crystal ball

Post a link to your templates that you'd like to share with other ProShow Producer users
Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Tue May 14, 2013 10:25 pm

Hi Joe,
I didn't even know you replied and just discovered this.
Yes, I would love to have the video.
Being still fairly new to Bluff Titler I think it might be too advanced right now for me to make.
Thanks So Much!
Eyelene

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Fri May 17, 2013 8:30 am

Hi Eyelene,

Below is a link to the video. It's 20 seconds long. I made it with a green background for chromakeying. It's an mp4 960x540, 23.976fps, and I tested it in PSP 5.0 to make sure it works. It does have to be tweaked when you chromakey it.

ORB Video 20sec You can make the effect as long or as short as you need but 20 seconds should be plenty.

Anyone who wants to download it, feel free to do so. I'll leave it up for at least 30 days.

This next link is to a sample show I put together to show one possibility. The hands I got by googling for "hands" :roll: and editing in photoshop to make a png file. The stars picture I had on my computer from a BluffTitler show. The rest is just editing keyframes.

http://www.photodex.com/share/sticky_buns/k8b7pmg4

Have fun and good luck,

Joe

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Sat May 18, 2013 3:51 pm

Thanks so much Joe,
But the tutorial won't play. It's saying I need Quicktime to play it and I guess I don't have that.
Regarding the background: Would I be able to put a moving video of twinkling starts behind it?

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Sat May 18, 2013 6:53 pm

It's a good idea to have Quicktime. There's a free version available here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Don't get the Pro version, you don't need it and it costs money.

VLC Player will also play mp4 and mov files, and that is also free. Get that here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

To clarify, the video is just a 20 second long video of the orb. If you need help making your final video I'll offer whatever assistance I can and I know others will too.

As far as the twinkling stars go, you would be able to add a video behind it if you have a specific one in mind. If a generic one will do, below is a link to another video where I added the twinkling star field. You will need quicktime or VLC to view this one as well.

Orb with Stars 20 sec. mp4, 25MB

Joe

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Sat May 18, 2013 8:09 pm

Thanks for the links. I downloaded both programs.
But I don't know what to do with the orb video. How do I save it to work on it?
And please forgive me for being a dummy but what exactly is chromakeying?

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Sun May 19, 2013 6:47 pm

EYElene wrote:Thanks for the links. I downloaded both programs.
But I don't know what to do with the orb video. How do I save it to work on it?
And please forgive me for being a dummy but what exactly is chromakeying?


You can right click on the link and do a Save As to save it to your computer. Then, in PSP, you can navigate to it to add it to your slide.

Chromakeying is where your object or talent stands in front of a green or blue screen and you film it that way. You can then go into your editor and remove the green background and replace it with whatever background you choose. It's the same process you see when a weather person is standing in front of a constantly changing weather map. They are actually in front of a solid colored wall and the weather stuff is electronically generated and added in the studio.

Applying the chromakey is done under Slide Options > Adjustments > Chroma Key. I had to adjust the Hue Threshold and Intensity Threshold to remove all the green. Some programs are better than others at keying, PSP is okay, but not great :wink:

In the case of the orb with the green background you can "key" that out and add your stars video on the layer below. Or use the one I made. You have a lot of options.

Joe

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Mon May 20, 2013 11:02 pm

Thank you for explaining that to me. I am thrilled to learn something new. Especially this cool.
I hate to keep bothering you since you have been so patient and generous with your time.
But I tried to use the Hue Threshold slider and it was grayed out.
I did fool around with the Intensity Threshold to remove the green background which it did.
But it also removed part of the inside of the orb as well.
Plus, how can I make it bigger?
Also, I wanted to add a video like you did with your grand baby.
But it wouldn't allow me to put it inside. Only in front of it or behind it.

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Tue May 21, 2013 8:01 am

EYElene wrote:Thank you for explaining that to me. I am thrilled to learn something new. Especially this cool.
I hate to keep bothering you since you have been so patient and generous with your time.
But I tried to use the Hue Threshold slider and it was grayed out.
I did fool around with the Intensity Threshold to remove the green background which it did.
But it also removed part of the inside of the orb as well.
Plus, how can I make it bigger?
Also, I wanted to add a video like you did with your grand baby.
But it wouldn't allow me to put it inside. Only in front of it or behind it.


Hi Eyelene,

I don't know why the hue threshold is greyed out but if you were able to "key out the green" :wink: (talkin' like a boss here, hehehe) that's all that's needed.

It should not have removed any of the inside except for a few speckles but they would be covered by the overlay picture anyhow.

To make the orb bigger you can just use the Zoom function but that does tend to lower the quality on a video more so than on a still photo. If you tell me how much larger you need it I'll just re-render another video with a larger orb. And if you want the star background let me know that too.

You will only be able to add your video on top of the orb. The trick is to feather your video to make it look like it blends with the orb. To do that you need to make a gradient mask. You can download this one if you like: Gradient Mask . Then you can adjust the size and position to fit over the orb.

The layout would look something like this:

Image

There may be other, even better, ways to accomplish this. I tend to work outside of PSP for special effects where others are much more accomplished than me at doing it all inside of PSP.

Joe
Last edited by heckydog on Wed May 22, 2013 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Wed May 22, 2013 10:11 am

Thanks again Joe. When I clicked on the link for the gradient mask I got an error page.
Also, you said you got the hands off the Internet. Where exactly did you go to get them?
As far as the size of the Orb, I guess I was hoping to fill the space up a little more instead of having all that space around it. This is starting to seem more complicated then I thought but I love it so will not give up.

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Wed May 22, 2013 11:57 am

Oops, I forgot to upload the gradient file to my ftp site, it should work now. Here it is again.

Gradient Mask

The hands I got just by googling for images. I can't remember which one but I took one hand, did some editing, then duplicated and reversed it. That was just jerry-rigged to have some hands for the sample video. I actually had another idea in mind and you'll see what I mean with the new links below.

This isn't as complicated as you might think. It's merely the process that people go through to reach a goal. You wanted the orb a little bigger. I made a couple more videos for you to look at. One is with the green background, the other with the stars. I changed the hands to something that I think is more appropriate.

So take a look and tell me what you think. The first one has the stars video for the background, the second one has the green for the chromakey. The gradient mask will work with either one to add your top layer video to the orb.

Orb_Stars_Larger

Orb_Green_Larger

Joe

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Wed May 22, 2013 9:20 pm

Oh I just love the one with the stars.
The only thing is the first part of it doesn't play right.
The background is white and has blocks on it. Then it straightens out after a while and I can see the stars.
Awesome idea with the hands!

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Thu May 23, 2013 5:14 am

In the Quicktime player I am also seeing a white distortion of sorts on the left side for the first 6 seconds or so. But, in VLC player and Windows Media player the video plays perfectly. I don't know why that's happening with QT but I rarely use that player. I keep it only to have the codec installed for other mov and mp4 files. I prefer to use VLC player.

More importantly, the video plays perfectly in PSP. :)

http://www.photodex.com/share/sticky_buns/d924pmg4 12 second sample, nothing offensive.

Joe

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Thu May 23, 2013 8:06 am

Oh ok. Well I am definitely going to play around with this tonight and I'll let you know how I make out.

Valued Member
User avatar
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: crystal ball

Postby EYElene » Thu May 23, 2013 6:46 pm

Hi Joe,
I'm so anxious to do the Orb tonight but I have to finish a project I'm doing first.
I was watching all of your fantastic shows on your web page.
Really great effects! I don't want to bug you too much but I hope you don't mind sharing once in a while how I can put some of those things in my slide shows.
The fireworks you have in Ananda's adorable party show would be perfect for what I am doing now.
Also, the flourish swirls at the beginning.
Are these styles I can buy somewhere?

.
Posts: 1727
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: near Chicago - Illinois USA

Re: crystal ball

Postby heckydog » Fri May 24, 2013 8:58 am

Hi Eyelene,

I'm glad you like some of the effects I made. Some of them take quite a long time to get just right.

The fireworks in that show are from a program I have called Particle Illusion 3. With some post-editing work I'm able to add it to my effects editor and eventually into PSP. BluffTitler has some fireworks effects as well. You can search on fireworks in the Gallery and it will give you 6 or 7 shows. They're not quite as realistic as in PI3 but they may work for your project.

The flourishes were made using the Evolution plugin for After Effects. Like the orb effect, I created a video which I then brought into PSP. I don't think there's a way to create a slide style from that. Too much custom work that PSP styles just can't do.

If you're interested, I would consider doing custom work in return for a donation to a 5K benefit run I'm entered in on June 9th. It's for the Ronald McDonald Children's Hospital at Loyola University Medical Center here in Illinois. I have a personal web page from Loyola UMC that has the details. You can PM me if you like.

Joe

PreviousNext

Return to PSP - Slide Styles & Templates

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests