How Can I Pause/Stillframe Video?

Steverobbins wrote on 10/6/2008, 1:35 PM

I was wondering how I can do this is Sony Movie Studio. I have a video of some cars racing. What I want to do is this:

As the video starts and the cars start going fast, I want to insert a text media square around one of the cars and pause the video on that shot for about 1 second, and then have the video play at normal speed.

How can I do this?

Thanks in advance!

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 10/6/2008, 1:44 PM

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=592332

If the text media is literally "around" the car, then you would need masking and it's better done on Photoshop instead, as Vegas Movie Studio doesn't support masking.

Steverobbins wrote on 10/6/2008, 1:56 PM

Thanks for the reply. Let me explain a little more about what I am trying to do. I am hoping to find an easy solution.

I am doing a video of 7 cars driving. Once they start driving, I want to the video to pause for 1-2 seconds showing an arrow pointing to the car that I want to show. After 2 seconds I want the video to resume at normal speed.

Isn't there an easy way to do this? If I have to take a snapshot and put it above the video won't it mess up the timing and flow of the video?

Thanks.

Eugenia wrote on 10/6/2008, 2:08 PM

No, it won't mess it up. Use the way Chienworks describes in the link I gave you. You split the event in the timeline, you go to the LAST frame of the left event and you take a snapshot of it (ALT+ArrowKeys to move frame by frame), save it as PNG as described, you put it exactly between the two events (make sure it's a perfect fit between the events), and you add the arrow as a transparent GIF file on the track above the car video track.

Steverobbins wrote on 10/6/2008, 2:14 PM

Ahh, makes sense, I will do it.

Thanks for helping!!

mickbadal wrote on 10/18/2008, 8:14 PM

This is one of those features that in my opinion Premiere has over VMS, and I really wish VMS would improve on. [No I'm not trashing on VMS, I really love the software]. It's just that for such a common, basic effect as a still shot is, having to set the preview to best (full), then save it to an external file (including the time spent to name it, navigate to folders, etc.), then load it on the timeline, etc. just to get a freeze frame seems so archaic for a software package that is as advanced as VMS.

In Premiere, you make a copy of the clip, find the frame you want to freeze, then right click and frame hold it. That's it - the whole clip is now a freeze of that frame. Want to change the frame that's frozen? Just un-freeze it, find the new frame in the clip, and re-freeze. So simple, done right on the timeline - without the need to save off files, etc. I would really love it if VMS introduced this kind of thing in the right-click context menu of an event.

Anyone agree out there? Perhaps we can get a few people asking for this together, which might cause Sony to notice it and take action on it as a feature.

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 10/19/2008, 6:18 AM

A de-shake plugin is another thing that VMS is really missing....