Excellent Grob,

Did you save your slide show as an AVI file?

Steve

Steve672, yep. Very long render times because of the high number of transitions, composites, and event FX to enhance given stills. But, just fired "render as" up and let it go while away, and voila!

Again, the concept/credit belongs elsewhere. I just profited from the high quality of this forum group (again).

Grob

Grob, Any chance you posting a small piece over on the Vegasuser Chienworks site? Love to see it!

Grazie

Marquat: That's nailing it down! That particular montage concept has such merit that it seems to crop up ;-) periodically. Thanks Marquat & Shredder.
Grazie: I'll have a go at next opportunity. You'd better like babies and grandparents???
Hey perkley: Any help?
Grob

Hey Grob,

Can I ask why you use bins? I scan to a unique windows directory that is just for the photos of the montage I'm working on. I then organize using ACDsee or the like then drag directly to the time line. I like your idea of creating a BW "matte" for your images. For me the time added for rendering is just too costly.

jack

Hello Everyone,

I was searching for help on Alpha Mask and found this fantastic post from last August... Shredder (Jon) is the Bomb!!!!!

Excerpt from Original Post (8/6/2002 4:06:12 PM (Shredder)):
My nephew's a huge Star Wars fan, and I made him a photomontage of stills from the star wars website.

Since I did mine for free (and your $25 isn't much better), time was of the essence to do this efficiently.

Here's a quick way to create a highly stylized photomontage for 10 or 1000 images:

1. In "Preferences...Editing", set the "New still image length" to the number of seconds you want to show each still. This way, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll already be the right length. -- I used 4 seconds, but you may want to use more so people can absorb the images

2. In "Preferences...Editing", check the "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" box and set the "Cut to overlap conversion...Amount" to the number of seconds you want the images to overlap. Now, when you drop them on the timeline, they'll be transitioned. You can leave the transitions as dissolves for a classy feel, or simply drag whatever transition you want at a particular part over the dissolve... Simple drag-n-drop. -- I used 1 second for the 4 second images, choose this base on the tempo of your music

3. Now go the Explorer, select ALL the images you want to include, and drag-n-drop the batch onto the timeline. -- You may want to pre-number the pics in the order you want them to appear

Now, if you want to stylize the montage quickly, and want to deal with those awful black borders around portait images dispayled in a landscape monitor, you can do the following:

4. Duplicate the track & then hide the duplicate

5. For track 1, go into track motion and size the frame down so you have a black border all the way around the image - the size of the broder is up to you. Hold down the alt key while resizing a corner to resize about the center. (basically zoom out)

6. Now hide track1 & unhide track 2.

7. For track 2, go into track motion & resize the frame larger, so that your narrowest picture can fill the whole frame (basically zoomed in). Don't forget the alt key!

8. Assign the following track FX to track 2:
- Black and White, 0.750
- Gaussian Blur, .02x.02
(You've now created a blurry, desaturated version of your foreground image, a perect background to elimnate those black borders)

9. Add a layer in between 1&2 and insert a Solid Color Generated event of all black for the entire length of the montage. Set the Level of this layer to 25% -- This will darken the background and thereby highlight the foreground image.

10. Now unhide track 1 & you should have a highly stylized (yet simply done) photomontage. -- Make sure layer 1's compositing mode is 'source alpha' -- Just add music & you're done!

Obviously, you can play with the desaturation & blur levels, or create your own effects for the background.

This is simple enough that it's roughly the same effort for 10 pics or 1000 pics - just scanning time & render time is the issue.

Here's the Star Wars Montage so you can see the effect (needless to say it looks much better on video):

High: Windows Media - 256Kbps
http://www.creativeshrapnel.com/swmontage256.wmv

Enjoy!

- Jon

HI THERe ...
If u wanna make title ... just use the text tool ... it's so easy i guest !
Please try it ...

"3. Now go the Explorer, select ALL the images you want to include, and drag-n-drop the batch onto the timeline. -- You may want to pre-number the pics in the order you want them to appear"

No reason, just been learning about bins. I have also used a specific folder for a specific project and followed Shredder's advice as above. I renamed/numbered the stills in sequence within the folder, and dragged the whole mess to the timeline in one fell swoop.

One thing, hold off on your duplicate track until you've made every last edit/FX/title to the montage. You don't wind up chasing yourself after every change or addition.

Kevmiami: Thanks, that's the one.

Grob

Sorry for taking long to get back to you - I figured this forum would email me with any responses, but I never got anything so I did not know anyone was writing.

I figured out most of what was mentioned and I want to comment on one other item that I figured out that was what I wanted.

If you right click and drag a picture to a different position then it will have a popup menu that you can choose "Shuffle Events" which will allow you to have a picture moved without messing up the entire video line and shuffling it yourself. I found that very handy, because sometimes I want a particular picture to happen at a particular part in the music.

Thanks for all your help.