AVI from Swish

tserface wrote on 1/31/2002, 11:45 AM

I figured "a way" to use the Swish program I bought (makes swf's) to create AVI snippets of cool text stuff (I.E., exploding, flying, snaking, etc.) It goes a bit beyond what the text generator in Vegas can do. I finally ended up putting a blue screen behind the text and then use a chromakey filter in Vegas to have it only show the actual text (not the background) overlayed on my video. This works, but I noticed in the Indeo compression type there is a setting for alpha channel. Is it possible to use this with an AVI in a similar way to using the alpha channel in a still (such as a PNG)? If so, is that a better method? This works so I'm not unhappy, it just made me curious. Is there anywhere to go to find get help on the compression modules (Cinepak, Indeo, etc.?) They all have options and I don't know what they all mean.

Thanks,

Tom

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 1/31/2002, 12:12 PM

If you can render uncompressed avi with alpha channel in swish, that would be the best method.

tserface wrote on 1/31/2002, 12:46 PM

Thanks. I'll check that out when I'm back at the video computer. It has an uncompressed option, but I don't know if that does anything with alpha channel.

Tom

SonyEPM wrote on 1/31/2002, 1:17 PM

if you render an identical black and white version of the swish sequence, you can use that as a separate alpha channel (see parent/child compositing)

wvg wrote on 1/31/2002, 2:05 PM

If you want fancy 3D Text animation, where the text can rotate on either the X, Y axis or both, use any True Type font you have on your system, control shadow, bevel, lightening, etc., check out Xara3D http://www.xara.com/products/xara3d/.

A bit of overkill for me, but just playing with it you can make some far out AVI snips and use them for introductions or whatever. Simpler to use than Swish and the text itself it 3D and fully configurable. Works fine with VV3. Just export as AVI and import into VV3. Swish ins't bad either. I prefer using Flash directly.