Lower Third Entry Point ?

[Trevor Dennis]

I have knocked up a 35mm film canister graphic in Photoshop, and a strip of 35mm film on separate layers to use as a fly in lower third. My problem is that I want the canister to be placed away from the left hand frame edge, and the film to appear as it is coming out of the canister. What happens, of course, is that the film strip starts out of frame. I want to blank the area left of the canister.

Now I know I could copy the clip below and place it above the lower third, and garbage matt out everything other than the tiny bit I'd need to blank the screen left of the canister, but is there a more elegant solution?

Premiere Pro CS6

[Gregory Gesch]

Hi Trevor. I would try adding Video Effects/Transition/Linear Wipe to the filmstrip and then keyframing the Transition Completion as it moves across.

[Trevor Dennis]

Hi Gregory. I've just been thanking the guys over on the Adobe Premiere Pro forums, and a Linear Wipe was the best answer I got over there too.

Adobe Community: How to start lower third wipe in away from fram edge?

I've already tried it out, and it did the job nicely, and way nicer and less messy than using a garbage matt. Actually, I also mentioned that I was getting flicker because I am moving the hard edged graphics in big steps across the screen (12 frames for the full transition), and that I added motion blur to the clips for just the frames they are moving. But it has just occurred to me that I might be able to use the feather effect in Linear wipe.

OK. Just tried it and feather definitely makes for a smoother transition.

BTW I tried Frame Blend of course, but I suspect the movement was too great for it help much.

Thanks again for your help.

[Gregory Gesch]

Glad it worked out for you, though what I intended was that you would keep your slide in from off screen, and that the Linear Wipe edge would be keyframed so as to remain "hidden" under the canister. It would have meant a bit of fiddling with the timing of the wipe but you would have been able to keep your shaped leading edge of the strip moving outward from the canister.

[Trevor Dennis]

Gregory I think that's exactly what I ended up doing. One problem is that because I need to hide the left end of the film strip under the canister, and that the right end has a graphic representation of a leader, I can't adjust the length of the film strip other than by trimming in Photoshop and saving different versions at different lengths. Not a big deal though, although I am concerned that I will end up modifying the wrong version and find that I have inadvertently made the clip too short in another sequence.

It's working out OK at the moment though, and I may well get away with just the two different lengths I have made to date. Definitely a time for good house keeping regards folder and image names.

[Ann Bens]

I would make two layers: one for the canister and one for the strip
You only have to keyframe the strip with a crop (for the left side) and keyframe motion to make it move to the right.

[Trevor Dennis]

Ann, that's a great idea! And it lets the leader travel across the screen as opposed to being revealed by the wipe. It also lets me use a one size fits all for the film strip.

One problem.

If I set the left crop point at the beginning and end of the strips motion, then the left side of the strip is creeping out from behind the canister. So I am having to manually adjust the left crop point ever few frames. (I can't see any way to adjust the anchor point, and am not entirely sure why this is happening.)

It is still a better option than using a linear wipe though.

A big thanks to all for your help.

[EDIT] As a little addendum, after looking at it some more, not only does this allow the film strip leader to travel across the screen, but the motion also looks better. Using a Linear wipe, I was having to use both frame Blend and some 90° Directional blur to smooth out the motion. Using a Crop and motion effects on the strip, plus Frame blend, looks much nicer.

[Ann Bens]

Don't understand why you need Frame Blend.
Frame Blend is used when you change the speed of a clip or when exporting to a different framerate.
When you are looking for smooth motion at beginning or end of the motion use Ease in/out on the keyframes.

[Battle Vaughan]

The brilliant Ann to the rescue again! This is so neat I just had to play with it myself.

The left edge will vary a little unless you get the crop percent exact on the keyframes at both ends of the sequence so that the left edge falls precisely in the same place at each end of the keyframing.

You might mask any slight variation by hiding the left edge under the overlaying cassette images so that it is obscured thereby....
You can animate the text to move with the filmstrip, but I think it gets blurry and confusing, as in seq.7. In seq.6 I just faded it in over the strip,
more legible...thanks for letting me play with this....

[Ann Bens]

Nice, like the first one best.
You could even nest the strip and add little video pips

[Trevor Dennis]

Ann, am I not understanding Frame Blend correctly? I thought that it would introduce some frame to frame blur to reduce the jerky movement of an over sharp graphic as it moves across the screen.

Battle, that's a good point about matching the start and end positions of the film strip. I had evolved a better order of doing things and was finding that in some cases the strip was not appearing beyond the left side of the canister, and in others, only slightly. I had not worked out why though.

Thanks everyone for your help.

[Ann Bens]

A still does not have any speed. Its stationairy. One can only change the duration.
A videoclip on the otherhand has speed which can be changed. To avoid jerkyness one can check the frameblend.
I have been messing with your canister also.

[Battle Vaughan]

Ann, that's awesome!

[Trevor Dennis]

ROTFL! OK Ann, I think everyone else needs to put up their hands and surrender, because no one is going to beat that.

I notice that your thumbnails are of really good quality. When the going gets tough, I tend to reach for a stills camera, and matt in some video taken in better light to provide movement. If the 6.5Mb mp4 file loads OK, then this is an example from the same project. Most of it is an HDR still frame, with the walkers, river, and three TVs matted in from separate video clips. My TV screens are nowhere near as nice as yours, although I suppose you would not want them to be with the apparent viewing distance.

I'd love to know if there is a best way to shrink a TV screen into a tiny thumbnail though.

Going back to Frame blend, I was not making it clear that I was bringing the canister in from off screen, and then the strip from out of the canister, so there was in fact movement with the canister layer. I was using a similar method to Battle's bringing in the text, in-place, with a short dissolve.

[edit] my video file did not upload so I'll try and find another way.

[Trevor Dennis]

This is the clip referred to above, but flickr has totally wrecked the quality! :-(

Clubs clip | Flickr - Photo Sharing!