Help w/ flashing stills effect

cheroxy wrote on 1/17/2004, 6:54 AM

I have tried a few times to make a project where around ten stills a second flash on the screen. An example can be seen here (this remeinded me when I saw this in another post) http://www.ANGELWINGONLINE.COM/highband.html .

I can't ever get it to work. When I watch the above example on my computer it works fine, but if I ever make one and render it I can never get it to work. The stills are never fast enough. I have tried from 5-20 stills a second. I usually render as wmv9. What might I be doing wrong.
thanks,
Carson

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 1/17/2004, 7:28 AM

The link you offered has a Flash Movie.

With it you can do tricks like you saw very easily since you can make the frame rate much slower or faster.

You can duplicate the effect in Vegas. You need to do a few things.

1. Options/preferences./editing change new still image length to a very low number. Something like 0.100 to 0.500.

2. now Zoom way in on the timeline,

3. Select a bunch of images drag/drop on timeline.

You may want to loop the selection to watch it over and over and fine tune the value you set in preferences.

cheroxy wrote on 1/17/2004, 9:27 AM

thank you for the reply billyboy. So far, that is exactly what I have done. I have tried everything from setting the preference for stills length from 0.100 to 0.050 yet I can't get it to look good. I admit, I haven't put it on a dvd yet, but when I render to wmv-9 it doesn't look good. It seems to play erratically, but never a good flashing effect. I have also made sure to keep my bitrate low so as to not over do it with my processor.

If anybody has done this and they turned out looking good let me know.
thanks

cheroxy wrote on 1/17/2004, 9:44 AM

I tried it again since it just didn't seem right that everything wasn't working, only this time I rendered to mpeg-2 and it looked perfect. Now, I just have to figure out why rendering to wmv-9 was such a bog down.
thanks

FuTz wrote on 1/17/2004, 9:44 AM

Maybe check the "keyframe spacing" in the wmv9 options ? (Video tab/Seconds per keyframes- enter value). If you click the "?" in the help on top right of the window and drag it over the "Seconds per keyframes" sentence you get suggested values for the bitrate you chose so your enter a good value...

Did you burn it to a cdrw or cdr and check it on your computer/video system just to be sure the "erratic" effect is not caused just by your buffer/graphic card reaction time/system memory : your clip may be perfect but when previewing it it's just your hardware that is not fast enough to preview..?

FuTz wrote on 1/17/2004, 9:46 AM

Great, by the time I typed the reply you wrote that...
I was about to add: did you try to render to another format (like uncompressed AVI) just to check... but you did.
You seem to have a part of your anser... don't give up !

FuTz wrote on 1/17/2004, 9:55 AM

Oh yeah, and did you do this very subjective quick test: have a real fast cross-fade between the pictures? Maybe it could "create" kind of a "morph" effect due to the speed the pictures are driven..?

To do it quick: you go into Options/Preferences/Editing tab/check the "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" and enter a value of, let's say one or two frames.
You then select all the pictures in Explorer window, right click 'n' hold then drag all the clips on the timeline (choose "add across time" in the poping window) Now you got these crossfades inserted automatically. You then go Shift+B (dynamic RAM prerender) to check it out...

It's just a suggestion though cause if you want something that "frankly cuts" maybe it will be too "smooth" for what you want to achieve... but this "morphoing effect" created by the process might be interesting...

Ok, I'm out, you're the boss here, this is *your* production! :D

cheroxy wrote on 1/17/2004, 10:07 AM

i think it is my card, any other way works fine. Thanks

BillyBoy wrote on 1/17/2004, 11:13 AM

If it doesn't seem to change images as fast as it should it could be your system. I tried on mine using using .100 and it flew from the preview window in Vegas at good settings. Depending on the time you pick you may or may not want to have transitions. At such speeds they are going to go by so fast may just blur or pixelate spoiling the effect.

One of those things you got to play with.