Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Post your tips & tricks here for creating slide shows with ProShow Gold. This could include suggestions for style and content in addition to working with the software itself
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Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby Eaglewing » Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:15 am

I have a video clip of approximately 3 minutes in length. I would like to add a caption of 3 seconds and then fade away. I have "combined" a blank slide with caption. But the caption runs the full length of the video clip which is not what I wanted. How can I make the caption "disappear" after 3 seconds.

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby debngar » Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:04 am

Since you're using Gold, there is no way to adjust the caption length shorter than the slide length. You would have to purchase Producer to have that feature and slide the last key frame to the left to the point in the slide time where you want the caption to end.
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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby gpsmikey » Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:40 am

While, as Debbie points out, you can't do exactly what you want in Gold, you may be able to achieve sort of what you want - you could grab the first frame of the video as an image, use it as a 3 second slide just before the video. The slide could have the caption you want, then it would cross-fade into the actual slide with the video. You could even modify the first shot of the video to make it look like a painting or something so it would seem to go from a painting of the opening with the caption to the video smoothly (if you ever saw the comedy movie "Paint your wagon" that is the same idea). You can use the same sort of idea to have captions only appear for a short period of time on a regular slide the same way - have two identical slides of the same image. put the caption on the first one and not on the second. Now it appears that the caption only shows for part of the slide (you can create different motions the same way -- fixed zoom, zoom in, fixed zoom for example).

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby debngar » Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:29 am

That's a great creative work-around tip Mikey! :D Since Gold doesn't offer ability to capture a slide preview as Producer, unless something has changed in the new version, using a screen capture program would be a way to do that. Lightroom 4 and newer versions offer the feature to capture/save a still from video which would do the trick too.
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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby Eaglewing » Tue Jan 21, 2014 5:43 am

Mikey,

Forgive me for my ignorance; how do I "grab the first frame of the video".

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby gpsmikey » Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:32 am

I was thinking Gold also allowed you to grab a screenshot as a jpg, Debbie pointed out it apparently does not. Depending on what other tools you have (do you have a video editor?), you could play the clip full screen in media player or whatever you have and grab a screenshot (windows 7 has several ways built in for screenshots). Debbie says you can do it in Lightroom if you have that (I have not tried that). Here is a quick tutorial on one way to do it using the free VLC player (which is worth installing if you don't have it - it can also play ISO files when you create them).

http://wic.library.upenn.edu/multimedia ... _frame.pdf

Do a Google search on "Video frame grab" and you will find lots of ways to do it. ( I am used to being able to simply do it on my system since I have both the very handy tool "Snagit" as well as a couple of video editors) - if you are going to be working with video very much, I would suggest getting one of the entry level ones like Sony Vegas Movie Studio or Premiere Elements (there are a number of others also). They can make your life much simpler when working with video.

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby BarbaraC » Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:34 am

Just an opinion: It's positively shameful that the capture frame ability isn't included with Gold! :evil:

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby debngar » Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:18 am

I haven't tried a video frame capture with Lightroom either because I'm still using version 3 which does not have that capability. But the ability is there in the more current versions.

An awkward way to get your still might be to insert the video and edit it to remove all the frames but the one featured frame that is to have the caption on it. Then insert the video again in the next slide to play the entire video.

But I wouldn't recommend that choice if you don't have to because it loads the entire video twice, making the show larger than necessary when a jpg of one frame would do the trick.
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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby Eaglewing » Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:03 am

I shall leave this topic for a while. I am contemplating an upgrade to Producer in the near future. This feature aside, I am sure the Producer has a whole lot of enhanced features too.

I am also using LR3 and have no plan to upgrade to LR4 as my photographic needs are pretty basic. I shoot mainly in RAW.

Thank you all.

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby SSMAKER » Thu Jan 23, 2014 3:04 pm

What I do when using videos in my show, is to insert the video and a copy next to it. I like to have the viewer's eyes see the scene before any movement so I set the play time of the first video to something like .05 seconds but have the slide run for maybe 2 seconds. That way the video freezes the scene for 2 seconds. Then I have the copy of the video start at .05 and run maybe 2 seconds longer than the video so that the ending is smooth. I suppose you can add a caption to the first video and it should appear for the whole 2 seconds.

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby gpsmikey » Thu Jan 23, 2014 3:20 pm

Be aware that when you use 2 copies of the video, if you are creating an .exe or .px (for the sharing site) file, I believe you end up with 2 complete copies of the video in your show. Only the first few seconds of one may show if you have it set that way, but it includes the whole video. For a short video, this is not a major problem, but if it is a longer video, it may significantly increase the size of the show (the .px stream as well as the .exe are sort of the same from my understanding - the .exe simply includes a basic player for the .px stream that it embeds in the executable). You can do it with 2 copies of the video, but you are better off grabbing a copy of the desired frame using one of the above methods (or others out there) and doing it that way. If the final output is a rendered (video) file like for a dvd etc, then it is not much of an issue since the final output will not have the "unused portions of your clip" still embedded in the final output.

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby heckydog » Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:37 pm

I have LR5, was not even aware it would import videos. I only ever used it for stills. Go figure eh :wink:

If I want to capture a frame from a video I always used VLC player. It's quick, easy, and accurate.

Joe

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Re: Adding Caption to a Video Clip

Postby gpsmikey » Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:23 pm

VLC was the one I posted the link to above on the tutorial how to do it. Very easy (although I usually use my video editor).

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