Stone Design Forums

ANDREW: I am posting this, and then your answers from the email exchange we had - so that others may benefit from your answers


I am new to Videator - currently in Demo mode - and was looking for a few features that I don't seem to be able to locate.
I wanted to ask if these features already exist, or if not, would you consider them for addition?

Here are the features I need..

1. The ability to display text within a colored background, i.e., a rectangle, oval, or other shape, where the shape's color and opacity are adjustable, and it would also be nice to be able to give a soft edge to the shape as well.
2. Similar to the last, it would be great to be able to insert lower 3rd text blocks, perhaps in a variety of pre-configured styles.
3. And if you were to add to the generator effects a way to insert a "slug", that is.. an empty solid color, with an adjustable duration, that could be inserted, either to use as a solid background for a text overlay, or just as a fade to black (or white) clip between sections of the movie.
4. Other common text effects, like for example title text: scrolling, credits, title text, etc. would also be appreciated and very practical additions.
5. The other thing would be a way to zoom in on selected sections on the timeline. I imported a movie that is over an hour in length, and when I wanted to add text that would fade in over a second, and remains for about 5 seconds, and then fades out; having the ability to zoom in would have given me finer control over the drag handles. As it was, I had a very hard time working with the handles given the length of the movie.

I am nonetheless impressed with Videator, based on all the movie editors I have tried - I own FCP, and iMovie - this will accept movie files in the formats I usually do my captures in (Apple Animation Codec) without having to re-encode it to have a fixed frame rate (as is required by FCP), and will also accept movies of any dimensions, which iMovie will not do (it expects movies in SD or HD) and it crops or distorts movies that are non standard sizes.

I do not know what other folks need, but I for one make lots of screen capture movies, which I then want to improve on by adding opening titles, inserting lower third text and/or overlay text (within a colored rectangle), all with simple transitions. And sometimes I want to overlay a picture-within-a-picture style screen shot over the movie as an insert in one of the corners of the movie with a transition in and out.

I personally do not have much use for distortion effects and the like, but appreciate that they are there and available should I want to use something like that. I can see many uses for some of the color, brightness, and other adjustment filters, and the compositing features are quite advanced as well.

Bravo!

I hope you will consider adding the features mentioned soon - or if they exist, or can be easily accomplished, I would greatly appreciate a tutorial on how to accomplish these specific effects.

I plan on purchasing a copy of Videator either way (as soon as I get paid) by the way.

Yours,
-Timothy Hall

PS: I have already produced a series of video tutorials on how to accomplish many of the effects mentioned above, for those using iShowU, and either iMovie or FCP; but there are strict limitations (as described above) with these methods. I would definitely want to add another chapter on how to accomplish these same tasks using Videator.

Andrew's reply..


Let's see if we ALREADY have what you want:

1. Grab our illustration, layout and web- page creation app Create (or any other drawing would work too!). Make a shape, color it the way you want (don't worry about transparency at this point - thats settable in Videator)
http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/.P ... -02-29.dmg
Create
Set the image well to TIFF, and drag into Videator - now you have the background
- then, click the bottom button "Add SubEffects" in the Options area on that image's options
- Click "Add Text", move the text into the image, scale it down if needed, change font, etc. etc.
Drop this on to see what I mean: (see attachment: "Image_1.iFilter")



2. Just as I have done in 1., consider designing your own "Filter Chains" , add them ot your fX library, and then you have them at your fingertips... You can add your own folders to the fX library, click the "+" button below the library...

3. Did you "get" the fade-in and fade-out markers on an effect?

(see attachment: "Constant Color.iFilter")

<--- fade from transparent white to solid white to transparent white
You could make a bunch of these -and not a bad idea to include some of these...
Duration is ALWAYS editable - those markers on the timeline in the options area.

Plus - you have probably seen the built-in transitions.

4. Again, a good idea to include these...

5. That's a good idea - did you know that if you double-click a slider in the options area - it does bring up a full window timeline? On an hour movie that would NOT be very useful however


I agree with you that Videator is a powerful tool to add to the arrows in your quiver - and you can always do stuff in Videator, save to QT NTSC and then drop that back into FCP or iMovie (and vice-versa of course!).


Thank you for your interest and input - and that's how the software grows as it goes! BTW - you get free upgrades for life: http://www.stone.com/Philosophy/


And when you do get paid:
http://www.stone.com/store/shop.pl/page ... ndividuals

At $49 - how can you NOT get it!

Regards, Andrew

I tried it, and it works.

I made a video tutorial.
See: http://www.stone.com/stoneforum/viewtopic.php?p=5238#5238

Thanks Andrew.