Still Motion Video Prep

Jim H wrote on 6/1/2006, 8:58 PM
What I love about Still Motion is that I can grab a folder full of photos and dump them to music in one stroke. I want to do the same thing with short video clips, lots of them. Problem is I'll be clipping them out of many much longer files.

I've got tons of footage of track runners and I want to grab nice close up action shots and set them to music. The old way I would gather the little clips using the trimmer and just place them on the track and then start cleaning them up -adjusting length to match the music.

I'd like to use Still Motion to do the arrangement for me. Can I do that from the clips on the track? Or do I have to render each clip and save them to a folder so Still Motion can grab them one at a time?

I'll place markers throughout the song and let still motion drop them in. I'm guessing Still Motion will clip the end off each clip to fill the marker (correct?) so ideally each clip will be longer than I expect to need.

What's the best workflow here?

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/1/2006, 9:16 PM
The Image Source area in the upper left corner of Still Motion contains a tabbed interface that supports the Timeline, Media Bin, a well as the File System. Just select the Timeline tab as the source and Still Motion will process the events on the timeline.

~jr
Jim H wrote on 6/2/2006, 8:56 PM
Thanks for the tip. It worked, sort of.
Before I spent a lot of time plunking short clips on the timeline, I started with a sample set of 15 loosely selected clips all from the same video file and arranged them on the timeline in no particular order and with a small gap between them. I also put 15 markers in beat to the music. My intent would be that Still Motion would arrange the clips to the marker and that any resizing of the clips would be within the range of the clips I put up there.

Here's a jpg of the before and after running still motion:



Before & After

Still Motion arranged the clips to the markers just fine. But the problem is that Still Motion seems to have backed up each clip well beyond the beginning of what I had selected for the clip. For example one clip might be of a guy in the middle of a high jump. After the SM operation that clip has been moved to the left to align with the marker and now shows the jumper getting ready to jump. As though the action was backed up the same amount that SM had to move it to the left. Follow me?

Any suggestions?
Spot|DSE wrote on 6/2/2006, 11:10 PM
your server is giving an error?
Jim H wrote on 6/3/2006, 4:44 PM
Please try again, I don't know why it's giving that error when I try to access the file. Seems I can get to it from the root dir though. Very strange.

Before & After

Anyway, the problem is described as best I can above, the image may help a bit though. Thanks.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/4/2006, 8:31 AM
This was a limitation of Still Motion 1.0.3 with Vegas 6. If you use Vegas 5 it will do exactly what you want. If you use Ultimate S2 Photo Montage it will do exactly what you want.

The problem is that Sony changed the behavior of the Script API in Vegas 6 and it broke all scripts that rely on the old behavior. Still Motion was never updated to compensate for this so it behaves differently in Vegas 5 than it does in Vegas 6. I had planned an update to Still Motion but it never happened (sorry).

I’ve just sent you Still Motion 1.0.4 in a private email which makes its behavior consistent between Vegas 5 & 6. I should have it updated on the VASST website shortly for anyone else who is using Still Motion with video files. (this does not affect still images at all) I’ve even added an Installation Guide to the ZIP file that shows you how to add the Still Motion icon to the Vegas toolbar.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

~jr
johnmeyer wrote on 6/4/2006, 8:49 AM
I just got burned again by that change. I have updated all my scripts (I think) but still have the old ones lying around. I somehow got hold of the V5 version and all hell broke loose. I hope that, if any scripting changes are made in a future release, that Sony provides upward compatibility, like pretty much all other language developers do.