Inserting MS Motion clips

jayzee wrote on 7/2/2003, 7:53 PM

Is it possible to insert MS Motion Clips? VF gets to the folder 'MS Clip Gallery' when an error message pops up; "The file is an unsupported format".

They are in GIF format which VF should support?
I would like to add some movement to the array of family still pictures.

Your help is appreciated.

Comments

IanG wrote on 7/3/2003, 6:35 AM

I thought the MS Motion Clips were just animated gifs - in which case I'd expect them to work. Have you tried any others? Regardless, you can add movement to your stills with pan and zoom.

Ian G.

jayzee wrote on 7/3/2003, 1:42 PM

IanG, Thanks for your suggestions. Did a website search for free motion clips with no success. Any ideas? You spurred me on, on how to successfully get the motion clips onto VF. Thanks. Have yet to take the time to learn how to add movement to stills. A slow learner here. Reading the Forum has given me a lot of ideas. So thanks to all! JZ

IanG wrote on 7/3/2003, 3:30 PM

JZ, I'm not sure what you mean by "motion clips", but if you mean animated gifs, have a look at animation factory. VF can definitely play them.

Ian G.

sdgates wrote on 7/11/2003, 11:15 AM

Very cool Ian. I didn't know animated clips could be pulled into VF!!!

Hey, I pulled in a little walking disk guy from that web site to test things out. I needed to use Pan/Crop to pull way back so the graphic wouldn't be so blurry (and to simply make walking disk guy smaller). Then I duplicated the clip on the timeline six times to get him on screen for a longer period of time. He looks pretty cute... maybe I should use him as my logo on the birthday videos I'm shooting.

I'd like to ask you or Grazie or Kelly or anyone another really basic VF question that I still don't have a handle on. When I pulled back from the walking disk guy (using Pan/Crop) I end up with a large black border around him. What is the most effective method of getting rid of that border and replacing it with white?

I thought that perhaps by clicking on Insert/Text Media on another track and then deleting the text I might be able to have the inserted area's "white" replace the border around walking disk guy. I placed the "text media" on a track below and changed the background to white and eveything looks good. Am I doing things right or is there an easier way to accomplish this?

sdgates wrote on 7/11/2003, 12:10 PM

I thought walking disk guy was blinking too much so I wondered if I could use VF to eliminate one blink out of the repeated clips. I expanded the timeline to the point that I could work on individual frames. Then I did two "Split Event" operations on either side of the blink.

I then dragged the sectioned-off blink down to the track below and adjusted both the starting and ending points of the sectioned-off clip a bit to the left to catch the point in the animation just before walking disk guy blinks. Sliding this adjusted clip back above into the gap showed that there was a bit too much jump in foot movement as a result. (The entire sectioned-off blink is only three frames long - I was surprised that the human eye could catch the jump!) So I did one more split on the sectioned-off piece and moved it's timing to cover two frames post-blink (with the first sectioned-off piece being one frame pre-blink). Now the foot movement is perfect - no big jumps.

I know this might all sound incredibly anal to some - but I wanted to see just what VF (or any of these editors) was capable of. I am pretty impressed! Now I am wondering what kind of goofiness I can get up to with live action? Hmmmm... I wonder if I can splice out the blinks of a real person so it looks like he never blinks during a conversation?