Pinnacle Studio 7 - Unbundled
by Douglas Dixon,
www.manifest-tech.com
Pinnacle Systems - Studio
Interface
Capture: Scene Detection
- Smart Capture
Timeline Editing - Transitions
and Effects
Audio- Titles
and Stills- Make Movie
Studio 7 - References
This summer, Pinnacle Systems announced that it has unbundled its
Studio video editing software, which was previously available only
with Pinnacle video capture hardware products.
Studio has been a really interesting editing tool with
industry-leading features, including automatic clip creation (by
detecting scene changes) and low-resolution preview capture for
editing (and then smart recapture of only the full-resolution
material required for the final edit). And now this new release,
Studio 7, also is available as a software-only product, with
sophisticated new features at a quite reasonable price ($129
estimated street price).
In this article, I'll step you through some of the new and
interesting features in Studio 7, which provide features that are
more powerful than basic consumer video editors, but without losing a
clean and simple interface.
Pinnacle Systems (www.pinnaclesys.com)
has a long history and illustrious reputation (including seven
technical Emmy awards) as a developer of video products for the
broadcast, desktop, and consumer markets. The Pinnacle
"Studio" consumer product line offers a wide range of video
capture solutions, including analog PCI boards, 1394 / DV boards, and
USB capture devices, some even with TV and FM radio tuners.
While primarily a hardware products company, Pinnacle has gone its
own way in software as well by developing its own Studio video
editing tool to include with its consumer video capture hardware
products, instead of bundling a third-party editing product.
But with the continued success of the Studio software, and with
the growing number of PC's with built-in 1394 / DV interfaces,
Pinnacle has now unbundled the Studio software as a separate product.
Studio 7 organizes the video editing process in a main window,
which then contains the components required for the current editing
step. Unlike some consumer editors, the window does not take over the
entire screen, and has a readable color scheme. But unlike higher-end
editors, you cannot reorganize or resize the different elements in
the window.
If you like using a graphical interface style, you can control the
entire process by using the tabs and buttons in the Studio interface.
Or you can use the more traditional Windows menus to access the same
functions organized in the menus, or use the right-click pop-up
context menus.
The Studio interface divides video editing into three steps,
represented by tabs across the top of the Studio window: Capture,
Edit, and Make Movie. In the top left of the window is the Album,
where you collect clips that you are working on. In the top right is
the Monitor window, where you can preview and play your work in
progress.
Studio 7 - Capture
In Edit mode, the Album also has tabs to access libraries of
Transitions, Titles, Photos, and Sound Effects. At the bottom of the
Studio window is the Movie window, where you compose your production
in either Storyboard or Timeline mode. The Movie window also has
slide-out trays to access the Video and Audio Toolboxes,
The rest of the Studio window changes between the three modes, as
you Capture from tape to the Album, Edit from the Album to the Movie
window, and then Make a Movie from the Movie window to a file.
Previous versions of Studio have really excelled at video capture,
especially because they were customized to specific Studio hardware
products. But the advent of DV and common 1394 interface hardware
means that Studio 7 can do even better, and with any DV device.
Studio already had a scene detection feature, which actually
monitored the video frames being captured - in real time - and looked
for dramatic changes that indicated a new shot, or scene. In many
cases, this can greatly simplify the editing process by automatically
segmenting one long capture into a collection of clips, ready to
trim, assemble, and edit. But this automatic scene detection can be
fooled, either by missing new clips of similar material or by
detecting too many changes, for example from a flash bulb or person
walking in front of the camera.
With DV video, however, Studio can segment the captured video
perfectly. The trick is that DV tapes can include not only an elapsed
time code, but also the shooting time, the date/time stamp when the
material was shot. If you set the time stamp in your camcorder, and
shoot a series of clips with pauses in between them, then Studio can
automatically capture them as separate clips. If the input video is
analog, or does not include the shooting time, or is one long
continuous shot, then Studio can still do scene detection based on
video content.
As Studio analyses the captured video, it adds each clip to the
Video Album at the top of the Studio window, with each clip
represented with a thumbnail of the first frame. You can click on a
clip to view it in the Monitor window at the top right, or play
through the entire video in the Monitor window, and watch as Studio
highlights the corresponding portion of each clip.
While the use of standard 1394 / DV interfaces has reduced the
problems of interfacing to custom capture hardware, just the
logistics of storing and managing large amounts of video data can get
unwieldy. Studio has been designed to help reduce these difficulties
in two ways: providing lots of good feedback to anticipate your disk
requirements, and with the Smart Capture feature, which captures
low-resolution "preview" video.
Studio is particularly helpful in planning your video captures. To
start with, it automatically checks your disk data rate the first
time you set up to capture. The Capture interface then displays a
Diskometer, a pie chart showing the available space on the selected
disk, as well as an estimate of the corresponding remaining recording
time, based on the currently selected video compression format.
You can use the camcorder controls in the bottom left of the
Studio window to position the tape in your DV camcorder, and view the
playback in the Monitor window. Studio offers additional Video and
Audio options in slide-out trays, and a Settings button to set
capture formats.
But here's the best part: If you are editing down a long tape, you
do not need to capture the entire tape at full resolution. Instead,
you can capture it a lower "preview-quality" resolution,
edit it, and then Studio can use its Smart Capture feature to rescan
the tape and capture only those portions needed in your final edit.
This can result in a big-time space savings. Full-resolution 720 x
480 DV video uses 3.6 MB per second of video, or 216 MB per minute,
or 12.6 GB per hour. That will fill a disk quickly enough, without
additional scratch space required for rendering edits. Instead, with
Studio you can capture and edit at a lower resolution.
Studio includes presets for compression with the Premiere PIM1 or
Intel Indeo 5 compressor, ranging from 360 x 240 video at 30 frames
per second with 16-bit stereo audio at 22 kHz, to 180 x 120 video at
15 fps with 8-bit mono audio at 11 Hz. Across this range, a disk that
might hold only 3 hours of DV video can hold 13 to 45 to 120 hours of
preview video.
Besides saving disk space, editing with preview video gives you a
lot more flexibility, since you can work with more video at one time,
and your computer can load and process it much faster.
In addition, Studio's preview settings work well for capturing
lower-resolution video for sharing with others and for posting on the
web. I was able to capture a 50-minute clip directly in Studio into a
file in Indeo 5 format at 360 x 240 resolution, and the resulting AVI
file was only 517 MB, or small enough to fit onto a CD.
Studio 7 supports both a Storyboard view for quickly arranging
clips in sequence to tell a story, and a Timeline view for trimming
and coordinating video, audio, and transition tracks. You can flip
between views by clicking the icons in the top right corner of the
Movie window. Studio also provides a Text view, to review the clips
and their trimmed size.
Studio 7 - Editing
The Timeline provides a fixed number of tracks: Video (with
transition), linked Audio, Title, Sound effect / voice-over, and
Background music. You can easily zoom the Timeline view in and out by
dragging in the Timescale bar.
Studio provides great feedback as you work. Clips that have been
used in the Movie window are show with check marks in the Album. As
you play in the Monitor window, the corresponding section of the
Timeline is highlighted. It also provides a Find Scene in Album
Trimming clips in Studio is as easy as clicking and dragging the
edge of the clip in the Timeline. Or for more precise control, you
can open the Video Toolbox to edit the trim point by dragging,
stepping through the video, or setting the exact time code. Studio
includes several more sophisticated tools, including a Razerblade
tool to split clips and the ability to recombine split clips, and the
ability to lock individual tracks.
Studio also supports "split" edits, a more advanced
technique for independently editing the video and audio tracks of a
clip. You can perform a "L-cut," where the audio from one
clip continues into the beginning of the next, or a
"J-cut," where the audio from the next clip is heard before
the video is seen.
Studio supports more than 100 transitions under the Transitions
tab in the Album window. The thumbnail for each transition
illustrates its effect, its name is displayed when you hold the
cursor over it, and the effect is animated in the Monitor window when
you click on it.
The Studio transition types include Fade, Dissolve, Wipe, Slide
and Push, plus a collection of Alpha Magic gradient wipes with
interesting shapes. Studio also includes several Hollywood FX 3D
transitions, with more available for purchase.
Studio provides access to video effects in the slide-out Video
Toolbox. These include color effects such as Monochrome and Sepia;
color correction for Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast; and
image processing with Blur, Emboss, Mosaic, and Posterize.
Another advanced feature in Studio is variable speed playback,
from 1/10 slow motion to 10X fast motion, with slow motion actually
interpolated smoothly between frames. Studio also provides a Strobe
effect, which repeats frames for the specified count, and drops the
intervening frames to keep the clip to the same length.
Studio provides two additional tracks in the Timeline for Sound
effects / voice-over audio and for Background music. For sound
effects, you can use the collection of WAV audio files provided with
Studio (the Flies sound is particularly irritating), or you can use
the Voice-over tool for quickly recording your own audio.
For background music, you can use the Audio CD tool to capture
music from an audio CD, or use the built-in to to generate music
automatically.
Studio includes the SmartSound QuickTracks audio soundtrack
generator for creating background clips to fit your movie. You select
the Style (from Classical to New Age to Rock), then a Song in that
style, and then a Version, from Soft to Saucy, Guitar to Drums.
SmartSound can then generate an audio clip in that style to fit
whatever length you require.
Studio also provides basic audio fades, cross-fades, and per-track
volume controls
Studio provides powerful features for adding titles and still
images into your production, both as full-screen, and overlaid on
video. For titles, Studio includes a version of TitleDeko, a
professional broadcast character generator. You can select from a
collection of pre-defined title styles under the Title tab of the
Album window, or use the TitleDeko editor to edit your text,
including over 300 title styles, alignment, transformations, and
graphics. You can animate text with rolls and crawls, or apply
transforms for reveals and wipes.
One you have finished editing your movie, click on the Make Movie
tab at the top of the Studio window to save it in a variety of
formats. Again, Studio provides visual feedback of the available disk
space and selected output format. Studio can export in Windows AVI
format, standard MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats, streaming Windows Media
and RealVideo 8 formats, or back out to tape to your DV camcorder.
Studio 7 - Make Movie
Studio provides instant previews as you edit, but does require a
rendering step before exporting. Studio does intelligent rendering,
only rendering those parts of your movie where you have added
effects. For AVI format it also uses smart recompression, again only
reprocessing the changed portions of your movie.
Note that Studio 7 is based on the Microsoft Windows DirectShow
architecture and DirectX. It only inputs AVI video files, and does
not support QuickTime input or export.
Pinnacle's Studio video editor has a good track record as an easy
to use tool with some interesting features. Now with version 7,
Studio is available separately from the Pinnacle hardware products,
and works well with 1394 / Firewire connections to DV camcorders.
Studio 7 adds more sophisticated capabilities, including split
edits, variable speed, and more export formats, plus further user
interface enhancements to help you keep track of which clip came from
where. Studio includes a undo / redo capability, which can even undo
actions such as scrolling and changing the time scale.
If you are looking for more than a very basic video editor, but do
not need the complexity of a high-end tool, then take a good look at
Studio. The DV scene detection and Smart Capture features make it
particularly easy to put together short and even medium-length
productions quickly and without a whole lot of pain. Studio 7 even
includes great documentation, including a complete Help file and an
extensive "Guide to Movie Making" book, with 284 pages and
lots of screen shots.
Get More info about
Pinnacle Studio 7 Professional
from Amazon
Copyright 2002, Douglas Dixon, All Rights Reserved
www.manifest-tech.com
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