing.

Chapter 2: The Library

CHAPTER 2:

The Library

The Pinnacle Studio Library, or simply ‘the Library’, is a cataloguing and management tool for all the file-based resources you can draw on when authoring. Its purpose is to let you choose and use the video segments, photos, sound bites, transition effects, titles and other ‘assets’ (as they are often called) for your movies as easily, rapidly and intuitively as possible .

The Library’s classification scheme resembles what you might see in a file-system viewer. While the viewer groups files under their physical storage locations such as hard drives, the Library groups

The Pinnacle Studio Media Library

Pinnacle Studio

assets under their type – video, photo, and so on. In other respects, the tree view concept for accessing subgroups of assets is virtually identical and should feel immediately familiar.

In addition to audio, photo and video files in standard formats, the Library includes specialized auxiliary media like titles and disc menus. They are found, along with transitions, filters and other effects, in the main category called Creative Elements.

The Library can easily manage large media holdings such as are often found nowadays even on a home system. All of the dozens of media file types usable in Pinnacle Studio can be browsed, organized and previewed within its integrated interface.

Assets are displayed either as icons or text records within collapsible folders that stack up in the Library Browser. The folders may correspond either to real directories in your computer’s file system, or to virtual groupings based on ratings, file type, creation date, or membership in a user-defined Collection.

Adding assets to a project

Two views of the Library are found in Pinnacle Studio. The Main view takes over the application window when you click the Organize tab. It uses the full available space to provide as much information as possible.

To open the Main Library view, click the Organize tab at the top of the Pinnacle Studio application window.

The Compact view of the Library is a panel, either docked (as in the Movie and Disc project editors) or floating (as in the Title Editor). The Compact view retains the full functionality of the Library. Its

Chapter 2: The Library

primar y purpose is to allow you to bring Library assets into a movie or disc project with drag and drop.

The current set of Library tabs, and the contents of the Browser, are common to all views of the Library. For instance, if you are browsing in a particular folder of disc menus in the Main view, that same folder will be open in the Compact view if you now switch to the Movie Editor.

Correcting media files

With regard to technical quality, media files are not all created equal. Occasionally, you do come across the perfect photo, clip, or sound effect. More often, though, the photo needs cropping, the video is shaky, or the sound starts with an annoying hiss. Pinnacle Studio’s media correction tools let you fix these and similar issues by applying correction filters to a problem clip after you have placed it on the timeline of your project.

Often, however, an even better solution is to apply the correction to the Library asset itself, before adding it to a project. That way, any production using the asset will start with the corrected version, not the unsatisfactory original. Such corrections can quickly be made by opening media editors from the Library. The file underlying the corrected asset is not modified: instead, the correction parameters are stored in the Library database and reapplied whenever the item is displayed or used.

Instant gratification: SmartSlide and SmartMovie

In addition to the core functions mentioned so far, the Library offers a matching pair of tools for automatically constructing a complete project using media resources you specify. Just select some photos or video sequences, enter a few settings, and start. You can output the project Studio generates without further modification, or refine it with manual editing as you prefer.

Pinnacle Studio



The Studio Library lets you manage and efficiently use the entire pool of media and other assets available for use in your productions.

What exactly does the Library contain?

The full range of assets that you can draw on for your projects is summarized by the four main branches of the Asset Tree. Each branch is further divided into more specialized subsections.

The All Media branch contains the standard media files on your system in subsections named Photos, Video, and Audio. Many standard file types are supported. The purpose of the fourth subsection, Missing media, is described below.

The Projects branch of the Asset Tree contains your own Pinnacle Studio movie and disc projects. You can open a project right from the Library and begin editing it, or you can add it to the timeline of another project to serve as an ordinary clip.

Collections are custom groupings of Library media. The more time you spend on media management, the more you will probably use Collections. They can serve as temporary holding places while you work, or for classifying and setting aside media for later use. Collections may be automatically generated, but most are user defined. Hierarchically-organized Collections are also supported. The top-level Collections in the hierarchy are used as subsections of the Collections branch.

The Creative Elements branch is shown open in the illustration at right, revealing its subsections. Each is either a type of special effect (Effects and Transitions), or a special media type. Ready-to-use, royalty-free collections of all seven types are included with Pinnacle Studio.

UNDERSTANDING THE LIBRARY

Chapter 2: The Library

Storage of Library assets

Every asset in the Library – every clip, sound, transition, and so on – corresponds to a file somewhere in the local storage of your computer system. The Library doesn’t ‘own’ these files, and never modifies them unless specifically requested to do so. Rather, it keeps track of their names, locations and properties in an internal database. The information stored also includes any tags and ratings with which you have annotated particular items, and the parameters of any correction filters you have applied.

The database

The files that make up the Library database are st ored in a folder with single-user rather than shared access rights under Microsoft Windows. If Pinnacle Studio is used on your computer by multiple users with individual log-ins, a separate Library will be created for each.

Missing media

Operations like adding, removing and renaming a Library asset are database operations that have no effect on the media file itself. When you remove an asset from the Library, an option on the confirmation dialog box does let you go one step further and delete the actual file as well, but the option is off by default – you have to specifically request the action.

By the same token, when you delete or move an asset file in Windows Explorer or another application outside of Pinnacle Studio, the database record of the file continues to exist. Since the Library can’t actually access the file, however, an error graphic is added to the file’s listing. If the file still exists, but has simply been moved to another folder or device, relinking it to the Library is easy. Double-click the item to pop up a standard File Open dialog with which you can point the way to the file’s new location.

Pinnacle Studio

Incidentally, to check if there are missing media anywhere in the Library, look in the special subsection All media Missing media of the Asset Tree. The Asset Tree is described below (page 17).

Location tabs

Editing a video project involves coordinating the various media and other assets at your disposal. As you proceed, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself browsing repeatedly in various parts of the Library that are relevant to the project. No doubt you will also change your viewing and filtering options from time to time, depending on the material you’re reviewing.

Like a web browser that uses a row of tabs to allow flipping effortlessly amongst multiple open web sites, the Library lets you create and configure location tabs as you work. The tabs provide direct access to each of the various locations in which you are currently working.

Here three tabs give access to media required by different parts of a disc project. The mouse pointer is poised to create a new tab. To close a tab, click the x icon to the right of the tab caption.

To set the location of the current tab, click a name in the Asset Tree. Changes you make to viewing and filtering options while the tab is active are retained between accesses.

Chapter 2: The Library

The Navigator

The entire gamut of Library assets is organized into a folder tree whose structure and general usage should be familiar from filesystem tools like Windows Explorer. When you select a location in the Navigator, the folder name appears on the caption of the active location tab, and its contents are displayed in the neighboring Browser.

In the Main Library, shown here, the Navigator occupies the lefthand pane of the workspace. In the compact view of the Library used by Studio’s project and media editing tools, the Navigator is presented instead as a dropdown list on the active tab.

The four main ‘branches’ of the Navigator were introduced above (page 14).

The Group By menu

The header line of the All media branch offers a small dropdown menu of options to control how the groupings within each subsection of the branch are created.

When you group by folder (the default), the folder structure corresponds to actual directories on

Pinnacle Studio

your hard drive, flash drive, or other file-system device. Some standard folders are included by default; you can add others at will using the watchfolder system. Grouping by folder is shown in the Main Library illustration above.

When you use another grouping, by rating, by date or by file type, exactly the same asset files are listed within each subsection as with the by folder grouping. However, instead of classifying them by the file system folders in which they are stored, the Asset Tree groups them into ‘virtual folders’ according to the chosen property.

Grouping by rating, for example, divides each subsection into six virtual folders. Five of them display media files to which you have given star ratings; the sixth is for those you haven’t rated yet. See “The Browser” (page 24) for more information about file ratings and their uses.

In the inset illustration above, the Photos subsection of the All Media branch is shown grouped by file type. The virtual folders have names like bmp, gif and jpg – one virtual folder for each recognized file extension in the subsection’s media files.

The Main Library with grouping By Date selected in the All Media branch of the Navigator. The bottom-level folders in the Navigator are displayed in the Browser (right). These ‘virtual’ folders each represent all the photos whose file date falls within a particular month.

Under group by date, the folders represent the year of the file’s creation; within these, the files are further grouped by month.

Chapter 2: The Library

Grouping in other subsections

The Projects and Creative Elements branches of the Navigator also provide a group by menu, so it is possible for branches to be in different grouping modes. The menu commands are the same as described above for the All Media branch, except that the by file type option is not needed and doesn’t appear.

The add collection button

The Collections branch does not exhibit a group by menu. This button on the branch header lets you create a new Collection as described under “Collection operations” below.

Collections

From the Library’s point of view, a Collection is just an arbitrary grouping of assets – a set of Library items with no organizing principle. You may well have a good reason for gathering certain files into a particular collection, but the Library doesn’t have to know what it is. Inside a Collection, any asset can rub shoulders with any other.

One special Collection, with the name Latest import, is automatically updated after each import operation to display the media added. Immediately after importing, you can turn to this Collection and start working with the new material.

Another automatically-generated Collection is La test Smart Creation, which stores the media you selected for your most recent SmartSlide or SmartMovie production.

Pinnacle Studio

Collection operations

To create a new Collection, click the icon in the header line of the

Collections branch and enter a name in the provided text field. Complete the process by pressing Enter. Alternatively, choose Add to collection Create new collection from any asset’s context menu.

Manage Collections: The context menu for any Collection provides commands for renaming and deleting the Collection, and one for creating a subcollection that has the current Collection as its parent ‘folder’.

Drag and drop: Collections can be organized in the Navigator with the mouse. A dragged Collection becomes a subcollection when dropped upon another.

Displaying collected assets

Clicking the name of a Collection causes it to be displayed in the Browser.

There is one important difference between the Browser view of Collections and those of all other categories: the media assets in any subcollections are visually merged with those of the selected Collection, but not subgrouped.

However, a special feature of the Browser makes it easier to keep track of the assets when viewing Collections, even if you’re not a robotically systematic sort of person: As your mouse pointer passes over any listed asset, the Collections to which the asset belongs ‘light up’ in the Navigator.

Operations on collected assets

These operations can be performed from the context menu of any Collection item. To act on a group of items, first select them with the mouse (using Ctrl-click and Shift-click for multiple selections as needed) or by dragging out a frame around the items. Then rightclick within the selection to access the context menu.

Chapter 2: The Library

Add to collection: Choose a target Collection on the Add to collection submenu to add the selected item or items. Alternatively,

drag the selection onto the target Collection. Remove from Collection: The Remove command removes the item

(or items) from the Collection. As usual with the Library, the underlying media items involved are not affected, so removing a video or other item from a Collection in the Library does not delete it from other Library locations.

Managing Library assets

Media and other assets find their way into the Library in several ways. For instance, the original contents of the Creative Elements branch of the Library are installed with Pinnacle Studio.

The Library automatically discovers some assets on your system by regularly scanning Windows-standard media locations. These are set up on Pinnacle Studio installation as watchfolders. Media files in these locations will automatically be brought into the Library. You can add your own watchfolders (see below), and they will be automatically updated, too.

Finally, you can import media manually by any of several methods (see “Importing” below).

Watchfolders

Watchfolders are directories on your computer that Pinnacle Studio monitors. If you add media files such as video clips to a watchfolder, or one of its subfolders, they automatically become part of the Library. Updating occurs each time the application is launched and while the application is running.

Watchfolders are set up on the Watchfolders page of the Setup control panel. For each folder that you add, you can specify that either one particular supported media type will be ‘watched for’, or all of them. Please see Chapter 12: Setup for more information.

Pinnacle Studio

Importing

If you need to import a large amount or variety of media, or to import from analog media such as VHS tape, click the Import button near the top of the application window to open the Importer. See Chapter 10: The Importer for full information.

Quick import

The Quick Import button at the top left of the Library opens a Windows file dialog for fast import of files from a hard drive or other local storage.

New folders in the corresponding media categories (photos, video, audio and projects) are created for the files specified. In addition, the imported items are included in the Last Import Collection. (Collections were described earlier in this chapter, on page 19.)

Direct import via drag and drop

To select and import items in one step, use drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer or the desktop into the Browser. The new items are immediately displayed in the Collection ‘Latest Import’, which is created for the occasion if necessary.

Exporting directly from the Library

Any photo, video, audio file or project in the Main Library can be directly exported “as is”, using the context menu commands described below, to either a Cloud-based storage service or a disc. For other exporting options, use the Exporter instead, by selecting the asset and clicking the Export tab at the top of the window. See Chapter 11: The Exporter for full information.

To store a Library asset on a disc, select Burn Disc on the context menu. You can burn just the file, or a disc image if you have made one. If you select multiple assets, and then select Burn Disc, all of the assets will appear on the Burn files to disc dialog. More assets can be added by clicking the File icon and browsing. You can also delete files from the list before burning.

Chapter 2: The Library

To use an Internet-based storage provider to store a Library asset, or multiple assets, open the context menu, choose Upload to, and click on Box. A dialog window will open for creating an account or logging in. The upload operation does not modify your files, but simply copies them to Box – that is, to your personal storage area on Box.com.

Multiple photos selected for export to Internet-based storage in the ‘Cloud’, using the Box.com service.

Removing items from the Library

To remove an item from the Library, or a selection containing multiple items, choose Delete selected from the context menu or press the Delete key. A confirmation dialog lets you approve the list of media files to be removed from the Library database. By default, the files themselves will not be affected, but the Remove from library and delete option lets you delete the files too, if desired. Be careful, as this command works on all kinds of Library assets, including your Pinnacle Studio projects if any of those are selected.

When all the files in a folder are removed, the Library hides the folder as well.

Pinnacle Studio

You may also remove a folder and all the assets it contains from th e Library when removing the folder from the watchfolders list. However, this is not automatic and you will be asked if you want to keep your current assets listed in the Library, but still stop monitoring the location.

The Browser

This is the area in which the Library displays its media assets – the videos, photos, audio, projects, collections and ‘creative elements’ that are available for you to use in your movie and disc projects. The items are displayed either as a list of text records or as a grid of icons. Visual asset types use thumbnail images for their icons; other types use graphic symbols.

The Library would not be much help if the Browser displayed all its assets at once. It therefore has several controls that help you screen out items that aren’t relevant to your purpose. See “Choosing what to display” below for details.

Controlling the Browser display

A group of controls in the Library’s footer bar provides general functions for managing the way assets are presented in the Browser.

The info button, available in the main Library only, toggles the display of a panel across the bottom of the Browser pane where details about the current asset are displayed, such as its caption, file name, rating, and any tags or comments associated with it. The information may be edited, and for some assets, you can also open the corrections tools by clicking the gear icon on the top left corner of the pane.

The scenes view button applies to video assets only. While this button is active, items in the Browser represent the individual scenes in a particular video, not the entire asset as usual. See “The Library Preview” on page 31 for more information.

Chapter 2: The Library

In the main Library, this and the next two buttons are grouped at right between the info button and the zoom slider. In the compact Library, the three buttons are placed at left.

The thumbnails view button switches to viewing assets as thumbnails rather than as text lines. A pop-up checklist associated with the button lets you select the readouts and controls that will appear beside thumbnails in the Browser.

The details view button switches to the alternative viewing mode, in which each asset appears as a text listing. The pop-up checklist with this button selects the text fields to be displayed.

The zoom slider lets you magnify the thumbnails to get a closer look, or pull back for a wider view. This slider is always found at the right-hand end of the footer bar.

Thumbnails and details

Each asset is displayed in the Library Browser in one of two formats, depending on the view selected.

Because the icons of thumbnails view and the text records of details view represent the same assets, they have certain features in common. For instance, the context menu for assets is the same regardless of which representation is used.

Similarly, standard media assets (video, photo and audio), along with Sound effects in the Creative Elements branch, open an appropriate media editor for corrections when double-clicked in either view. The corrections tools are also available when a media editor is invoked from the timeline, but when applied to a Library asset the corrections are carried forward into any future project that includes it. See “Correcting media” on page 41 for more information.

Pinnacle Studio

Details

In details view, each asset is presented as one line in a list of text records. In thumbnails view, it appears as a thumbnail image (for visual media types) or graphic icon.

To switch the Browser to details view, click the icon on the details view button at the bottom of the Library. The arrow beside the button pops up a panel listing the optional columns available to be included in the text records (one column, Caption, is always present). Check the boxes beside any of these – File size, File type, Date, Tags, Rating and Duration – you wish to be shown.

In Details view, each asset is displayed as a one-line text record. A pop-up checklist beside the Details view button lets you select which columns to show. In the illustration, ‘animals’ and ‘scenery’ are the names of folders in the All Media branch of the Library.

Thumbnails

The button to the left of the details view button selects thumbnails view, in which assets are represented in the

Browser by icons rather than text. The arrow alongside the button opens a pop-up checklist on which you can choose additional data to be shown with each icon. The options are Rating,

Stereoscopic, Information, Correction, Collection, Tag, Used Media, Caption and Shortcut. These are explained below under “Thumbnail

indicators and controls”.

Chapter 2: The Library

At the bottom center of most asset icons a preview button, a standard triangular play icon enclosed in a square, is displayed when the mouse pointer is over the asset. In the compact version of the Library (as seen in the project editors and some media editors), the preview is shown on the Source tab of the embedded Player. In the Main Library, the Player occupies a floating, resizable window. See “The Library Preview” on page 31 for more information.

In either version of the Library, Alt-clicking the preview button will give you a mini-preview on the asset icon itself. With video and audio media, you can control the mini-preview manually by means of a scrubber that appears below the thumbnail whenever the mouse is over the icon.

If the asset is a photo, a pop-up preview button replaces the standard play symbol. Clicking it will display the photo in the pop-up Player.

When the Browser is in thumbnails view, a slider is available to control the size of the icons. You will find the slider in the bottom right corner of the Library. The icons can also be resized with the scroll wheel when Ctrl is pressed and the mouse pointer is positioned over the Browser pane.

Locked content indicator: Some of the Disc Menus, Titles, Montages, and other creative elements in the Library are locked to indicate that you do not own a license to distribute them freely. This status is indicated by the lock indicator.

Even though locked, the content can still be handled as usual. You can edit it in the Library, and add it to a timeline. A project containing locked content can be saved, put on a disc and exported.

Pinnacle Studio

However, a translucent ‘watermark’ logo will appear on the locked content:

The locked content watermark.

To purchase and unlock the content, use one of the following options:

•

In the Library, click the lock symbol on the icon.

•

During export of a project with locked content, a dialog will appear prompting you to click the lock symbol.

•

When editing effects in one of the media editors, click the lock symbol on the Settings panel. (See Settings panel on page 131.)

Optional indicators and controls

The optional indicators and buttons on an asset icon in the Library Browser let you access and in some cases modify information about the asset without having to burrow deeper. Use the pop-up checklist

Chapter 2: The Library

on the thumbnails view button to determine which indicators and buttons are displayed.

Caption: The caption below the icon is the Library alias for the asset, which you can set with the Edit caption context menu command for any asset. It is not necessarily the name of the underlying asset file (which is shown in the tooltip).

Shortcut: The presence of this indicator in the extreme upper left of a thumbnail shows that the asset is a shortcut rather than an independent media file. Shortcuts, which consist of a reference to an existing media item along with a package of Corrections settings, can be created from the File menu of the media editor for any Library asset. Thereafter, they behave like ordinary assets, and are available for use in your productions.

Tag indicator: The bottommost of the three symbols at the right of the thumbnail is shown if the asset has any tags assigned to it. Hover the mouse pointer over the indicator to bring up a menu on which the existing tags for the asset are shown. As you pass the pointer over a tag name on this menu, a remove button appears. Click it to unset the tag. Click remove all at the bottom of the menu to clear all tags from the asset. The creation and application of tags is discussed further below, and under “Tags” on page 38.

Collection indicator: Just above the tag indicator, the presence of this symbol

indicates that you have included the asset in one or more Collections. To see which ones, hover the mouse over the symbol. As with the tag indicator menu, a remove button is shown as you position the mouse on each Collection name; click it to remove the asset from the Collection. The remove all command removes the asset from all Collections of which it is a member.

Corrections indicator: The Library allows you to apply image and audio correction filters ‘non-destructively’ on Library media assets,

Pinnacle Studio

meaning that the original file remains intact. The types of corrections that have been applied to an asset, and the parameters that were used to control them, are stored in the Library database. If corrections have been applied to an asset, the corrections indicator appears just above the collection indicator. Click the indicator to open the applicable media editor and update corrections settings. See page 41 for information about applying corrections to Library assets.

The Ratings control appears at the left above the asset thumbnail. At top right is the Info button. The Corrections indicator is also at upper right, just above the Collection indicator.

Ratings: The row of stars above the top left of the icon lets you set the asset rating. If no stars are lit, the asset is said to be unrated. To set the rating of one asset or a selection of assets, either click the corresponding star on the indicator (click the first star twice to make the asset unrated again) or choose the setting on the Apply rating context submenu.

3D indicator: Assets whose content is designed for stereoscopic 3D viewing carry a 3D indicator. The indicator appears when video and photo assets are automatically detected as stereoscopic while importing them the Library, and when an asset has been manually set as stereoscopic in corrections.

Used media indicator: A checkmark is displayed to the right of the ratings indicator if the asset represented by the thumbnail is currently to be found in an open timeline within your project. The checkmark is rendered in green if the asset is used in the currently visible project; otherwise it is gray. The used media indicator applies only to photo, video and audio assets, not to items like transitions and titles that come from the Creative Elements branch.

Chapter 2: The Library

Information indicator: Clicking the information indicator opens the information panel in the pop-

up Player, where you can edit the asset’s rating, title, and tags as well as view all its properties. Like most of the other indicators, the information

indicator can be turned on and off using the thumbnails view pop-up.

The Library preview

Most types of Library asset support previewing in the Browser. The capability is indicated by a preview button on the asset icon, and the presence of a Show preview command on its context menu. Remember too that most asset types can be previewed on the icon itself with an Alt-click on the play button.

The Library Player

Clicking the preview button in the center of the asset icon loads the item into the Library Player for viewing.

Previewing a video clip in the Library Player window. The transport controls are at the bottom, starting with a Loop button at the far left and a shuttle wheel. The third in the group of five arrow buttons starts playback. The two buttons on each side of it are for navigating from asset to asset in the Library folder.

Pinnacle Studio

Along the top of the Player, the current viewing position is displayed. At the bottom is a toolbar of transport controls and function buttons.

Transport controls

First among the transport controls is the loop button, which causes playback in a continuous loop from the start of the media. Next is a shuttle wheel with which you can sensitively control the speed of playback by dragging backwards and forwards on the control.

The center play button in the cluster of five arrow controls begins preview of the video or audio asset. The two buttons on either side of it are for navigating from the viewed asset to others in its folder. When previewing a photo the play button does not appear; only the navigation buttons remain.

Click the mute button to the right of the transport controls to toggle the audio associated with the clip. A volume slider appears next to the mute button when the mouse is over it.

Function buttons

Some buttons in the final group at the bottom of the Player appear only with particular asset

types. A video file uses all four types, in the order shown and described here.

Scenes view: This button activates a mode in which the Browser displays a separate icon or text record for each scene in the video file. (As explained under Video scene detection, a scene in the most general sense is just any portion of a video file.)

When Scenes view is active, the neighboring Open in corrections editor button is removed, and a Split scene button takes its place. This allows you to define your own scenes instead of, or as well as, relying on the automatic scene detection feature.

For more information about video scenes in the Library see “Video scene detection” on page 42.

Chapter 2: The Library

Open in media editor: The media file is opened for editing in the applicable media editor so that corrections settings can be adjusted.

Full-screen: The preview is shown in a special full-screen window, with its own basic set of transport controls. To close the full-screen display, click the close button in the top right corner of the window, or press Esc.

Info: This button switches between the Player’s information and playback views. The information view can be opened directly by

clicking the info button on a media asset icon in the Browser. Audio assets have no separate playback view; instead, full scrubbing controls are shown in the information view.

In the information view, the properties that can be edited are Rating,

Title, Tags and Comment.

Here, data regarding a Library asset, a video, is displayed in the Information view of the Player. Click the highlighted Info button to return to the Playback view of the asset.

Pinnacle Studio

3D viewing mode switcher

When stereoscopic 3D content is being shown, the 3D viewing mode switcher will appear. On opening the Player, the default mode from

the preview settings in the Control Panel is used for photos, videos, and projects. The icon for the current mode is displayed beside a dropdown arrow used for switching modes. The available modes are:

Left eye, Right eye: The preview for stereoscopic content can be set to show only its left or right eye view. This helps keep things simple at times when a stereoscopic preview is unnecessary. Editing in these views is carried out as for a 2D movie.

Side by side: This mode displays the frames for both eyes horizontally adjacent to each other, with the left eye on the left and the right eye on right. When editing, no stereoscopic equipment is needed.

Differential: Differential mode is good for detecting the ‘depth’ of an image more easily, and especially for revealing areas of ‘zero depth’. Differential mode show a 50% gray for areas where identical information is being presented to both eyes; a color difference is shown if the areas are not identical. If 2D material is added to a stereoscopic 3D timeline in differential mode, since the same content is shown to both eyes, the image will be a uniform gray.

Checkerboard: Checkerboard mode breaks the image up into a 16 x 9 checkerboard pattern. The ‘white’ squares of the checkerboard contain the view from one eye, the ‘black’ squares the other. Checkerboard mode provides a quick check on the ways the left and right frames differ across the whole image.

3D TV (Side by Side): Use this mode to preview stereoscopic content on a 3D TV display or with a 3D projector by connecting it as a second monitor. This obviates the need for a special graphics card or additional hardware. Configure the second display to operate in its native resolution, and to extend your desktop, not just mirror it. Make sure the input format is sideby-side.

Chapter 2: The Library

In the Control Panel Preview settings, choose Second Monitor from the “Show external preview on” dropdown menu. Set up Studio with a 16x9 stereoscopic timeline. Finally, on the Player, click the Full

Screen button. Please see “Preview” settings on page 301, and “Timeline settings” on page 61 for help with these configurations.

Anaglyph: An Anaglyph stereoscopic preview is suitable for viewing with red-cyan stereoscopic glasses, with no additional hardware support required. Pinnacle Studio’s anaglyphic display works well even for images with a lot of red, thanks to a method very similar to the ‘optimized anaglyphs’ technique described at:

3dtv.at/Knowhow/AnaglyphComparison_en.aspx

3D Vision: This stereoscopic mode is available with many NVidia graphics cards after the 3D Vision feature has been enabled in your NVidia configuration utility. The type of 3D display offered depends on the hardware available. At the basic ‘Discover’ level, the 3D Vision display is anaglyphic.

USING THE LIBRARY



The Library is much more than a passive storehouse of material for your Pinnacle Studio productions.

The Library Browser has several features for decluttering your view by hiding assets that aren’t relevant to your purpose. No matter how numerous your media files, the combined power of these techniques can greatly speed your browsing.

Choosing what to display

Pinnacle Studio

Location tabs

Most importantly, each location tab corresponds to a different selection on the Navigator. Like web browser tabs, location tabs are readily defined (click the ‘+’ icon at the right end of the tab list), and come in handy for keeping track of multiple things simultaneously.

Clicking within the Navigator sets the location for the current tab; conversely, clicking another tab transfers you to its saved location on the tree. Only the assets within the chosen location are displayed in the Browser. If the location has subfolders, however, their contents will be included. To keep things simple, choose a location as near the bottom of the folder hierarchy as possible.

Other controls let you restrict the display further by filtering out some of the assets in the chosen location. Each location tab maintains its own set of filters, so any change of filtering settings affects the current tab only.

Filter by rating

The Filter by rating control at the top of the Library hides all assets that don’t have at least the specified rating from one to five stars (zero stars means ‘unrated’). To use the filter, simply click on the star that represents the minimum rating you want to bother with. The default filter setting is to show all assets regardless of rating.

See “Inadvert ent filtering” (page 38) for instructions on switching off all filters at once. To deactivate just the rating filter click the last

selected star or double-click any star.

In this close-up, three stars are highlighted, meaning that only assets with ratings of three stars or better are on display. Here the mouse pointer is poised to click the fifth star, which would set the rating filter to hide all but five-star assets.

Chapter 2: The Library

Filter by stereoscopic 3D

To display only stereoscopic 3D content, click 3D at the top of the Library. To return to viewing 2D assets as well, click 3D again.

Filter by tags

Another way to narrow the field of displayed assets is with filtering by tags. Tags are keywords that you can assign to assets as you work. Once tags have been defined, you can use them in several ways to control which assets are displayed by the Browser. See “Tags” on page 38 for detailed information.

At the top right of the Library is a search field that gives one further way to filter the display. As you begin entering your search term, the Browser continually updates the view to include only those assets with text that matches your search term.

Even when multiple terms are separated by spaces, partial-word as well as whole-word matches are allowed in each term. A dropdown list lets you choose whether the search will be satisfied if even a single search term matches the asset text, or if all terms must match for the asset to be accepted.

Pinnacle Studio

Inadvertent filtering

The various filtering methods can be combined at will. Should you leave any of the filtering types switched on when you don’t need it, it’s likely that some assets will be hidden that should be displayed. When an item is unexpectedly missing in the Browser, verify that filters are inactive.

The Browser guards against the possibility of inadvertent filtering by displaying a ‘filter alert’ that remains visible as long as any filter is in use.

A filter alert like the one shown here is displayed at the top of the Browser whenever filtering is in force. Click the x icon at the right-hand end to clear all filtering at once.

Tags

The Library is capable of handling a great number of asset files, sometimes far more in even a single folder than can be viewed conveniently. The Browser therefore provides a number of methods of winnowing out irrelevant assets from the display.

One method of streamlining the display of assets in the Browser is filtering by tags. A tag is simply a word or short phrase that you think would be useful as a search term. It is up to you whether you assign tags to your media, but if you do, they provide a powerful way of selecting assets to display.

Tag management and filtering

Management of tags, and filtering by tags, are handled in a panel that appears when the Tags button at the top of the Library is clicked. The panel can also be invoked by choosing Apply tag  Create new tag from any asset’s context menu.

Chapter 2: The Library

The tags panel, with existing tags listed alphabetically.

At the top of the tags panel is a text box for entering new tag names. The panel also lists all the tags you have defined so far, lets you delete or rename them, and lets you choose which assets you want displayed in the Library.

Creating, renaming and deleting tags

To create a new tag, click in the text box at the top of the tags panel and type in your tag. Select the media that you want to tag, make sure the Apply the tag to selected media box is checked, and click the Create new tag button beside the text box. There is no limit to the number of tags you can create. However, if you try to apply a name that isn’t new, you will be notified that the name already exists, and it will not be added to the selected media.

To apply an existing tag to all currently-selected assets in the Browser, click the tag name. Selecting multiple assets to tag makes the process much more efficient than if you could tag only one item at a time.

Hovering over a tag reveals the Rename and Delete buttons. Clicking the tag itself applies it to any currently-selected assets.

Pinnacle Studio

Hovering the mouse over a tag reveals the controls for renaming or deleting the tag. To rename, click the Rename icon, type in the new name, and press Enter. Click the Trashcan icon to delete the tag. To delete all tags at once, use the Delete all tags button at the bottom of the panel. If you are deleting a tag that is in use, you will be given a chance to back out of the operation.

Sorting tags

In the middle of the tags panel is the Sort by dropdown, offering just two choices: ‘Abc’, in which the tags are sorted alphabetically, or ‘Relevance’, which sorts them in descending order of their popularity in the set of assets currently on display. Under the second choice, you will see the tags being resorted each time one is checked or unchecked.

Filtering with tags

Beside each tag name listed in the panel is a Filter icon that you can use to narrow the set of items displayed in the Browser. As you check and uncheck the tags, the view updates automatically.

The exact effect of your selections depends on another control, the Match dropdown just above the tags. The list provides three options.

None displays only assets that have none of your checkmar ked tags. In a tagged set of animal photos, checking both the ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ tags, then selecting ‘None’, should hide most of the pet pictures.

Partial selects assets with any of your tags, which happens to be exactly those hidden by ‘No match’. If you leave ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ checked, but switch to ‘Partial’, all the dogs and cats will be displayed, including the handful of photos in which both animals appear. Photos with neither tag will be hidden.

Full selects only the assets that have all your tags. Now with the same boxes checked you should see only those photos in which at least one cat and one dog appear. Notice that under ‘Partial’ you will see more assets displayed as you check more tags, but with ‘Full’ you will see fewer.

Chapter 2: The Library

Turning off tag filtering

When tags are set to filter the contents of the Library, an orange bar at the top of the Browser lists which tags are being used. To turn off filtering by an individual tag, bring up the tag panel and uncheck the tag’s Filter icon. To turn off all filtering at once, click the x button at the right hand end of the orange bar.

The art of tagging

There is no prescribed way of using tags. The best way to use them – if you do – is the way that works best for you. Consistency is important, however. The more faithful and systematic you are about assigning tags to your media, the more useful they will be.

Since the idea is to locate an asset quickly when you need it, tags should be chosen to work well as search terms. With family photos, your tags might include the names of the people in each shot. For vacation video scenes, tags naming the locations visited would probably be useful.

Videographic terms (‘two-shot’, ‘silhouette’, ‘exterior’) can also serve as good tags by making it easier to find assets that fulfill particular structural or creative requirements.

Correcting media

You can apply the media correction tools in the Video, Photo and Audio editors directly to Library assets. This kind of editing does not change the underlying files. Instead, the editing parameters are stored in the Library database and are reapplied whenever the asset is recalled. See Chapter 4: Media editing: Corrections for details.

An important purpose of the media correction tools is to allow you to make ‘adjustments’ on material that is not correctly identified automatically. With video footage, for example, the Adjustments group of tools allows you to override the Library-assigned aspect ratio, interlace mode and stereoscopic 3D format.

Pinnacle Studio

Video scene detection

Using the Library’s automatic scene detection function, video footage can be split into multiple scenes either automatically or manually. Dividing raw files into scene-length portions can make some editing tasks much less cumbersome than they would be otherwise.

The time required for scene detection varies depending on the length of the clip and the detection method selected. A progress bar keeps you informed of the status.

To initiate scene detection, select one of the methods on the Detect scenes context menu command for video assets.

By date and time: This option often results in logical scene boundaries that reflect your intention while shooting. In many digital recording formats, such as DV and HDV, a discontinuity in the recorded timecode data occurs whenever the camera is restarted after being stopped. These shooting breaks are treated as scene breaks under the option.

By content: Under this option, the scene detection tool analyzes the image content of the material frame by frame, and establishes a new scene whenever there is an abrupt change in content. However, a quick pan or rapid movement across the frame may produce some unneeded breaks.

By time interval: In this variant you define the length of the scenes to be created. A small editing window opens for entering the desired value in hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. The scene duration has a one second minimum. Press Enter to confirm your input.

Show the scenes

To show the catalog of scenes for a particular video file, either select

Show scenes from its context menu; or select the clip, then click the Scenes view button that appears at the bottom right of the Library.

Chapter 2: The Library

Scene view is a temporary viewing mode. The orange bar at the top of the Browser alerts you that scene view is active. At the right hand end of the bar is an x button you can use to terminate the mode. Clicking the Scenes view button again has the same effect.

A single video file can contain many scenes. This makes the footage easier to manipulate during editing than if it were treated as a single segment.

During editing, scene clips behave identically to other video clips.

Manually creating scenes

If you want to manually divide a video file into individual scenes, select Show scenes from the asset’s context menu, or click the Scenes view button. If you haven’t previously subdivided the file, it will now appear in the Browser as a single scene.

In the Library Player, navigate within the clip to each frame where a scene break should occur, then click the Split scene button. See “Function buttons” on page 32 for further information.

Removing scenes

To empty the entire list of scenes for a video file, select Scene detection Remove scenes on the asset’s context menu.

To remove individual scenes, select one or more scenes then press Delete.

Pinnacle Studio



SmartMovie is a built-in project generator that allows you to create a slideshow or movie automatically based on media you supply. The created production will include animated transitions, a full music soundtrack and eye-catching image effects.

To begin, select from the Library a series of photos or video files. Your music might come from digital audio assets already in the Library, or you can cook up a soundtrack on the spot with the ScoreFitter tool.

That might be all it takes, though you can work on the project further with manual editing if you wish. Once you have a final product you like, it takes only a few clicks to burn it onto a disc or save it as a file for other uses, such as upload to the web.

The SmartSlide controls are presented on a panel that slides up into the window from below. It contains three subpanels. The leftmost of these presents information about SmartSlide, and advice on how many files to include. The center subpanel is a storage area with bins for photos and other images (top) and audio. The right subpanel contains controls for customizing the show.

SMARTMOVIE

At the bottom of the Library window, just click SmartMovie.

SmartMovie for slideshows

Chapter 2: The Library

Adding media

To add images to the slideshow, drag them from the Browser into the upper bin in the storage area. Drag thumbnails within the storage area to get the order you want. Continue adding further images until you are satisfied.

To add music, drag one or more sound files to the lower bin in the storage area. Alternatively you can click the clef button in the bottom left corner of the audio bin to create a music soundtrack in ScoreFitter.

Preview, edit and export

Once your media are in place, click the Preview button on the footer bar below the tool. The project is created and presented in a preview window. If necessary, you can return to the SmartSlide tool to modify your media selections.

When you click the Preview button, the media you have chosen are automatically saved in a Collection named Latest Smart Creation. If you expect to make further use of this grouping of assets, rename the Collection to prevent it being overwritten the next time you look at a SmartSlide or SmartMovie preview.

The Edit button brings your slideshow to the Movie Editor timeline for detailed editing. It’s a good idea to check that the timeline video settings match your requirements for the show. The video settings button on the settings panel (below) provides access to these. Also see “The project timeline” on page 55.

When the presentation is the way you want it, click Export to burn a disc or create a file for upload.

The storage area

The photos in the upper bin ar e displayed as icons, while the music and sound files in the lower bin appear as text lines giving the file name and duration of each asset. Both bins support multiple selection, drag-and-drop reordering, and a context menu with just two commands:

Pinnacle Studio

Delete selected: The selected media are removed from the SmartSlide production. They remain available in the Library for other uses. (Shortcut: Delete.)

Open editor: This command opens the Corrections tool of the Photo or Audio Editor. Any modifications you make to the media apply only within this SmartSlide production. (Shortcut: double-click.)

SmartSlide settings

The settings on this subpanel customize the SmartSlide production.

The settings entered will be used the next time the slideshow is generated. The video settings button lets you set up the timeline options that will apply if you take the production into the Movie Editor. The clear project button removes all media from the project and returns to default settings.

Title: Enter a caption to be used as the main title of the slideshow. Pan and zoom: Checking this option enlivens your presentation

with simulated camera moves. Fit image: Check this option to enlarge images that are too small for

the selected format. For a more flexible approach, you can also consider correcting the asset with the Crop corrections tool.

Chapter 2: The Library

SmartMovie

SmartMovie presents its controls on a panel that slides up into the Library from below. Again there are three subpanels. The leftmost presents information and advice concerning your SmartMovie. The center subpanel is a storage area with bins for video and photos (top) and audio. The right subpanel contains controls for customizing the show.

Adding media

The visual elements in your SmartMovie can include photos and other still images along with the video. Drag the assets you want to use from the Browser into the upper bin in the storage area. You can also drag thumbnails within the storage area to get the order you want. Continue adding further material until you are satisfied.

As media are added, the total running time of the source material is displayed in the top-left corner of the bin. This is not necessarily the length of the resulting movie.

Pinnacle Studio

Preview, edit and export

Having placed your media, click Preview on the footer bar below the tool. The project is created and opened in a preview window. If necessary, you can return to SmartMovie to modify your media selections.

The analysis phase of generating a SmartMovie may take some time to complete the first ti me the material is analyzed. Full rendering of the project, with progress indicated by shading on the time-ruler of the Player, may introduce an additional delay before a fully-detailed preview is available.

When you click Preview, the media you have chosen are automatically saved in a Collection named Latest Smart Creation. If you expect to make further use of this grouping of assets, rename the Collection to prevent it being overwritten the next time you generate a SmartSlide or SmartMovie preview.

The Edit button brings your production to the Movie Editor timeline for detailed editing. As usual, it’s a good idea to check that the timeline video settings match your requirements for the show. The video settings button on the settings panel (below) provides access to these. Also see “The project timeline” on page 55.

When the presentation is the way you want it, click Export to burn a disc or create a file for upload.

The storage area

The visual assets in the upper bin are displayed as icons, while the music and sound files in the lower bin appear as text lines giving the file name and duration of each asset. Both bins support multiple selection, drag-and-drop reordering, and a short context menu:

Delete selected: The selected media are removed from the SmartMovie production. They remain available in the Library for other uses. (Shortcut: Delete.)

Chapter 2: The Library

Open editor: This command opens the Corrections tool of the Video Editor, the Photo Editor or the Audio Editor. Any modifications you make to the media apply only within this SmartMovie production. (Shortcut: double-click.)

SmartMovie settings

The settings on this subpanel customize the SmartMovie production.

Selecting the ‘medium’ Clip Length setting on the SmartMovie settings panel. At the bottom are buttons for adjusting video settings for the generated project, and for starting over.

The settings entered will be used the next time the movie is generated. The video settings button lets you set up the timeline options that will apply if you take the production into the Movie Editor. The clear project button removes all media from the project and returns to default settings.

Title: Enter a caption to be used as the main title of the movie. Clip lengths: The visual tempo of your movie increases as the clip

length is shortened. Maximum uses the original length of the asset. Pan and zoom: Checking this option enlivens your presentation

with simulated camera moves. Fit image: Check this option to enlarge material that is too small for

the frame format of your project. Video volume: Set the volume of the original audio in the video

segments. For a soundtrack of background music only, set to zero. Media order: Set the order of slides from ‘As defined’ (you set the

sequence), ‘Chronological’ (by file date), and ‘Random’.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

CHAPTER 3:

The Movie Editor

The Movie Editor is Pinnacle Studio’s main editing screen for digital movie creation. The editor brings together three main components:

The Library, in its compact view, provides the assets available to your project.

The timeline lets you organize the assets as clips within a schematic representation of your production.

The Player lets you preview Library assets before adding them to your project. It also lets you view – on a frame-by-frame basis if you like – how any part of the production will actually appear to your audience when you export it, whether you save it as a file, burn it to a disc, transfer it to a device, or upload it to the Internet.

Along with the Library, the timeline of your project, and the Player, the Movie Editor window provides a variety of tools and panels for creating and editing titles, adding effects, and other purposes.

The compact Library

The compact view of the Library, which uses the top left of the Movie Editor screen, is a core feature of the editing environment. If you switch back and forth between the Library and the Movie Editor, you will see that the same location tab is selected in both views, and that the same Library assets are on display.

To make navigation easier in the compact view of the Library, the location tabs across the top bear icons that indicate the type of content that will appear in the Browser when the tab is clicked. To

Pinnacle Studio

display a different part of the Library, click the expand-collapse triangle beside the icon. This opens the folder tree through which you can access any Library asset.

Finding Library assets using the expandable

Navigator in the compact Library.

With the compact Library and the timeline together in the same window, adding assets to your movie becomes a breeze: just drag the items you want from the Library Browser onto the timeline.

Previewing in the project editors

You can operate the Player either in single or dual preview mode. Click the Preview Mode button in the upper right corner of the Player to toggle between them.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

The Player in single mode. You can choose to view

either ‘Source’ (Library) or timeline material.

Single mode conserves screen space by providing only one Player preview. The Source and Timeline tabs above the Player indicate whether Library or timeline material is being viewed, and allow you to switch from one to the other.

The player in dual mode. The side-by-side previews let you browse

the Library while keeping your current movie frame in view.

In dual mode, Source (Library) material is shown in the left-hand preview, and timeline material in the right-hand preview, each with

Pinnacle Studio

its own set of transport contr ols. The dual view makes it easier to locate Library assets that fit well with your movie by making both the existing and the prospective material visible simultaneously.

A portion of the Movie Editor display, with the compact view of the Library at upper left, the Player at upper right (partly visible), and at bottom the timeline, with the Navigator panel open in its upper region.

Disc editing

If you plan ultimately to release your movie on DVD with interactive menus, you will at some point need the special features of the Disc Editor. It provides all the same timeline editing features as the Movie Editor, but also lets you create and work on the disc menus with which users will navigate your production.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Pinnacle Studio lets you smoothly tr ansition a movie to a disc project at any time during development, so it’s all right to start in the Movie Editor even if you end up targeting DVD for output instead of or as well as the other opti ons. Please turn to Chapter 9: Disc projects for information about the special features provided for disc authoring. The other aspects of timeline editing are covered in this and subsequent chapters.

Slideshow productions

In addition to all types of video productions – ‘movies’ – the Movie Editor (and the Disc Editor) can be used for authoring complex slideshows and presentations from still images. The same editing techniques apply in both cases.



The timeline is where you create your movie, by adding video, photo and audio assets from the Library, by editing and trimming these core media, and by enlivening them with transitions, effects, and other enhancements.

The timeline consists of multiple tracks – as many as you require – in a vertical stack. Tracks nearer the top of the stack are positioned towards the front when viewed, their opaque parts obscuring the tracks below.

The basic action of movie authoring is to drag an asset from the Library to a timeline track, where it is called a clip. With a little

THE PROJECT TIMELINE

Timeline fundamentals

Pinnacle Studio

practice, you can lay out a rough edit of a movie very quickly just by adding its main media assets at their approximate timeline positions.

At the left end of the timeline are track headers with several controls per track: a lock button, the track name, and monitoring buttons for the track’s video and audio. Here the current default track is ‘Main’.

The track header: To the left of each track is a header area that provides access to functions such as disabling video or audio monitoring for the track.

The default track: One track is highlighted with lighter background color, and is also marked with an orange bar to the left of the track header. This is the default track. It has a special role in certain editing procedures; for instance, it is the target track for pastes. To make another track the default track, click in its header.

Your current position on the timeline corresponds to the video frame shown in the Player when it is in Timeline mode. The current position is indicated by a vertical red line, at the bottom of which is a draggable scrubber handle. Another vertical line marks the same position in the Navigator (see below).

The toolbar

Above the tracks, the timeline toolbar provides several clusters of editing-related tools. (In the Disc Editor, the toolbar also includes tools specifically for disc authoring.)

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

The Navigator

The Navigator is an auxiliary navigation panel that can be revealed or hidden by clicking its icon on the Navigation tool selector near the left end of the timeline toolbar.

The full-width strip appears just below the toolbar. It gives a bird’seye view of your whole project at a reduced scale. In the Navigator, the bars represen ting clips have the same colors as they do on the timeline, except that the bar representing the selected clip is drawn in orange. Clicking in the Navigator allows you to speedily access any timeline location.

A portion of the Navigator strip, showing the current position (vertical line, left) and the translucent draggable view window.

The gray rectangle that encloses a portion of the Navigator display – the view window – indicates the section of your movie currently visible on the timeline tracks.

To change which part of the movie is in view, click and drag horizontally within the view window. The timeline scrolls in parallel as you drag. Since your timeline position does not change, this may take the scrubber out of view.

Zoom

To change the zoom level of the timeline, either click and drag horizontally in the time-ruler along the bottom of the timeline, or drag the sides of the view window. The first method has the advantage that it always leaves the screen position of the playhead undisturbed, which may make it easier to orient yourself after the zoom.

To change the zoom of the Navigator itself, use the plus and minus buttons immediately to its right.

Pinnacle Studio

Double-clicking on the view window adjusts the zoom of both the Navigator and the timeline such that your entire movie fits within the Movie Editor window.

The Storyboard

Assembling a movie can involve juggling a large number of photos and video clips, as well as deciding where to place titles, Montages and the like. In the Storyboard, the clips on one track of your movie are presented as a sequence of icons, so you can see at a glance what is included and where. To choose which track to view in the Storyboard, use the Storyboard link button in the track header.

Any of the photos, video, audio, projects, Montages and titles in the Library can be added to your movie by dragging and dropping them onto the Storyboard. Once there they can be rearranged, or removed altogether if you change your mind.

Different types of clips are represented in the Storyboard with different colors. For example, photos and videos have a blue frame, and projects have a gray frame. As in the timeline, clips that have had effects applied appear with a magenta line on the top, and clips with corrections have a green line. A colored band connects the Storyboard icon with the position of its clip on the timeline; a gap in the timeline is reflected in a gap in the Storyboard. Once you become familiar with the color coding, it will help you quickly visualize the structure of your movie.

The Storyboard displays a sequence of icons representing the contents of one track. Effects (magenta) and corrections (green) are indicated on the top edge of the icon; the length of the clip is shown on the bottom.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

The space just below the toolbar where the Storyboard appears is also used by the Navigator (and in the Disc Editor by the Menu List). Which tools is visible, if any, is controlled by the Navigation tool selector near the left end of the timeline toolbar.

Navigating in the Storyboard

To scroll to a part of the Storyboard that is not in view, hover with the mouse over the Storyboard until a hand cursor appears. Now click the left button and drag the Storyboard. If you drag the mouse quickly and release the mouse button, the Storyboard will briefly continue scrolling, thus creating a ‘swiping’ behavior.

Alternatively you can hover over the Storyboard and use the mouse wheel to scroll, or use the arrows at each end of the Storyboard.

Editing with the Storyboard

Although most editing takes place on the timeline tracks, the Storyboard has some editing capability. For instance, effects can be added directly to a clip on the Storyboard by dragging and dropping the effect onto the clip. The clip’s context menu offers the same set of commands here as on the timeline. Any editing that takes place on the Storyboard is immediately reflected in the timeline, and vice versa.

Adding clips: Any photo, video, audio clip, project, Montage or title can be added to your project by simply dragging it from the Library to the Storyboard. An insertion line appears to indicate where the new clip will be placed. You can select multiple clips to add them all at once.

Inserting or replacing clips: If you are inserting material between clips already on the Storyboard, drag the new clip so that it overlaps the right side of the clip that will precede it. When the insertion line appears and a space opens up, drop the new clip into the gap.

To replace a clip, drag the new one onto the clip to be replaced. The insertion line will appear, and the old clip will highlight to indicate

Pinnacle Studio

proper placement. The new clip must be the same type as the old. A video clip cannot be replaced by a photo or audio clip, for example.

Selecting clips: To select a clip, click on its icon; an orange frame around the clip indicates selection. The timeline scrubber will jump to the beginning of the selected clip, and a connecting band of color will link the Storyboard clip with its timeline counterpart. If the timeline position of the selected clip is currently off-screen, it will be brought into view.

You can select multiple clips using the Shift and Ctrl keys according to the usual Windows conventions.

Reordering clips: To pick up a clip and move it, click on it until it is selected, and then drag it to its new location. If necessary, the Storyboard will scroll until you reach the desired position.

Resizing

The height of the timeline, along with the relative proportions of the Library and the Player, can be adjusted with the sizing grip in the form of an inverted T in the middle of the screen.

To adjust the height of individual timeline tracks, grab and adjust the separator lines between the track headers on the left. If the vertical size of all tracks exceeds the available viewing area, a scroll bar at the right will allow you to select which tracks are in view.

Set the height of the Storyboard (when it is visible – see “Navigation tool selector” on page 62) by vertically dragging the horizontal separator along the Storyboard’s bottom edge.

The timeline toolbar

The toolbar above the Movie Editor timeline offers various settings, tools and functions that apply to the timeline and timeline editing. These are described in order from left to right.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Customizing the toolbar

The timeline toolbar can accommodate numerous buttons to help editing go more smoothly. One set of buttons is available for the Movie Editor and a somewhat larger set for the Disc Editor. The Customize toolbar button at the far left of the toolbar lets you choose which subset of the available buttons you wish to display.

The Customize toolbar panel, with

all available buttons selected for display.

Clicking the button brings up a panel upon which all the other toolbar buttons can be individually set as visible or hidden. The gray checkmarks beside the Timeline settings button and a few others indicate that these buttons are not optional and will be displayed as a matter of course. Check or uncheck the boxes for the optional buttons until the toolbar has been configured to your liking, or check the Select all box to display all of the buttons.

Some of the commands invoked by buttons also have keyboard shortcuts. These work whether the button is displayed or not. (See Appendix D: Keyboard Shortcuts for more information.)

Timeline settings

By default your timeline settings are copied from the first video clip you add to the timeline. If that will give the right result, you won’t have to alter them.

If you do need to change these basic image properties of your project, click the Gear button to open the timeline settings panel and configure the four settings provided.

Aspect: Choose between a 4x3 and a 16x9 display.

Pinnacle Studio

Imaging: Choose between Regular (2D) and Stereoscopic (3D). Size: Choose amongst the HD and SD pixel resolutions available for

the given aspect ratio. Frame rate: Choose from a selection of frame rates consistent with

the other settings. These settings can be changed at any time during the development of

your movie, but you should be aware that a change of the frame rate can cause a slight shifting of clips on the timeline as they adjust to new frame boundaries.

Timeline settings

Video material that is not in compliance with the chosen project settings will be converted automatically on being added to the timeline. If you are making a stereoscopic movie, 2D material may be used but it will still look two dimensional, as both the right eye and left eye views will be the same. 3D material can be used on a 2D timeline, but only the left eye channel will be shown.

If you want to choose a video standar d for your projects explicitly, rather than relying on inheriting the format from the first clip added, open the Project settings page of the application settings. See “Project settings” on page 303.

Navigation tool selector

The space just under the toolbar can be occupied by the Navigator or the Storyboard, or by neither. (In the Disc Editor there is a third possibility – the Menu List.) The Navigation tool selector includes a dropdown that lets you select which tool you want displayed in that area.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Clicking on the selector icon toggles the visibility of the area itself. See “The Navigator” on page 57 and “The Storyboard” on page 58

for more about these navigation tools.

Audio mixer

This button opens the enhanced audio control area with volume adjustment tools and access to the Panner, a surround panning control. See “Timeline audio functions” on page 69 for details.

ScoreFitter

ScoreFitter is the integrated music generator of Pinnacle Studio, providing you with custom-composed, royalty-free music exactly adjusted to the duration required for your movie. See “ScoreFitter” on page 213.

Title

The Title button opens the Title Editor. If none of the many supplied titles answers your need, why not author one of your own? See “The Title Editor” on page 157.

Voice-over

The voice-over tool lets you record commentary or other audio content live while viewing your movie. See “The Voice over tool” on page 214.

Razor blade

To split one or more clips at the playhead position, click the razor blade button. No material is deleted by this operation, but each affected clip becomes two clips that can be handled separately with respect to trimming, moving, adding effects and so on.

If there are selected clips at the playhead on any track, only those clips will be split. Both parts of those clips remain selected after the split.

Pinnacle Studio

If there are no selected clips at the playhead line, all clips intersected by it will be split and the right-hand parts will be selected to facilitate easy removal in case that is desired.

Locked tracks are exempt from the split operation.

Trashcan

Click the trashcan button to delete all selected items from the timeline. See “Deleting clips” on page 76 for details on how other timeline clips may be affected by the deletion.

Snapshot

If, while previewing video on the timeline, you see a frame that you would like to capture as a still image, click the Snapshot button. This creates a photo of the image currently being previewed, and puts it in the Snapshot folder under Photos in the Library.

Using the Snapshot button on the timeline is a quick way to grab a frame; for more control, use the Snapshot tool in the Video Editor. Please see “Snapshot” on page 120 for more about the Snapshot tool.

Markers

The marker functions available here are identical to those provided in the media editors for video and audio. Please see “Markers” on page 118.

Instead of being attached to a particular clip, however, timeline markers are considered to belong to the video composite at the marked point. Only if there is a clip selection embracing all tracks at the marked point, and only if no track is locked, will the markers change positions during timeline editing.

Trim mode

To open a trim point, place the timeline scrubber near the cut to be trimmed and click the trim mode button. Click it again to close trim mode. Please see “Trimming” on page 79 for more details.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Dynamic length transitions

Ordinarily when a transition is added to the timeline, it is given the default length you have configured in Setup. Click this button if you would like to override the default length. When the button is highlighted, the transition durations can be set by dragging the mouse to the right or left while placing the transition onto a clip. For more about transitions, please see page 92

Magnetic snapping

Magnet mode simplifies the insertion of clips during dragging. While the mode is active, clips are ‘magnetically’ drawn to other items on the timeline when they approach within a critical distance. This makes it easy to avoid the unnecessary – though often indiscernibly small – gaps between items that are otherwise apt to arise during editing. If you want to deliberately create such a gap, however, simply turn off the mode to allow the preferred placement.

Volume keyframe editing

The volume keyframe editing button toggles keyframebased editing of clip audio. While the button is engaged, the green volume contour on each timeline clip becomes editable. In this mode you can add control points to the contour, drag contour sections, and other operations. While the button is off, the volume keyframes are protected against modification.

Opening the Audio Mixer automatically activates the button.

Audio scrubbing

By default, the audio portion of a project can be heard only during playback in the preview. The audio scrubbing button on the timeline toolbar provides an audio preview even while just ‘scrubbing’ through your movie by dragging the timeline scrubber control.

The shuttle wheel of the Player also provides audio scrubbing.

Pinnacle Studio

Editing mode

The editing mode selector at the righthand end of the timeline toolbar determines the behavior of other clips when editing changes are made. Material to the left of the edit point is never affected in timeline editing, so this applies only to clips that extend rightward from the edit point.

Three choices of editing mode are available: smart, insert and overwrite. The default is smart, in which Pinnacle Studio selects from insert, overwrite and sometimes more complex strategies in the context of each editing operation.

Smart mode is designed to maintain synchronization between timeline tracks as far as possible. In a multitrack editing situation, clips typically have vertical as well as horizontal relationships. When you have carefully placed your cuts to coincide with the beats of a music track, for example, you don’t want to disrupt everything when you make additional edits.

Insert mode is always non-destructive: it moves other clips on the track out of the way before inserting new material. It will also automatically close gaps created by removing material. Only the target track is affected. Any prior synchronization with other tracks from the edit point rightwards is lost.

Insert is most useful in the ear ly stages of a project, when you are collecting and arranging clips on the timeline. It ensures that no material will be lost, and makes it very easy to reorder clips and sequences of clips.

In the later stages, when the structure of your project is approaching its final state and you have started carefully synchronizing material on different tracks, insert mode is less helpful. The very properties that favor its use for the early stages (the ‘ripple’ behavior) count against it when finalizing. This is where overwrite comes into play.

Overwrite directly affects only the clips you select. Changing the length or position of a clip in overwrite mode will overwrite neighboring clips (if you lengthen) or leave gaps (if you shorten). It will never affect the synchronization between tracks.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Alternative mode

The smart editing mode works by predicting what you’re trying to do and determining whether insert, overwrite or even some more complex strategy would be best to apply. You’ll find it usually does what you want, but there are sure to be other times when you have something else in mind.

Many actions support both insert and overwrite, but no other possibilities. Smart mode will use sometimes one and sometimes the other, but if insert isn’t what you want, overwrite usually is, and vice versa. All you need, therefore, is a method of overriding smart mode’s default behavior.

To change insert to overwrite behavior, or overwrite to insert, hold down the Alt key while carrying out your edit as usual. You can press (or release) Alt as you please while setting up the edit: what counts is the state of the key at the instant the operation is finally enacted, such as when you drop dragged items onto the timeline.

The trick works in all editing modes, so it’s always available when you need it. If you are not satisfied with the default behavior, just cancel or undo as needed, then try again with Alt.

In one timeline editing operation – that of replacing one clip by another while retaining its duration, effects and other properties – the Shift key takes on a si milar role. See “Replacing a clip” on page 74 for details.

The timeline track header

In the header area of the timeline are a number of controls affecting the arrangement and organization of the timeline tracks. These are covered here, while the audio functions controlled from the timeline header, such as track volume, are described starting on page 204.

The all tracks area above the track headers offers controls similar to those found on each track header but with global effect: they apply to all tracks simultaneously, overruling the individual settings.

Pinnacle Studio

Default track

The orange vertical line to the left of the track header, together with a lighter background shade, identifies the default track. It provides a destination track for certain functions, including send to and paste. Newly-created titles and ScoreFitter songs are also added on this track. For more information see “Sending to the timeline” (page 74),

“Using the Clipboard” (page 88), “The Title Editor” (page 157) and “ScoreFitter” (page 213).

To make another track the default track, simply click anywhere within the track header other than on a button or other control.

Locking

Click the padlock buttons to protect a track from unintended edits. The same button in the all tracks area confers this protection on the whole project.

Storyboard link

The Storyboard is an alternative representation of a timeline track. A small storyboard link button appears beneath the padlock button on all track headers when the Storyboard is open. Click the button to select a given track as the one linked to the Storyboard display.

Track name

To edit the name of a track, click the name once to access the inplace editor, or select Edit track name from the track header context menu. Confirm your edit with Enter, or cancel it with Esc.

Video and audio monitoring

The video and audio buttons in the tr ack header control whether this track contributes its video and audio to the composite output of the project. They support the many editing situations in which it is advantageous to block the output of one or more tracks in order to simplify the preview. The same buttons in the all tracks area toggle audio and video monitoring for the entire project.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Additional track functions

The following functions are available in the tr ack-header context menu:

New track: You can insert a new track either above or below the existing track.

Delete track: Delete a track and all clips on it. Move track: Drag the track header up or down to a new layer

position. As you drag, a bright horizontal line appears at valid placements.

Copy track: Keeping the Ctrl key pressed while moving a track will copy the track instead of move it.

Track size: The context menu contains four fixed track sizes (Small, Medium, Large, Very large). For custom sizing, drag the separator

line between the track headers to seamlessly adjust the height. View waveforms: Toggle the waveform view for audio clips.

Timeline audio functions

Please see “Audio on the timeline” on page 204 for coverage of these functions.

EDITING MOVIES



The first step in any movie editing session is to bring your project into the Movie Editor to begin work.

To launch a -new production: Choose File New Movie from the main menu. Before adding your first clip, make sure that the timeline video format will be right for the project (see below).

Pinnacle Studio

To edit an existing movie: Select a recent project from the File  Recent menu; click File Open to browse for a movie project to

open; or locate the movie you want to open in the Projects folder of the Library, and double-click the thumbnail.

If your movie has been stored as a project package, it must be unpacked before editing. Find your project in the Studio Projects group in the Library, and use the Unpack project package command on the thumbnail’s context menu.

A project package thumbnail in the Library, with the context menu open. After unpacking, the movie will appear on the project’s timeline, ready for editing.

Alternatively , you can click File Open and find the project package in Explorer by choosing Studio Project Package (axx) in the file extension box.

When unpacking is finished, the unpacked project is added to the Library and opened on the project editor timeline, where it can be edited as usual.

To open a Studio project: Choose File Import previous Pinnacle Studio projects. Please note that some features of projects created

with a previous version of Studio may not be supported in the current version.

To import a Studio for iPad project: Choose File Import Studio for iPad App projects.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Timeline settings

To start editing a new project, verify that the video format settings of your project – aspect ratio, 2D or 3D, frame-size and playback speed – are as you want them. You can choose in the Project settings tab of the application settings to set the values of these properties automatically by matching the first clip added to the project. You can also set them manually. See “Project settings” on page 303 for configuring the automatic feature, and “The timeline toolbar” on page 60 for instructions on entering project settings manually.

Depending on your timeline settings, clips in some formats might not be instantly playable. Such content will automatically be rendered in an appropriate format.

Establishing tracks

With only minor exceptions, timeline tracks in Pinnacle Studio do not have specialized roles. Any clip can be placed on any track. As your projects become more complex, however, you will find it increasingly helpful to give some thought to the organization of tracks, and rename them according to their function in the movie. For information on track properties and how to edit them, please see “The timeline track header” on page 67.

Adding clips to the timeline

Most types of Library asset can be brought onto the timeline as independent clips. The types include video and audio clips, photos, graphics, ScoreFitter songs, Montage and titles. You can even add your other movie projects as container clips that work just like video clips in your project. Disc projects, however, cannot be added as container clips to a timeline, since they require a capability – user interactivity – that timeline clips don’t have.

Drag-and-drop

Drag-and-drop is the commonest and usually the most convenient method of adding material to a project. Click any asset in the Movie

Pinnacle Studio

Editor’s compact view of the Library and drag it wherever you like on the timeline.

When crossing into the timeline area during the drag and continuing to the target track, watch for the appearance of a vertical line under the mouse pointer. The line indicates where the first frame of the clip would be inserted if dropped immediately. The line is drawn in green if the drop would be valid, and red if it would not be possible to insert a clip where indicated (because the track is protected, for example).

It is possible to insert multiple clips into the timeline at the same time. Simply select the desired Library assets, then drag any one of them to the timeline. The sequence in which the clips appear on the track corresponds to their ordering in the Library (not the order in which you selected them).

Magnet mode: By default, magnet mode is switched on. This makes it easier to insert clips so that their edges meet exactly. The new clip snaps to certain positions, like the ends of clips or the positions of markers, as if drawn by a magnet once the mouse pointer gets close to the potential target.

On the other hand, don’t worry about whether the first clip is right at the start of the timeline. Not every movie starts with a hard cut to the first scene!

Live editing preview

In order to eliminate the confusion created by complex editing situations, Pinnacle Studio provides a full dynamic preview of the results of editing operations as you drag clips around on the timeline. If things seem to jump around a bit more than you’re used to during timeline editing, this is the cause. Don’t worry: you will quickly get used to and learn to take advantage of the extra information provided. Take it slowly at first. Watch the changes on the timeline as you hover the dragged item over various possible landing places, and complete the drop when you see the result you want.

If it turns out that drag-and-drop isn’t working the way you want, either press Esc or move the mouse pointer out of the timeline area and release the button. Either of these abandons the drag-and-drop

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

operation. To call back a drag-and-drop after it’s complete, press Ctrl+Z or click the undo button.

Don’t forget that you can vary many timeline editing operations with alternative mode: just press and hold Alt while dragging or trimming. In a one-for-one clip replacement (see “Replacing a clip”, below), Shift is also significant.

Advanced drag-and-drop

After you have assembled an assortment of clips on a timeline track, it’s only matter of time before you want to start changing things around. For instance, you might want to:

•

Fill a gap with clips.

•

Insert some clips before a specific clip.

•

Replace a clip already on the timeline with a different one.

The smart editing mode helps you achieve these goals with ease.

Filling a gap

Smart mode makes it simple to fill a particular timeline gap with new material, for example. Rather than having to painstakingly pretrim the new material to the space available, you simply drag items into the gap. Any clips that are not needed for filling the gap will be dropped, and the last clip used will automatically be trimmed to the appropriate length. No clips already on the timeline are affected, so no synchronization problems can result.

Inserting clips

Suppose that your goal is to add new material to the timeline at a point where there is an existing clip. You don’t want the clip already there to be overwritten, however; you just want it (and any clips to its right) to move rightwards far enough to make room for the new material.

Here again, smart editing provides a painless answer. Simply drag the new material to the start of the clip that is in the way, rather than into a gap. The clip moves aside exactly as far as necessary.

Pinnacle Studio

Inserting with split

If you drop an item onto the middle of an existing clip, rather than at a cut, the clip will be split. The new material is inserted at the point you specified, and is followed immediately by the displaced portion of the original clip.

In smart mode, synchronization of the target track with all other tracks is maintained by inserting in each of them a gap of length equal to the new clip. To avoid affecting the other tracks in this way, use insert instead of smart mode. Alternatively, pressing Alt as you drop the new material will cause it to overwrite a portion of the existing clip. A third approach is to lock any track that should not be modified, although this will affect the synchronization of clips on locked tracks with those on unlocked tracks.

Replacing a clip

To replace a clip, drag a single Library asset onto the clip you want to replace while holding down Shift. The replacement clip will inherit any effects and transitions that were applied to the original clip. Corrections are not inherited, however, since they are usually meant to address the issues of a particular media item.

In smart mode, the replace operation will succeed only if the Library clip is long enough to cover the full length of the clip being replaced. In other modes a Library clip of insufficient length will be extended using over-trimming. The direction and amount of the extension is based on your mouse position as you drag. For information on overtrimming, please see page 78.

If the Library asset is longer than needed, it will be truncated to the same length as the clip being replaced.

Sending to the timeline

In addition to dragging a clip to the timeline, you can ‘send’ it to the default track at the position of the playhead. The operation is equivalent to drag-and-drop, so smart mode is applied accordingly when deciding how other clips will be affected.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

The Send to timeline command is found on the context menu of an individual asset or multiple selection in the compact view of the Library.

Sending from the Player

There is also a second ‘send’ method that provides greater control. If you click on a Library asset when working in the Movie Editor,

the Player switches to Source mode for previewing. For trimm able media (video and audio), the Player also provides trim calipers for cutting out a starting or ending portion of the asset.

Clicking the Send To Timeline button in the Player

after trimming a Library video asset.

After previewing the asset and trimming it if required, use the send to timeline button at the bottom left of the Player. As usual, the asset

is added to the project on the default track and at the playhead. A useful variation is to click anywhere within the Player screen and drag the asset onto any desired timeline track. The asset is added at the drop point rather than at the playhead.

Title Editor, ScoreFitter, voice-over

These three functions add new clips to the project’s timeline, clips that are not underpinned by any Library asset. Instead, they are created from settings and other actions you take during editing.

Once your editing is complete, both titles and ScoreFitter clips will be sent to the default track on the timeline using the Send to timeline function, while voice-over clips will go to the special voice-over

Pinnacle Studio

track instead. For details please see Chapter 7: The Title Editor (page 157), “ScoreFitter” (page 213) and “The voice-over tool” (page 214).

Deleting clips

To delete one or more clips, first select them, then press Delete. Alternatively , click the trashcan icon on the timeline toolbar, or choose Delete from the selection’s context menu.

In smart mode, if the deletion produces a gap that spans all tracks, it is closed by shifting material to the right of the gap leftwards. This lets you avoid accidentally creating empty sections in your movie, while still ensuring that synchronization between tracks is maintained.

If the Alt key is held down when deleting, any gaps produced will be left unclosed.

In insert mode, gaps on the tracks from which clips are deleted will also be closed, but other tracks will be unaffected. No effort is made to preserve synchronization to the right of the deletion.

With regard to synchronization, the safest editing mode for deletion is overwrite, which will simply remove the clips and leave everything else unchanged.

Clip operations

The timeline of your project provides comprehensive support for selecting, adjusting, trimming, moving and copying clips.

Selecting

Select clips in preparation for performing editing operations upon them. A selected clip receives an orange frame in the timeline and in the Storyboard, and is displayed as solid orange in the Navigator.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

To select one clip, click it with the mouse. Any previous selections are removed. For a fast multiple selection, click in an open timeline area then drag out a selection frame that intersects the clips of interest. To select all clips with one command, press Ctrl+A.

To clear a selection click into any gap area of the timeline.

Multiple selection with keyboard and mouse

To create more complex multiple selections, left-click while pressing Shift, Ctrl or both together.

To select a series of clips: Click on the first and Shift-click on the last. The two clips together define a bounding rectangle, or selection frame, within which all clips are selected.

Toggle selection of one clip: Use Ctrl-click to reverse the selection state of a single clip without affecting any of the others.

Select rest of track: Press Ctrl+Shift-click to select all clips that start at or after the start position of the clicked clip. This function is particularly useful if you quickly want to get the rest of your timeline ‘out-of-the way’ for inserting new material, or to manually ripple left to close timeline gaps.

Adjusting

As you move your mouse pointer slowly over the clips on your timeline, you will notice that it changes to an arrow symbol while crossing the si des of each clip, an indication that you can click and drag to adjust the clip boundary.

Adjusting changes the length of a single clip on the timeline in overwrite mode (since insert mode would cause synchronization issues). If you drag the start of a clip to the right, a gap will be opened on the left side. If there is a clip to the immediate left of the clip being adjusted, dragging to the left overwrites it.

The adjustment pointer also appears when the mouse hovers at the ends of a gap – an empty space on a timeline track with at least one clip to its right.

Pinnacle Studio

It turns out that adjusting gaps in overwrite mode, as we do for clips, is not especially helpful. However, gaps do come in handy when you’re editing in smart mode if you want to ripple an individual track left or right, ignoring any resulting synchronization issues. Adjusting gaps therefore occurs in insert mode.

Even if no gap is available, incidentally, you can get the same result by holding Alt while adjusting the sides of a clip.

Over-trimming

Over-trimming occurs when you try to extend the duration of a clip beyond the limits of its source material, a situation you typically want to avoid.

Notice that if you have over-trimmed your clip the invalid parts are shown in pink.

Overtrimmed clip: The first and last frames

Over-trimming is not a crisis situation. You do not need to take action immediately. Pinnacle Studio will simply extend the clip as specified by ‘freezing’ the first and last frames of the clip into the over-trimmed areas.

Depending on the duration of the over-trim, and the context, this simple approach may be all you need. A brief freeze-frame can even be visually effective in its own right.

The freeze-frame method will probably not give satisfactory results if it happens during a sequence involving rapid motion, however. In such exacting cases you might consider supplementing or replacing the clip, or prolonging it with the Speed function. (See “Speed” on page 89.)

will be frozen in the over-trimmed sections.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Trimming

Changing the length of clips or gaps on the timeline is called ‘trimming’.

Multitrack trimming is a valuable editing skill. By trimming multiple tracks at once, you can assure that the clips coming later on the timeline maintain their relative synchronization.

Trimming clips without consideration for content later on the timeline can disrupt the synchronization of your project. Soundtracks that don’t match the action and badly-timed titles are the kinds of problem that may result.

A rule for staying in sync

Pinnacle Studio has powerful trimming tools to allow you to perform multitrack trimming without risk. Fortunately, there is a simple rule for safeguarding synchronization even on a complex timeline: open exactly one trim point on every track. Whether the trim point is attached to a clip or a gap, and at which end, are up to you.

Opening trim points

To open a trim point on the active timeline track, position the timeline scrubber near the cut you want to trim, then

Multiple track trimming

Pinnacle Studio

click the trim mode button on the timeline toolbar. To open one trim point on each non-empty track simultaneously, Shift-click the trim mode button.

Once in trim mode, you can open trim points with the mouse pointer at the beginning or end of a clip. Notice that the trim pointer faces left at the start of the clip and right at the end. While the trim pointer is showing, click once at the point you want to trim. Then continue to open trim points on other tracks if required.

You can open two trim points per track by holding down the Ctrl key to create the second point. This feature is useful for the trim both,

slip trim, and slide trim operations, all described below.

The Trim Editor in dual mode. The yellow rectangle shows the currently selected trim point at the start of a clip; the left side shows the final frame of the outgoing clip.

When a trim point is opened several things happen:

•

The left or right edge of the clip is highlighted with a yellow bar, showing that it is currently selected. Trim points that are not currently selected are shown with an orange bar.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

•

The Trim Editor opens, with the Player in dual preview mode.

•

The transport controls under the Player become trim adjustment tools.

•

The preview with the currently active trim point is outlined in yellow.

The Trim Editor

In dual preview mode, the Trim Editor shows two frames from the timeline. The currently selected trim point is always shown and has a yellow rectangle around it. If the trim point is at the beginning of the clip, the first frame of the clip is shown; at the end of the clip, the last frame. You can switch the selected trim point by clicking in the other preview window, or by pressing Tab.

The Trim Editor in a slip trim operation. The left preview shows the currently selected trim point; the right preview shows the second trim point.

Which frame is shown in the second preview window depends on which trim mode is being used. In a slip or slide trim, the second

Pinnacle Studio

trim point of the operation is displayed, surrounded by an orange rectangle. In other cases, the second preview window shows the frame on the other side of the cut at the selected trim point.

Above each preview window, the number of frames that have been trimmed is displayed. If you think of the original cut point position as zero, the number indicates how many frames the new position of the cut point has moved.

The Trim Editor is by default in solo mode. The clip that has the trim point is shown without the tracks above it and without any transitions applied to it. This preview mode is most suitable for determining the exact frame to trim. The default display of adjacent frames are a complete composition of all the timeline tracks. You can toggle the display behavior with the solo button in the lower right corner of the Trim Editor. When solo mode is deactivated, the preview shows trim points in their timeline context.

The Trim Editor in single preview mode.

The Trim Editor opens in dual preview mode. To switch to single preview, click the preview mode button in the upper right corner of the preview area.

Closing trim mode: Trim mode can be closed by clicking the trim mode button.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Editing modes

The current editing mode – smart, overwrite or insert – determines

how trimming will affect other clips on the timeline. Select the mode from the dropdown list at the far right of the timeline toolbar.

Insert mode: Clips to the right of a trimmed clip and on the same track will shift left or right to accommodate the new length of the clip. Synchronization with other tracks may be lost, but no clips are overwritten.

Overwrite mode: Only the clips you are trimming, and any neighboring clips they happen to overwrite, are altered in this mode. Synchronization across tracks is not affected.

Smart mode: For trimming, smart mode is equivalent to insert mode.

Trimming the beginning of a clip

Prepare to trim the beginning of a clip (the ‘mark-in’ point) by clicking at the left-hand edge of the clip while the trim pointer is visible. With a trim point thus established, you can add or remove frames from the beginning of the clip.

To trim on the clip, drag the trim point to the left or right. To trim on the Player, use the trim buttons to trim one or ten

frames either forwards or backwards. Click the loop play button for a looping preview of the trim region.

The position of the playhead relative to the trim point helps distinguish the in-point of a clip (left) from the out-point of the previous clip (right).

Pinnacle Studio

Trimming the end of the clip

To trim the end of the clip (or ‘mark-out’ point), open a trim point by clicking at the right-hand edge of a clip when the mouse pointer changes to a rightward-pointing arrow. Now you can add or remove frames from the end of your clip.

Once again you can trim directly on the clip by dragging the trim point, or on the Player while it remains in trim mode.

Trimming gaps

The project’s timeline lets you trim not just the clips upon it but also the gaps between them. Trimming gaps might not sound terribly useful at first, but is in fact handy. For instance, the easiest way to insert or delete space on a single timeline track is to trim the righthand edge of a gap. All clips to the right of the gap are shifted as a block when this is done.

Also, when you need to open a trim point on each track in order to maintain synchronization while trimming, you may often choose to trim the duration of a gap rather than that of a clip. (Remember the rule: one trim point on every track is required for keeping in sync.)

Trimming a gap, whether at the start or the end, is accomplished in exactly the same way described above for trimming a clip.

Two gaps and an audio out point have been selected for trimming. Because one trip point has been created on each track, the entire production stays in sync when trimmed.

Chapter 3: The Movie Editor

Trim both

In this operation, two adjacent clips (or a clip and an adjacent gap) are trimmed simultaneously. Any frames added to the left-hand item are taken away from the one on the right, and vice versa, as long as space and material are available. All you are moving is the cut-point where the items meet. One application for this technique is adjusting visual cuts to the beat of a music soundtrack.

To start, click at the end of the left-hand clip to open the first trim point, then Ctrl-click at the beginning of the right-hand clip to open the second.

When positioned over the adjacent trim points you just opened, the mouse pointer should be a horizontal two-headed arrow. Drag left or right to move the clip boundary, or use the Player in trim mode.

Trim both: Adjacent out and in trim points have been selected. Dragging the trim points affects the timing of the hand-off from the outgoing clip to the incoming one, but does not disrupt the timeline.

Slip trim

To change the starting frame of a clip within the source material, but leave its duration unchanged, open one trim point at the start of a clip, and another at the end of either the same clip or one later on its timeline track.

Pinnacle Studio

Drag either trim point horizontally or use the Player trim controls to reposition the clip within its source.

Slip trim: With the in and out trim-points of a clip selected, dragging the clip changes its in and out points relative to the original material, but doesn’t affect its start time or duration on the timeline.

Slide trim

A slide trim is an extended version of the trim both technique described above. In this case you open trim-points at the end of one clip and the beginning of another later on the timeline. Instead of sliding a single clip boundary along the timeline, as in trim both, you are sliding two that move together. All clips between the two trim points are repositioned earlier or later on the timeline.

Slide trim: An out-point has been opened for trimming on the first clip, and an in-point on the third. Dragging either point moves the center clip – or multiple clips, if more are present – along the track while other clips remain stationary.

Pinnacle Systems Studio - 17.0 Instruction Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual