In this lesson, you’ll learn how to apply effects to the basketball clips that you used in previous lessons, and you’ll also apply these effects to several new clips. Specifically, you’ll learn how to do the following:
• Apply video effects to single and multiple clips
• Change effects and settings
• Copy effects and settings from one clip to another
• Create a pan over a still image with preset effects
• Render your entire project and a work area within a project
• Control visual effects with keyframes
• Create a Picture-in-Picture effect
• Composite one video over another with Videomerge
• Apply Motion Tracking to a clip
• Apply Effect Masking to a clip
This lesson will take approximately two hours.
Before you begin the exercises in this lesson, make sure that you have correctly copied the Lesson06 folder from the DVD in the back of this book onto your computer’s hard disk. For more information, see “Getting Started” section at the start of this book.
Now you’re ready to begin working with the Lesson06 project file.
Your project file opens with the Monitor, Tasks, and My Project panels open.
To see what you’ll be creating in this lesson, you can play the completed movie.
Effects () are located in two places in the Edit tab of the Tasks panel. “Standard” effects are in the Audio Effects folder or the Video Effects folder and are organized by type. For example, all video effects that create a blur are grouped within the Blur & Sharpen folder inside the Video Effects folder. As you’ll see, you apply these effects by dragging them onto the target clip and configuring them in the Properties view.
There is also a small group of video and audio effects called “fixed” effects that are applied automatically to each clip in your project. The two video effects are Motion and Opacity, and the audio effects are Volume and Balance. You access these fixed effects by clicking the clip in the My Project panel and then clicking the Properties button ().
As a first-generation program, Premiere Elements for the Mac doesn’t have as many effects as the Windows version, although all effects discussed in this chapter are available in both versions.
Fixed effects are there for convenience; they’re the effects that you’ll use the most when editing your projects. You configure fixed and all other effects exactly the same way—you just have to apply standard effects before configuring them (the fixed effects are already there waiting to be configured).
Beyond the fixed and standard effects designation, it’s helpful to think about effects in the following categories:
• Curative effects:Curative effects correct problems in your video footage, including footage that’s too bright or too dark, backlighted video, video that’s too shaky because it was shot without a tripod, and even video that’s a bit blurry. You can find curative effects in the Adjust folder (Auto Color, Auto Contrast, Auto Levels, Image Control, and Shadow/Highlight), Blur Sharpen folder (Sharpen), Image Control folder (Black & White, Color Balance HLS, Color Balance RGB, Gamma Correction, Tint), and Video Stabilizer folder (Stabilizer).
• Overlay effects:Overlay effects allow you to composite one image over another. You can find overlay effects in the Keying and Videomerge folders.
• Artistic effects:Most other effects are artistic effects that let you create a different look or feel from the original clip. These artistic effects can be quite powerful, like the Cartoonr Plus effect in the NewBlue Cartoonr Plus Elements folder that converts your videos to cartoons, and the Old Film effect in the NewBlue Film Look folder that can make your video look like old film by adding details like scratches and graininess. Other artistic effects let you add lightning to a clip (Lightning effect in the Render folder), add earthquake-like effects (Earthquake effect in the NewBlue Art Effects Elements folder), place a spotlight on a subject (Lighting effects in the Adjust folder), and apply many other looks and characteristics.
• Speed controls:You can speed up, slow down, or reverse your clips in the Timeline of the My Project panel by right-clicking the clip and choosing Time Stretch, or by choosing Clip > Time Stretch in the Premiere Elements menu.
• Motion effects:Motion effects allow you to zoom into and around your original video clip or still image, and are used to adjust the framing of a video or create a pan-and-zoom effect. You adjust these parameters using the Motion controls found in the fixed effects that are automatically available for every clip in the My Project panel. Other fixed effects include the following:
• Image control:With image control you can control the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation of clips.
• Opacity:The Opacity effect lets you make a clip transparent, and by using keyframes, create fades and dissolves.
• Volume:Volume lets you control the volume of audio clips.
• Balance:Balance lets you adjust the balance of audio clips.
Once you apply an effect from the Effects panel to a clip, you can also adjust its parameters and set keyframes in the Effects Properties view. All effects that you add to a clip appear in the order in which you add them.
Clicking the Properties () button in the upper left of the My Project panel opens the Edit workspace in Properties view. There you’ll find the functions of all fixed effects, which you open by clicking the twirl-down triangles to the left of each effect.
Although you can apply any and all of these effects at any time during the course of a project, the recommended workflow is to apply curative filters first, then adjust speed and motion, and then add other artistic effects. You can add an effect to any clip in the My Project panel and even apply the same effect numerous times to the same clip, but with different settings. By default, when you add an effect to a clip, it applies to the entire clip. If you want to apply an effect to only part of a clip, split it first using the Split Clip icon beneath the Monitor panel, and then apply the effect to the desired clip segment.
Unless you disable the application of the Auto-Analyzer in the Organizer, at some point Adobe Premiere Elements will analyze your clips, either in the background while you’re performing other edits or after capture or import. While analyzing the clips, Premiere Elements looks for problems in the video.
As you saw with Smart Trim in the previous chapter, Premiere Elements uses some of this information to recommend which clips to trim away. In addition, you can instruct the application to use some of this information to fix common problems like shakiness and poor exposure. This is how you do it.
In the Properties view, you’ll note that Premiere Elements applied the Stabilizer effect to minimize the shakiness in the clip. If the clip was too dark or exposure was poor, Premiere Elements would apply the highly effective Shadow/Highlight effect.
If you click the eye icon next to the effect (officially called the “toggle the effect on or off” button), you’ll see that the Shadow/Highlight effect does a marvelous job of brightening the shadows without “blowing out” the lighter regions.
If you haven’t completed Lesson 4, it’s possible that Clip 4.mov is not in your Media view. If not, click Get Media > PC Files and Folders, and locate and input the file in the Lesson06 folder. Then select the file in Media view, right-click, and choose Auto-Analyze.
Note that you can adjust the setting of any effect applied by Premiere Elements or disable or delete it. Unless you have a strong reason not to do so, it’s generally a good idea to allow Premiere Elements to apply SmartFix whenever you add your clips to the My Project panel. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a great start towards improving clip quality.
All projects are unique, and all source clips present their own unique issues. Outdoor projects, like this basketball shoot, are generally fairly simple to perfect. To optimize the video in this shoot, you’ll correct backlighting in several clips and pictures, boost the color saturation in another, apply the Stabilizer effects, and reframe a shot using the Motion controls.
However, indoor shoots typically present a completely different range of problems since lighting is often inadequate and camcorders sometimes have problems producing accurate colors when shooting under fluorescent or incandescent lighting. When your personal projects involve indoor shoots, you should experiment with the Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation adjustments in the Image Control effect, and the Auto Color, Auto Contrast, Auto Levels, and Shadow/Highlight effects in the Adjust folder. Often, applying the latter three—either individually or in concert—can produce quite remarkable improvements in minimal time and with little effort.
Whether you shot the source videos outside, inside, or both, typically you’ll apply the curative effects first, fixing brightness, contrast, and color; then remove the shakes; and then reframe the video to get the best presentation possible. Thereafter you can start to apply artistic effects.
Let’s jump in and adjust brightness and contrast using the Image Control effect, which is a standard effect you’ll apply from Effects view. You can apply standard effects in either the Sceneline or Timeline; use the view that you feel most comfortable using. Let’s adjust Clip 5.mov.
Here’s the problem. The clip was shot in the early afternoon with the sun almost directly overhead. Sometimes when shooting in these circumstances, the subjects of the shoot are a little dark. If you drag the current-time indicator to about 00;00;29;15, you’ll see what I mean: The exposure is good on the boy’s forehead, but the bushes and the rest of the boy’s face are too dark. Let’s look at a couple of alternatives you can use to fix these problems.
When you apply an effect to a clip or adjust a standard effect, Premiere Elements will show a very close approximation of the effect when you preview in the Monitor panel. In most instances, this is good enough to allow you to perfect your configuration options and move on to the next edit.
If the quality isn’t sufficient, right-click the frame in the Monitor panel and choose Playback quality > Highest. This tells Premiere Elements to prioritize frame quality over playback speed. As a result, on slower computers, playback may be jerky, but frame quality should be very good. On the other hand, if playback speed isn’t sufficient, right-click in the Monitor panel and make sure that Automatic is selected. This tells Premiere Elements to prioritize smoothness over frame quality. With Automatic selected, you might see some blurriness or pixilation in the frame, but playback should be smooth.
If neither setting gives you the preview quality that you need to finalize the edit, you’ll have to render the clip. Start by clicking the Timeline icon () at the top left of the My Project panel to enter Timeline view. If you applied the Image Control effect detailed in the previous lesson, you should see a red line above Clip 5.mov in the Timeline. In this instance, the red line tells you that an effect has been applied to the clip that hasn’t been rendered.
In general, the red line tells you that some adjustment has been made to the clip that must be rendered before final production. For example, if you apply a title above a clip, you’ll see the red line. If you insert a clip into a project that doesn’t match the project preset—like the JPEG images inserted into the slide show at the end of the project—you’ll see the red line as well. You don’t have to render to preview your work; however, rendering will show you exactly how the final video will look.
To render the entire project, click Enter/Return. Premiere Elements will open the Rendering dialog, which tells you how many clips need to be rendered and how long it will take. After rendering, Premiere Elements will turn the red bar to green, and start previewing your clip from the beginning.
In Premiere Elements 8, you could elect to render in the background while performing other edits. This function was removed in Premiere Elements 9.
In most instances, it’s not necessary to render every edit, and sooner or later, you’ll have lots of red lines over your Timeline. At some point, you’ll apply an effect that you do want to render. If you press Enter/Return to render, you render the entire clip, which can be time-consuming. As an alternative, you can simply render the work area that you’re interested in.
We don’t have to do render a work area with our Image Control adjustment to Clip 5.mov, since that’s the only clip that should have a red line, but next you’ll learn how to render a work area using Clip 5.mov. To change the green line above the clip back to red, adjust any parameter in the Image Control effect—for example, change the Brightness value to 14.
Again, you don’t need to render each effect to see it in final form; in most instances, the real-time approximation produced by Premiere Elements should suffice. When you need to render, however, often it’s more efficient to render a work area.
Sometimes it may not be convenient to zoom out to see the entire clip and the edges of the work area bar. As an alternative to dragging the edges, you can also place the current-time indicator at the start of the work area and press Alt+[ (Windows) or Option+[ (Mac OS) to set the start of the work area. Then drag the current-time indicator to the end of the work area and press Alt+] (Windows) or Option+] (Mac OS) to set the end of the work area.
The Image Control effect works well with clips that need to be adjusted globally—for example, when the entire clip is too dark or lacks contrast. However, that’s not precisely the case with Clip 5.mov where the background area is very well lit; it’s just that some faces and other areas in the shadows are too dark. When you brighten the faces, you risk brightening the background, which really doesn’t need it.
So let’s consider an alternative approach and use the Shadow/Highlight effect, which lets you brighten just the shadows in the clip without adjusting other regions. This effect is perfect for fixing backlighting, which often occurs when shooting against a bright background and is characterized by dark faces such as those in Clip 5.mov.
The Shadow/Highlight effect divides each video frame into three regions based on the original brightness of the pixels in the frame, Shadows (darkest regions), Highlights (brightest regions), and Midtones (all other regions). The Shadow and Highlight sliders let you customize the adjustments to these respective regions, but the effect doesn’t modify the Midtone values.
These are the most important manual controls; to learn about the others, check the Premiere Elements Help file.
You can’t delete fixed effects, but to delete any standard effect, right-click to select it in the Properties panel, and then choose either Delete Selected Effect or Delete All Effects from Clip. Use this procedure to delete the Image Control effect on Clip 5.mov.
Let’s take a look at the fixed effects that you’ll probably use the most: the Motion controls. In this exercise, you’ll learn how to use these effects to reframe a shot; later in the lesson, you’ll learn how to use these controls to create a pan-and-zoom effect within an image.
The clip you’ll edit is the first clip of the project, Clip 1.mov. This was my “establishing shot,” which was meant to show the entire court so the viewer could get a feel for the surroundings. It turns out that it’s too much of a wide-angle shot. In this lesson, you’ll use Motion controls to reframe the shot.
One common problem with home video footage is excessive shakiness, which can occur anytime you don’t use a tripod. Via the SmartFix function, Premiere Elements will stabilize the worst of the clips, but if you elect not to use SmartFix, you’ll have to do it manually. As you probably could tell when you were reframing Clip 1.mov, it bounces around quite a bit. In this exercise, you’ll apply the Stabilize filter to correct this problem.
Play the clip, using the eye icon to the left of the Stabilizer effect to toggle it on and off. The clip is definitely easier to watch with the Stabilizer effect applied.
Speed changes are a commonly used effect, and Premiere Elements offers two techniques for speeding up or slowing down your video. In this exercise, you’ll learn how to adjust the speed of clips bounded by others in the Timeline. In a subsequent exercise, you’ll learn how to adjust the speed of a clip that doesn’t have a clip immediately after it on the Timeline.
Specifically, in this exercise, you’ll adjust the speed of Clip 3.mov—which is an instant replay of the layup in Clip 2.mov—slowing it down to 50 percent of its original speed. Note that you can implement this effect only in the Timeline, so step 1 will send your clip to the Timeline of the My Project panel.
Every clip in the Timeline, and most effects that you apply to them, can be modified over time. This involves a concept called keyframing. Essentially, a keyframe is a location in the Timeline where you specify a value for a specific property. When you set two keyframes, Premiere Elements interpolates the value of that property over all frames between the two keyframes, effecting a change gradually over time, basically creating an animated effect.
For example, in the next exercise, you’ll use keyframes to create an image pan, in effect simulating the movement of a camera over a still image. Or you can use keyframes to animate the appearance of an effect, which you’ll do in a subsequent exercise.
Keyframes give you significant flexibility and creativity in your projects. Although they sound challenging at first, if you work through the next few exercises, you’ll quickly grasp their operation and utility.
The image pan is a popular effect in many documentaries and films. An image pan is defined as a movement of the camera, usually from left to right, although it can be from top to bottom and also zooming in or out. In traditional production, an image pan would actually involve the physical movement of a camcorder over an image; however, if you’re working with footage from a stationary camera, Premiere Elements enables you to simulate camera movement using the Motion controls.
In Properties view, note that this image is 1,296 pixels wide and 864 pixels high. Although it’s not critical that the original image’s resolution exceed that of the project (1280×720 in this instance), when it does, it ensures that you can zoom (up to a point) into regions in the video without causing blurriness. In general, when adding still images to a project, it’s best to use images with a resolution larger than that of the project. Because the image is only slightly larger than the project resolution, you don’t have a lot of wiggle room to zoom into this image.
In this exercise, you’ll use a horizontal image pan to animate the third photo in your slide show.
You’ve set the keyframes for the initial position to the desired values. Now you’ll create and set the values for the second keyframe.
The current-time indicators in Properties view and in the Timeline of the My Project panel are actually the same. You can use either one to navigate through your clip. However, the Timeline in Properties view enables you to navigate through only the currently selected clip and is used primarily for working with keyframes.
After you change the values, Premiere Elements automatically inserts a keyframe.
When adding pan and zoom effects to images like this one, sometimes it’s easiest to delete the transition by clicking it, pressing the Delete key, and then adding the Pan/Zoom effect and reapplying the transition, which you’ll learn how to do in Lesson 7.
You can control keyframes in two locations in Premiere Elements: Properties view and the Timeline. In this exercise, you’ll adjust the opacity keyframes of a video clip in the Timeline.
When you’re working with clip keyframes, it’s often helpful to increase the magnification. The orange line spanning horizontally across the clip is the connector line (or graph) between keyframes. By default, all clips have the Opacity property enabled.
Now you’ll add keyframes to help Premiere Elements create a fade to black at the end of the movie.
In Lesson 7, you’ll learn how to create a similar effect using the Cross Dissolve transition. Although the visual effect is similar, working with keyframes lets you customize the effect to a much greater degree.
Once you’ve set a keyframe, you can modify it by dragging it to a new location or value. To delete a keyframe, right-click it and choose Delete (see the previous figure).
The other keyframe-related controls shown in the context menu are advanced options that control the rate and smoothness of change applied by Premiere Elements. For more on these options, search the Help file for “Controlling change between keyframes.”
Finally, you can access all keyframes inserted on the Timeline in Properties view. Select IMG_0576.jpg, and then click the Properties () button in the upper left of the My Project panel. This opens Properties view.
If necessary, click the Show Keyframes () button at the top right in Properties view to view the keyframes. Then click the twirl-down triangle to the left of the Opacity effect to open the parameter settings and view the keyframes that you created in the Timeline.
You can set and modify opacity-related keyframes in either or both locations. In general, the Timeline is best for fast and simple adjustments, like the fade-out that you just applied, whereas Properties view is a better choice for complicated, more precise adjustments.
You’ve learned how to apply effects and how to create and modify keyframes. Now you’ll animate an effect using keyframes. This is a very powerful capability: Essentially, it lets you create custom transitions using any Premiere Elements effect.
One word of caution: This section is more advanced than some users of Premiere Elements may need, so feel free to skip to the next lesson if you wish. However, you should know that such keyframing is the basis of animation in programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects, which means this could be a useful introduction to using those tools, and the exercise is not difficult to complete. If you do choose to skip it, you can always revisit it later.
In this exercise, you’ll be animating the NewBlue Pastel Sketch effect to create a unique transition that you’ll apply to the start of several clips.
Changing the value automatically adds a second keyframe, which is represented as a second diamond in the Timeline in Properties view. Once animation has been turned on, Adobe Premiere Elements automatically animates the effect between the two values.
Because effects are customized a single clip at a time, it would be quite time-consuming to place the same effect across numerous clips, especially if you had to drop the effect on each clip. Fortunately, Premiere Elements provides a simple way to copy effects and their settings from one clip to another.
This concludes the main lesson. Next, you’ll learn how to implement several additional effects using other source clips in a separate project file.
Premiere Elements can superimpose multiple tracks of video. In this exercise, you will superimpose one video clip in a small frame over your preexisting background clip that covers the entire screen. This effect is called a Picture-in-Picture (PiP) overlay.
Compositing is the process of merging two clips together, one atop the other, while removing the background color of the top clip to reveal the second. This allows you to place your subject in a variety of environments, both real and simulated.
Adobe Premiere Elements’ Videomerge effect makes compositing as easy as drag and drop. Videomerge automatically determines the background of the top clip and makes it transparent. Video or image clips on the tracks below it become visible through the transparent areas. You’ll get the best results with Videomerge if you shoot the clip to be composited using the following rules:
• Create a strong (preferably dark or saturated), solid, uniform color background to shoot against.
• Make sure the background is brightly and uniformly lit to avoid shadows.
• When choosing a background color, avoid skin tones and colors that are similar to the subject’s clothing or hair color. (Otherwise, the skin, clothes, or hair will become transparent, too). Bright green and blue are the best choices.
With this information as background, reload the Greenscreen.prel project file (you should have already saved the first project as Lesson06_pip.prel) and follow this procedure.
Premiere Elements inserts Gina_guitar.mov in the Video 2 track over Rockshow.mov, automatically detects the blue background, and makes it transparent. The result needs a bit of work. Let’s try a manual adjustment.
Previously, you learned how to change the speed of clips bounded in the Timeline by other clips on both sides. Now you’ll learn how to use the Time Stretch tool to accomplish the same task but in a more visual way.
Here’s the problem you’ll solve. The Rockshow.mov clip used as a background in the previous two exercises is 31 seconds long, and the Gina_guitar.mov clip is about 27 seconds long. You could just trim the Rockshow clip to the same duration, but that would delete content at the end of that clip.
A more elegant solution is to use the Time Stretch feature to speed up the Rockshow.mov clip so that it’s the same duration as Gina_guitar.mov.
Premiere Elements opens the Time Stretch panel. Note that the speed should have increased to 112.86, which is precisely the correction needed to make Rockshow.mov the same duration as Gina_guitar.mov. In most instances, you would click Maintain Audio Pitch to maintain the pitch of the clip, but since Rockshow.mov has no audio, that isn’t necessary in this case.
Motion Tracking gives you the ability to automatically track moving objects in a project so you can add labels, thought bubbles, or other effects to the moving object. This exercise teaches you how to use this function.
In addition to thought bubbles, you can use Motion Tracking with other clip art, titles, graphics, and Picture-in-Picture effects.
You can use the Add Object/Track Object procedure to add and track multiple objects in a single video.
In my version of Premiere Elements, this exercise ran correctly only one time, which was the first time the application analyzed Alfie.mov. After that, the rectangle won’t reappear. If you want to run the exercise again, go to the Elements Organizer and delete Alfie.mov. The next time you run the project, Premiere Elements will have to reanalyze the clip, and the exercise should work as detailed here.
Effect Masking gives you the ability to constrain an effect to a certain section of an image, and if that section is moving, to track it around the frame. For example, reload the project file from the previous exercise—Motion_Tracking_Win.prel (Windows) or Motion_Tracking Mac.prel (Mac OS)—without saving the project you just created, and work through steps 1–7 again. Then follow these steps.
You can apply a static mask to any clip by right-clicking the clip and choosing Effects Mask > Apply.
Premiere Elements applies the effect only within the box (called a mask), and the box follows Alfie’s motion in the video.
I used the Cartoonr Plus effect because it’s new and cool, and because I wanted to show it to you. If you’re looking for the witness-protection look, which may make more sense in this application, try either the Gaussian Blur effect (in the Blur & Sharpen group) or the Mosaic effect (in the Stylize group).
Congratulations! Now you understand how to apply video settings, change effects and settings, copy effects from one clip to another, create an image pan, animate an effect with keyframes, create a Picture-in-Picture effect, and composite one video over another with Videomerge. You also know how to use Motion Tracking and how to “mask” an effect. Here are some effects that you can experiment with on your own.
1. What are curative effects, and when should you apply them?
2. What’s the quickest way to apply identical effects and settings to multiple clips?
3. What are fixed effects, and what is their purpose?
4. What is a keyframe, and what does it contain?
5. How do you modify keyframes once they’ve been added to a clip?
6. How do you apply the same effect to multiple clips on the Timeline?
1. Curative effects improve one or more aspects of a clip, such as exposure, backlighting, or excessive shakiness. You should apply curative effects to a clip before applying artistic and other effects.
2. After selecting the clip that contains the effect or effects that you want to copy, click an effect to select it in the Properties panel or Shift-click to select multiple effects. Copy your selection by choosing Edit > Copy. Then select the clip to which you want to transfer the effects and choose Edit > Paste.
3. Fixed effects are the Property parameters that every clip in Premiere Elements has enabled by default. These effects are Motion, Opacity, and Volume. Within the Motion effect, Scale, Position, Rotation, and Anchor Point are all properties that can be adjusted to create, for example, a PiP effect.
4. A keyframe contains the values for all the controls in an effect and applies those values to the clip at the specific time.
5. Once keyframes have been added to a clip, they can be adjusted by clicking and dragging them along the connector line. If there are two keyframes, moving one keyframe farther away from the other extends the duration of the effect; moving a keyframe closer to another keyframe shortens the effect.
6. Select all target clips in the My Project panel and apply the effect to any single clip.