Video effects

Auto-exposure

With this button you can automatically optimize brightness and contrast with a click. Use the fader in the dialog for finer adjustments.

Brightness/contrast: Use the sliders to increase or reduce the brightness and the contrast of the picture.

Gamma: Set the mean gray value that can be calculated from the various color ranges. In the preset list, you can select different areas to edit only the dark, median, or brightest areas of the image.

Using the fader, you can also set the level of brightening or darkening.

HDR Gamma: Unlike "Gamma", very dark areas are selectively lightened.

HDR Blur: This changes the transition between light and dark areas together with "HDR Gamma".

NOTE The HDR Gamma and HDR Blur features are only available in the Plus/Premium version of Movie Studio.

Saturation: Use the saturation slider to increase or reduce the hue proportions in the image. A newly developed algorithm is applied which makes color changes related to other parameters (for example contrast settings) in order to achieve the most natural coloration possible. With some experimenting, you can achieve some amazing results – such as turning summer images into autumnal pictures, or creating funky pop art...

White balance:An incorrect white balance can lead to an unnatural blue or red hue. To use the white balance, click on the "White point" button and then select a point which represents white or a neutral gray to the "outside world". The color temperature is then corrected automatically.

NOTE You can achieve unusual color effects by choosing a different shade instead of white. There is definitely room for experimentation!

Color: Select a color for coloring the image from the color chart.

Red/Green/Blue: Changes the color portion mix.

Red Eye removal: Using this photo function you can remove unnatural red eyes that are the result of using a flash. Click on the eye symbol and then select the red pupils in the preview monitor using the mouse.

This section contains the effects for chroma keying used to mix together two videos into a foreground and background.

1. Switch to Timeline mode .

2. Insert the background video into the Timeline.

3. Add the video whose color you want to replace to the track below.

4. Adjust the size of the object/video, if necessary.

   Size/Position/Rotation

5. Mark the green screen video and within the Media Pool, click Effects → Chroma key.

Mode

Stamp: The currently selected object is "stamped" onto the video on the track above the object. This is only possible if the bottom video takes up only a part of the image. Otherwise only the bottom (currently selected) video would be visible. Normally, the object should be reduced or moved first. This is done with the help of "Position/size" effect or via the submenu "Section" in "Effects -> Video object effects".

Color: In the program monitor, drag the cursor over the color that should be transparent and select a section. The video is made transparent in the sections with this color and the video on the top track will show “through”. You can use the "Threshold value", "Transition area" and "Antispill" controls to fine-tune your results, e.g. to remove reflections of hidden colors on surfaces or to sharpen the transitions to objects.

Mix: This button mixes the two videos together based on their brightness. Brighter areas accumulate and quickly appear white; darker areas have less of an effect on the result.

Colors to be hidden

Green/blue/black/white: All green/blue/black/white areas of the video below appear transparent. This makes it possible to "place" a person who has been recorded in front of a blue background into any type of landscape.

Water: Only the contours of the upper video are mixed, which results in something like a water effect..

Alpha: This video effect uses the brightness of a video to control a cross-fading effect between two other videos on neighboring tracks. The additional videos should be situated directly above and below the alpha-keying object.

In all black parts of the alpha-keying object, the top video is faded in, while in all white passages the bottom video is shown. Gray passages are permeable for both videos and create a mixture of the two. In the case of colored passages, the brightness of the color is used for control purposes.

Video level

Changes the brightness of the video before additional video effects are applied. This can have a serious influence on the effects, in particular on Chroma keying. The level setting may be automated so that two videos can be mixed dynamically with each other. Read more about this in the chapter "Animating objects".

Anti-spill

Smoothes edges in order to minimize artifacts.

Erosion: The image is broken-up by means of small rectangles and resembles a "patchwork".

Dilate: Similar like Erosion, but uses light surfaces instead of dark ones to form the rectangle.

Emboss: Creates a relief of the image edges, in which case strong contrast differences are interpreted as edges.

Substitution: Parts are exchanged using the rainbow spectrum red, green and blue. Quickly create surreal landscapes and green faces.

Shift: The color values are inverted increasingly. Blue colors turn red, green ones appear purple.

Quantize: Depending on the setting, colors are either rounded up or down so that the overall number of colors is reduced. This creates grids and patterns.

Color fill: Using this slider, color in the video with red, green, and blue colors (the basic TV colors).

Contour: The image is reduced to its contours in two sizes (3 x 3 or 5 x 5). It is possible to select either vertical or horizontal contours.

Motion: Moving parts of the image are enhanced and warped.

Echo: The moving images create an optical "echo"; previous images stand still and gradually turn paler until they completely disappear.

Whirlpool: The image is twisted into an "S" shape.

Fisheye: The perspective is distorted as if the image were viewed through a fisheye lens.

Mosaic: The video is depicted as a mosaic.

Lens: The image is dynamically distorted at the edges.

Sand: The image is depicted in a granulated manner.

Kaleidoscope: The left upper corner is mirrored horizontally and vertically.

Mirror horizontal/vertical center: The object is mirrored vertically or horizontally – it appears on its side or upside down.

Sharpen: This fader allows you to increase the sharpness of the image.

Blur: This fader allows you to reduce the sharpness of the image, making it blurry.

• Apply to: This allows you to set just how much the sharpness or blur should be applied to surfaces or edges. This enables you to effectively reduce ongoing image distortions (noise).

Artificial blur: Here you can blur the image in an alternative manner. The achieved effects are much stronger compared to simply sliding the "Blur" fader.

• Quality: Enhances the artificial blur.

TIP The artistic blur can be used well for transitions. To do so, you can animate the first video so that it is strongly blurred and let the second video begin with blur and slowly return to normal focus.

NOTE The higher the quality of the effects, the longer the calculation takes.

Speed

The playing speed can be adjusted with the slider control. The range between 0 and 1 plays the video slowly; values above 1 accelerate playback. If the playing speed is increased, the object length in the project window is automatically shortened.

Frame rate: Here you can set the video's frame rate directly. Changing it directly affects the speed factor, while moving the slider conversely results in changing video frame rate.

Algorithm: Here you can determine how to adjust the soundtrack. "Timestretching" changes the playback speed, without influencing the pitch: "Resampling" changes the playback speed together with the pitch (the faster the playback, the higher the pitch).

Reverse playback: With this button the playback direction will be reversed (with the same tempo).

Interpolate intermediate frames: Activate this option if your video lags as a result of being slowed down. Movie Studio then automatically fills in missing frames so that your video can be played back more smoothly.

Maintain length: If you shorten an object in the arranger, you can play a video faster without reducing the object length. The shortened footage is used to maintain the object length.

Apply the "Cookie Cutter" effect to punch simple geometric shapes and create picture-in-picture effects in a video.

• Click on Apply effect to activate the Open FX plug-in.
  The selected object will be punched in circular form as default. You can also customize these presets the way you want.

Color: Use the values r, g and b for red, green and blue to set the colors for the borders (only visible when borders > 0).

Shape: Select a shape in the drop down list to define the cut form.

Methods: Specify whether part of the video image is visible/masked:

• Cut everything apart from section: The cutout shape forms a window which displays your video.

• Cut section: The cutout shape covers your video and the area outside the shape is visible.

Feather: Drag the slider to determine how smoothly the cutout border fades into the background.

Borders: Drag the fader to determine the size of the frame around the cut shape.

Restore X/Y: Drag the slider to repeat the cutout shape along the horizontal axis by the number of times specified.

Size: Drag the fader to determine the size of the cut shape selected.

Middle: Drag the slider to set the center of the cutout within your project's video frame: 0.00, 0.00 represents the lower-left corner of the frame, 0.50, 0.50 represents the center, and 1.00, 1.00 represents the upper-right corner.

This alters the apparent focus of the video, blurring and softening the appearance. It can also be used to smooth out some types of noise and can also be used as a corrective filter.

• Click on Apply effect to activate the Open FX plug-in.

Horizontal range/Vertical range: Drag the slider or enter values in the editing fields to specify the number of pixels in a block.

Color channels: Select individual color channels (Red, Green, Blue or Alpha) to which you want apply blur. If the video or image has an alpha channel, basing the blur on that channel can sometimes improve transparency and mask blending.

This effect produces a halo effect around bright image objects.

• Click on Apply effect to activate the Open FX plug-in.

Glow percent: Changes the quantity of light emitted (similar to Blur effect) Light intensity, Effect intensity, and Suppression all work together. Adjust the settings to get the desired effect.

Intensity: Sets the intensity of the glow color.

Suppression: Drag this to reduce the glow so that it can only be used for highlights.

Color: Use the values r, g and b for red, green and blue to set the colors for the glow effect.

Apply the "Lens reflection" effect to simulate the light reflected by a camera lens.

Light color: Set the color value to which you want to apply the effect.

Light position: Set the position of the light source that creates the Lens Flare effect.

Lens type: Click on a lens in the drop down list to select the number of light flares to be created.

Tint: Drag a fader or enter a value in the field to set the strength of the tint that will be applied to the light source.

Intensity: Drag the slider or enter a value in the field to set the strength of the effect.

Blend: Drag the slider or enter a value in the field to set the transparency for the light flare effect. a setting of 0 is completely transparent; a setting of 1 is opaque.

Size: Drag the slider or enter a value in the field to set the size of the light flare effect.

Perspective: Drag the slider or enter a value in the field to set the angle of the light flare effect.

This effect lets you create a mask from any video or image. The video or image is converted to gray scale and made partially transparent. Brightness (Luminance), one of the color channels red/green/blue or an alpha channel (for image files in PNG or TGA format) can be set under Type as an information source for transparency.

• Click on Apply effect to activate the Open FX plug-in.

Invert: Reverses transparent and opaque areas in the mask.

Low in/High in: Lets you determine a range between the minimum and maximum brightness values for the source (independent of type) for which the image/video will be opaque. If both values are the same, the mask created will have hard borders (threshold value), whereas if the second value is higher, a graduated fade will appear at the mask borders.

Low out/High out: Lets you set the minimum/maximum transparency value. If lows are increased in value, the entire image will become brighter (less transparent)

NOTE 1.0 corresponds to maximum white, therefore maximum opacity.