Chienworks you gave me a clue…! “About the best you can do with Video Factory is to open up an existing .vf project file next time you want to start a new project, then replacing the media with new clips.”

Templates:

1. Make a new project and call it “Grazie’s Templates”
2. Create a series of the “framed” earthquake effects – say 10 in all, or whatever!
3. Leave “black” video frame spaces between each effect, to clearly separate “effects”
4. Place “Markers” to make reference/indexing more available for searching.
5. Name those markers – Grazie’s Earthquake 1; Grazie’s Earthquake 2; Grazie’s Earthquake 3…. Etc etc.
6. Save this VF “film” as what… AVI or what? Close film.
7. Open up new or previously produced film project
8. Import/open “Grazie’s Templates” into Media Pool
9. Drag this, “Grazie’s Templates”, into the Overlay track.
10. Select the “effect” one wants – search the markers - and subtract what one doesn’t want!
11. “Stretch” or “Squash” effect over the video in the video track to produce/achieve final result.
12. Potentially one could overlay and overlay and overlay template effects to experiment with more homegrown effects.
13. You can decide to have One Template file or have a series of VF Template files – all as mini film projects – lurking in a subdirectory

Creating & Preserving FX Effects:
I now see that one can create “chained” FX effects and save these in the FX selection menu. I can give it a name- “Grazie’s Pixels 1” and it will reside in that menu ready to be used in the future, in any VF project.

Question 1: Can I do this with “Chained” effects – Pan/Crop; Pinch ‘n Punch etc etc?
Question 2: Is there a way of combining “Templates and Creating & Preserving FX effects”?

I feel like we are onto something. What d’yer think?

Grazie