You can also change the default transition duration using the Effects window’s More menu. When you choose Default Transition Duration from the menu, the Preferences dialog box appears with the General options group displayed. The default duration for video transitions is 30 frames, but you can change it to any length you want. This default duration applies to all transitions, not just the default transition.
Previewing (And Rendering) Transitions
Transitions add a great deal of complexity to a video image. For this reason, a transition must usually be rendered before export, and in some rare cases you may even need to render a transition to preview it properly. When you render a transition or other effect, Premiere Elements creates a new file on your hard drive containing the affected video with your edits incorporated at full quality. If you find that some transitions play back in a rough or jerky manner when you try to previewing them, you need to render to get a smooth preview.
Figure 9-10:
The Default Transition option can be quickly applied when you create a slideshow.
When you place a transition on the Timeline, a red bar appears above it on the Timeline. If you try to preview the transition without rendering it, the transition may play just fine. If it doesn’t play acceptably, try rendering the transition.
There are two easy ways to render a transition:
Choose Timeline➪Render Work Area.
Press the Enter key on your keyboard.
When you choose to render the work area, Premiere Elements renders the whole work area. A lot of your Timeline probably doesn’t need to be rendered, but any unrendered areas are rendered when you choose this command. If all you need to render in the work area is a single transition, the process takes mere seconds. If long clips with effects or speed changes need to be rendered, you could be waiting a few minutes. In that case, a progress bar appears on- screen to tell you how many frames must be rendered — and approximately how long it will take. See Chapter 8 for more on adjusting the Work Area bar to reduce the size of the Work Area. I describe rendering in greater detail in Chapter 15.
Part III
Advanced Editing in Premiere
Elements
In this part . . .
Virtually all affordable video-editing programs can do the things described in Part II of Adobe Premiere Elements For Dummies. Most programs can easily cap- ture video and edit them into a basic movie. (Of course, Premiere Elements does all that with a lot more finesse than the other programs. . . .)
But Part III explores the features of Adobe Premiere Elements that truly sets this program apart from other affordable editors. In this part, I show how to improve the light and color in your video images, add special effects, perform advanced animation and video image compositing, work with audio, and add titles.
Chapter 10
Improving and Repairing Video Images
In This Chapter
Understanding video color Correcting colors
Adjusting brightness and contrast
Making your own color-correction presets Using the Color Match filter
Anyone who has used a camera — be it a still camera or a camcorder — has probably learned some hard lessons about light and color. A scene that looks great to human eyes often turns out poorly when it is photographed.
You’ve probably experienced this before; pictures you take are too dark, colors look weird, or brilliant colors get washed out by bright sunlight. Managing light and color is one of the trickiest aspects of photography and videography.
When you shoot video, there are some things you can do to take advantage of the light and color that is available. In Chapters 4 and 20 I show you some techniques to use to shoot better video. But no matter how hard you try to follow the rules of photography and videography, you’re going to wind up with video clips that appear less than perfect when you view them on a TV screen or your computer. Don’t feel bad — it happens to the best of us. People often use programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements to touch up light and color problems in still photos, and thanks to some advanced effects and features you can use Premiere Elements to make similar improvements to your video.
This chapter shows you how to use the color-correction tools in Premiere Elements to improve the quality of your video images.
Understanding How Video Color Works
Remember back in the old days when many personal computers used regular televisions for monitors? In the early 1980s I had a Commodore 64 hooked up to a TV — it made sense at the time — but these days this setup is hard to visualize, especially when you consider how dissimilar TVs and computer monitors have become. Modern computer monitors offer incredibly high resolution compared to most televisions, and computer monitors today are usually progressively scanned instead of interlaced like TVs. Also, computer monitors of today make up images using square pixels, whereas TVs have rectangular pixels. (I explain interlacing, resolution, and pixel aspect ratios in Chapter 4). On top of all that, TVs and computer monitors use different kinds of color.
Computer monitors utilize what is called the RGB color space. RGB stands for red-green-blue, meaning that all the colors you see on a computer monitor are combined by blending those three colors. TVs, on the other hand, use the YUV color space. YUV stands for luminance-chrominance. This tells us two things:
Whoever’s in charge of making up video acronyms can’t spell.
Brightness in video displays is treated as a separate component from color. Luminance is basically just a fancy word for brightness, and chromi- nance means color in non-techie speak.
I could go on for pages describing the technicalities of the YUV color space, but there are really only two important things you need to know about color:
Some RGB colors won’t show up properly on a TV. This is an issue mainly when you try to use JPEGs or other computer-generated graphics in a video project, or when you adjust the colors of a video image using effects and color settings in your video-editing program. RGB colors that won’t appear properly in the YUV color space are often said to be illegal or out of gamut. You won’t get arrested for trying to use them, but they will stubbornly refuse to look right.
Generally speaking, illegal colors are ones with RGB values below 20 or above 230. Graphics programs can usually tell you RGB values for the colors in your images. Some graphics programs (including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements) even have special fil- ters that help you filter out “illegal” TV colors from your images. In Photoshop Elements, open your image and choose Filter➪Video➪
NTSC Colors to remove out-of-gamut colors from the image.
Video colors won’t look exactly right when you view them on a com- puter monitor. Because you’ll probably do most of your video editing while looking at a computer monitor, you won’t necessarily see the same colors that appear when the video is viewed on a TV. In other words, as
you use the video filters in Premiere Elements to adjust colors, keep in mind that the changes you see on your computer screen don’t necessar- ily reflect how the video will look when you output it to DVD or tape. If possible, I strongly recommend connecting an external video monitor to your computer, as described in Chapter 15. Using an external video monitor allows you to more properly preview the colors of your video.
Correcting Video Color
Correcting and changing colors in video is much more of an art than it is a science. Every video camera has unique characteristics, every scene is lit differently, and every project has special color needs. I guess this is my way of saying that you won’t find a magic formula here to help you make each and every video clip look perfect. When you want to adjust video colors, trial-and- error is an inevitable part of the process. But the following section can help you get started using some of the color and lighting effects available in Adobe Premiere Elements.
Surveying color and light effects in Premiere Elements
Most consumer-oriented video-editing programs now include some sort of pro- visions for adjusting color and lighting in video clips. Usually such a tool chest consists of a few slider or dial controls that mimic the adjustment knobs on old TVs, with controls for color, tint, brightness, and contrast. Adobe Premiere Elements goes above and beyond with a collection of advanced color and lighting effects that give you capabilities that until now were only found in expensive, professional-grade programs.
To view the selection of effects that Premiere Elements offers up, choose Window➪Workspace➪Effects, or click the Effects button on the Premiere Elements toolbar. The Effects window appears, as shown in Figure 10-1. Click the arrow next to Video Effects to reveal the list of subfolders containing effects. You can find the effects that come in handy for fixing light and color by opening the Adjust or Image Control subfolders. In the Adjust folder you find the following effects:
Auto Color: This effect quickly adjusts color and contrast by limiting the range of blacks and whites in the image based upon midtones in the image. Use this effect to quickly improve color in high-contrast images.
Auto Contrast: This effect adjusts contrast without changing the overall color cast of the image.
Auto Levels: This effect adjusts all color levels to soften shadows and highlights, but it can change the overall color cast of the image.
Brightness and Contrast: This effect does exactly what the name implies.
If you just want to adjust the brightness or contrast of a clip, this effect can do the job.
Before you choose the Brightness and Contrast effect, you may want to experiment with the Shadow/Highlight, ProcAmp, and Color Balance (HLS) effects. Those effects can also fix brightness and contrast prob- lems, often with more favorable results.
Channel Mixer: This effect dynamically mixes color channels in the image, and is most useful when converting an image to a black-and-white or sepia tone look. In Chapter 19 I show how to make new video look like old-fashioned film using the Channel Mixer effect.
ProcAmp: This effect provides a selection of brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation controls that work like the processing amplifier found on some professional-grade video equipment. This is one of my favorite effects for color correction in Premiere Elements because it provides a variety of useful controls, thereby simplifying the color-correction process.
I show how to adjust image color and lightness using the ProcAmp effect later in this chapter.
Shadow/Highlight: Use this effect to improve the appearance of heavily- shadowed subjects, or to soften extreme highlights in the image. Use this effect if you find that the Auto Levels effect unfavorably changes the color case in the image.
Figure 10-1:
Find color and lighting effects in the Effects window.
In the Image Control folder are these effects:
Black & White: This effect removes color from your video image and turns it to grayscale. Use this effect during dream or flashback sequences.
Alternatively, you may want to try the Channel Mixer effect.
Color Balance (HLS): This effect allows you to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness in the image. It is similar to the Hue/Saturation controls in Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.
Color Balance (RGB): You can make direct changes to the levels of red, green, and blue in the image using this effect.
Color Match: This is one of the most powerful effects in Premiere Elements, and can match colors between video clips. I show how to use the Color Match effect later in this chapter.
Color Pass: This effect removes all but one color from a video image.
Use this effect to place special emphasis on a particular object by making everything except that object grayscale. The Color Pass effect works best if the object contrasts strongly with the background. Say you have footage of a red balloon against a blue wall. Turn everything else grayscale to make the red balloon burst with color.
Color Replace: Use this effect to replace one color in a video image with another.
Gamma Correction: This effect adjusts the brightness of midtones in an image without affecting shadows or highlights. I show how to use the Gamma Correction effect in the following section.
Tint: This effect modifies only the color tint of the image. Use this to change the overall color cast of the image.
In addition to these Adjust and Image Control effects, you can also find a useful effect in the Presets folder at the top of the Effects window. In the Presets folder, open the Color Effects subfolder and select the Increase Saturation effect. This effect quickly increases the color saturation in a clip, giving more vivid colors to an otherwise bland-looking clip. The following sections show you how to use a few of these effects to improve the quality of your video images.
Making color adjustments
In the previous section I list the various effects you can use in Premiere Elements to fix and repair color and lighting in your video images. In all you will find at least 16 different effects to use, each with varying degrees of success. Rather than try to show you how to use all of them, this section
focuses on two effects that, in my opinion, are most likely to yield good results with the least amount of fiddling. You might experiment with some of the other effects and find that they work quite well for you. But if you are new to color correction, the following two sections will help you get started.
As you correct colors and light, keep in mind that sometimes less is more. I don’t mean less light, but rather less editing. Color correction should be done sparingly, or else colors can start to look artificial and cartoonish. Fortunately, Premiere Elements encourages creative experimentation because color cor- rections and other edits don’t make permanent changes to your video clips.
If you don’t like your changes, simply delete the offending color effect from the Effect Controls window, or use the Premiere Elements History palette (Window➪History) to step back in time and undo your edits.
Before you start correcting colors, you should set up your Premiere Elements workspace for image correction. I recommend using the Advanced Effects work- space, which you can open by choosing Window➪Workspace➪Advanced Effects. This workspace hides the Media window, adjusting the view so that the screen includes the Effects window, Effects Controls window, Monitor, and Timeline. These are the four windows you will need when you correct colors and lighting.
The following sections show how to apply color and light changes to an entire video clip. However, you can also apply changes to only portions of a clip, or have your changes vary as the clip plays. If you don’t want to apply your adjustments to the whole video, you must use effect keyframes. I show how to use effect keyframes in Chapter 12.
Improving color and lightness with the ProcAmp effect
Video-editing professionals often use a device called a processing amplifier — ProcAmp for short — to adjust various aspects of a video signal. If your TV has controls for hue, brightness, or contrast, those controls are actually part of a simple ProcAmp that is built-in to the TV.
The Premiere Elements ProcAmp effect is designed to mimic a professional-style ProcAmp. I like it because this single effect provides controls for brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation all in one place. I have found that a majority of minor video color and light problems can be fixed with a few simple tweaks using the ProcAmp filter.
To apply the ProcAmp filter, open the Adjust subfolder of the Video Effects folder in the Effects window. Click-and-drag the ProcAmp effect from the Effects window and drop it on a video clip in the Timeline. When you drop the effect on the clip, the clip is selected in the Timeline. Controls for that clip appear in the Effect Controls window, as shown in Figure 10-2.
When you apply effects to a clip, the Monitor window shows previews of your changes in real time. However, when you first drop the ProcAmp effect onto a clip you shouldn’t see a change. To start adjusting the image, click the arrow next to ProcAmp under Video Effects in the Effect Controls window. A list of controls appears. Next to each control you see another arrow. Click the arrows to expand each respective control, as shown in Figure 10-3. ProcAmp controls include
Brightness: Slide the Brightness slider left to reduce brightness, and slide it right to increase brightness. In most cases I recommend against making large changes to the brightness setting. Be especially cautious about increasing brightness; as you increase brightness, areas of the image that were already bright appear to wash out and lose detail. If you notice that this has happened to your clip, you may want to use the Gamma Correction effect, which I describe in the next section.
Drag ProcAmp effects from here.
Effects controls appear here.
Drop the effect on a clip.
Figure 10-2:
Drag the ProcAmp effect to a clip to apply the effect.
Contrast: This is another control that you should usually use sparingly, especially if the image includes a lot of white or black areas such as the one shown in Figure 10-3. Increasing the contrast in this type of image quickly causes whites to become too intense and wash out. However, a slight decrease in contrast allows you to slightly increase brightness without light areas becoming too light. In Figure 10-3 I have decreased contrast slightly to 93.6 (the baseline is 100) while increasing brightness to 3.7 (baseline is 0).
Hue: The Hue control quickly changes the color cast in the image. The control looks a little strange because it has a dial that you cannot easily manipulate with the mouse. Click-and-drag left or right on the numbers above the dial to adjust the hue. This control is definitely one that you will have to play with to get just the right look.
In Figure 10-3, I used the Hue control to bring out the color of the green lichens growing on the cave walls. Adjusting the Hue control to give a slight greenish color cast to the image gives the right results, but be care- ful when you use this technique — otherwise the faces of the people in the image will turn green as well. (I had to spend some time working back and forth between the hue, contrast, and saturation controls before I got the improvement I was looking for.)
Saturation: This controls the color saturation in the image. You can lose color saturation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is making other color adjustments. For example, in Figure 10-3, I increased satura- tion to 130.3 (from a baseline of 100) to bring back some of the color lost when I decreased the contrast. Increasing saturation also helps restore color after you make hue adjustments. For example, I was able to restore vitality to the faces of the people in the image; they had taken on a slight greenish cast because of my hue adjustments.
Split Screen: The last option in the ProcAmp controls is a split screen feature. Most of the time you won’t want to correct colors on just one side of your video image. However, this option can be helpful because it allows you to see a side-by-side comparison of the “before” and “after”
appearance of the clip. To test this, place a check mark next to Split Screen and then play the clip. As you can see, half of the clip incorpo- rates your brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation adjustments, and the other half is unchanged.
Move the Split Percent slider to adjust the location of the split in the split screen effect. When you’re done previewing your changes, make sure you uncheck the Split Screen option. Otherwise, your final movie may look a little strange because one side of the video image will have nice colors and lighting, and the other side won’t.