Screenblast Movie Studio NEW USER PLEASE HELP

rhiggins wrote on 10/20/2003, 3:04 PM
Based on my purchase of the Screenblast movie studio I have several
questions and I am betting that other people have experienced the same frustration. I have reviewed the manual help text and program online help text (which is kind of skimpy and does not provide enough examples or HOW TO help.

Anyways I hope someout out there can provide me with answers to my questions below or suggestions before I give up and return it to the store. I would really like to use this product but it is extremely frustrating when you buy something for over a $100 dollars, and the consumer is supposed to figure it out instead of having detailed instructions or a template, and then when you need technical support questions you have to pay $3 dollar a minute???? Sure I am aware of the free email tech support but I don't think it is fair to the consumer that the document did not contain examples, or even the installation where is a example project???


Here are my questions....

(1)

I bought Screenblast totally based on the "green screen" effect (or the
Chroma Key Feature) however page 92 in the manual talks about what you can do with it but only briefly mentions it. Does anyone have a step by step instructions on how to utilize this? Would you please provide me with
a step by step example on how to perform this.... Does the feature only allow for STILL pictures (like JPEGS) or can you use the feature within a live feed using a camcorder?


(2)

Within Screenblast I started a new project to basically create a slideshow
(using JPG's) and then added a MP3. I then used the make movie option and left all defaults (AVI) and then after the rendering played the movie... during the playback the pictures actually shaked... why? How do you resolve this? I have tried different things and I have defragged my hard disk but still the shaking persists.

(3)

Can you attach multiple projects? If so how? Because basically I want to create a movie that contains a collection of slideshows (pictures, live feed) for each member of my family, so that I can send this to my relatives for Christmas they will get this DVD and then they can plop it in their DVD player and it will autostart.......

Thank You ALL for you assistance

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 10/20/2003, 4:01 PM
Calm down there, rhiggins. Give this program a chance. You'll be more than $100 happy with it. I promise.

1) Anyway, the chromakey feature is everything you hoped it would be. Yes, it does indeed work on video as well as stills. You simply drag it from the effects tab onto the event (clip on the timeline) that you want to make transparent. The feature window will open. You can either set the transparency color manually or use the eye-dropper to click on an area of preview screen that represents the color you want to make transparent. Every pixel that color will become transparent and reveal the video layer beneath it.

2) When you create you AVI, set it for NTSC-DV. This is a codec (a compression method) that will use your computer more efficiently. Most likely the shaking (if it's a constant shaking) is your computer working with an uncompressed file. If the shaking is not constant, give us more details (including information about your computer) and we may be able to advise you.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/20/2003, 4:17 PM
Don’t be discouraged by the lack of information with the product. You can only pack so much information into a users guide before it gets so big that no one would bother to open it. ;-) That’s why people write books on these topics and why there are forums like these so we can help each other. Don’t give up on MovieStudio. It’s an outstanding application for making movies.

(1) The chroma key FX in MovieStudio is the same chroma key that is used by MovieStudio’s big brother application, Vegas, so you can use Vegas tutorials and follow along pretty closely. Search the internet lots of great sites that support Vegas with tutorials and tips. Here is a quick overview:

Step 1: Place your background video or image on the track labeled Video.
Step 2: Place the foreground video or image (the one with the green screen or blue screen that you want to chroma key out) on the Video Overlay track.
Step 3: Next add the chroma key effect to the event on the Video Overlay track. This should popup the dialog to adjust the parameters.
Step 4: Just click the 'eye dropper' in the dialog and select the color from the video on the timeline that you want to remove and it should become transparent so that the track underneath can be seen. (This really needs pictures to explain better)
Step 5: Use the High / Low threshold to match the color range better and use the Blur to soften the edges where the foreground and background come together.

I realize this isn’t a great step by step tutorial but I don’t have MovieStudio (just VideoFactory and Vegas) but hopefully you can get the basic idea.

(2) This may be interlace flicker but you shouldn’t be getting it on every image with still pictures. This usually happens only on images with very close horizontal or vertical lines. Have you viewed it on a TV set and does it still flicker? Instead of leaving all the defaults when you render, select the DVD NTSC template for AVI files. This will make a DVD compliant AVI file if you plan on burning them to DVD later. (I’m not sure this is the default)

(3) You cannot append multiple projects just by opening them. You could render all the projects to AVI files and then drop the AVI files into a new project. That's about as good as it gets.

Not the best of answers but I hope this helps get you started. Don’t be afraid to ask more questions. It’s hard to describe visual instructions with just words.

~jr
rhiggins wrote on 10/21/2003, 5:15 PM
Thank You for your help John and Steve.....

I got it working THANK YOU very much for your step by step instructions..