I started playing around with the new transition progress envelope feature and am thinking of some (what I think are) neat uses for it -- including as an advanced split-screen method.
Consider: You want to do the classic "two people talking on the phone" scene. I think the standard way of doing this is put the two subjects on sepearate tracks and use track motion to move them side by side (or picture in picture, or..?). To get creative, you add a track above them with some kind of funky graphic to hide the line between them. Or you mask out half of one track so that half of the other one shows through.
Here's a new way that occurred to me last night: You film both people in their locations doing their thing. Put the video of the first person on a track. Put the video of the second person on the SAME track. Then move the second one over to the left until they're crossfaded for the entire phone conversation (and probably a little more).
Then replace the crossfade with the your transistion of choice. Clock or linear wipes are the obvous ones, but I started experimenting with some others as well. Now insert a trasition progress envelope and add four points to the envelope: 1) When the switch to split screen should start; 2) when the split screen should be in place; 3) when the split screen should start to go away; 4) When the "return to normal" should be finished.
Finally, change the settings for each point. The first should be set to 0. The second and third points should be 50% in most cases (for example, if your subjects are each on either side of the center of the screen), but this will vary depending on which transistion you use, where your subjects are in their respective frames, etc. (I tried some where the second subject was in a smaller, picture-in-picture type box with the first subject in the center, so setting the progress at about 40% left the second subject off to the side and out of the way.) Point #4 can be either 100% or 0% depending on which subject should remain on the screen after the phone conversation (or whatever) is done.
If you want some funky movement during the split screen segment, add more points between 2 and 3 or just give them different settings.
Kinda surprised I haven't read of anyone using the transistion progress envelopes for this kind of thing. Either a) I'm the first person to think of this and am a genius; 2) people are doing it, but it's so freakin' obvoius that no one mentioned it; or iii) there is a major flaw to my idea (ie, maybe rendering loooooong transitions takes a lot longer than rendering track motion?). I guess one issue I can think of that the audio might be pretty tricky (for me, anyhow).
Thoughts on this? And does anyone have any other neat uses for transition progress envelopes?
Rob
Consider: You want to do the classic "two people talking on the phone" scene. I think the standard way of doing this is put the two subjects on sepearate tracks and use track motion to move them side by side (or picture in picture, or..?). To get creative, you add a track above them with some kind of funky graphic to hide the line between them. Or you mask out half of one track so that half of the other one shows through.
Here's a new way that occurred to me last night: You film both people in their locations doing their thing. Put the video of the first person on a track. Put the video of the second person on the SAME track. Then move the second one over to the left until they're crossfaded for the entire phone conversation (and probably a little more).
Then replace the crossfade with the your transistion of choice. Clock or linear wipes are the obvous ones, but I started experimenting with some others as well. Now insert a trasition progress envelope and add four points to the envelope: 1) When the switch to split screen should start; 2) when the split screen should be in place; 3) when the split screen should start to go away; 4) When the "return to normal" should be finished.
Finally, change the settings for each point. The first should be set to 0. The second and third points should be 50% in most cases (for example, if your subjects are each on either side of the center of the screen), but this will vary depending on which transistion you use, where your subjects are in their respective frames, etc. (I tried some where the second subject was in a smaller, picture-in-picture type box with the first subject in the center, so setting the progress at about 40% left the second subject off to the side and out of the way.) Point #4 can be either 100% or 0% depending on which subject should remain on the screen after the phone conversation (or whatever) is done.
If you want some funky movement during the split screen segment, add more points between 2 and 3 or just give them different settings.
Kinda surprised I haven't read of anyone using the transistion progress envelopes for this kind of thing. Either a) I'm the first person to think of this and am a genius; 2) people are doing it, but it's so freakin' obvoius that no one mentioned it; or iii) there is a major flaw to my idea (ie, maybe rendering loooooong transitions takes a lot longer than rendering track motion?). I guess one issue I can think of that the audio might be pretty tricky (for me, anyhow).
Thoughts on this? And does anyone have any other neat uses for transition progress envelopes?
Rob