Creating Video Effects in Premiere

Creating Video Effects in Premiere

Premiere Effects are much more extensive than a filter on a camera lens

by Bonnie Blake

Page 1 of 4

Bonnie Blake, the host of the Premiere WWUG forum, is an award-winning designer who specializes in Web design and multimedia. She also teaches web, multimedia design, and video editing at Ramapo College in New Jersey. She is the author of The Premiere Virtual Classroom, How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5, and co- author of Flash DeCONSTRUCT, and author of How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash MX.

She was also the author of the bestselling online course "Flash 5 ActionScript" for E-Handson.com, which was offered online to all new users of Macromedia Flash 5 during the first several months of its release.

She authors online courses for Education to Go and is currently authoring "Animation and Interactivity," to be released in Summer 2002.

Bonnie is one of the people who keep the DMN Forums active, interesting and relevant. Stop by the Adobe Premiere WWUG even if it's just to say Hi...

This article is a chapter from Bonnie's book Adobe Premiere Virtual Classroom published by McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing.

Adobe® Premiere® Virtual Classroom
by Bonnie Blake
304 pages
McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing
Click on image to buy book

If there’s one thing about Premiere everyone can agree on, it’s that video effects are fun to experiment with. Effects were called “filters” in older versions of Premiere and some users still refer to effects as filters. In Premiere 6, many new effects have been added, including some After Effects filters. [an error occurred while processing this directive]


	TIP If you become hooked on effects, you can purchase plug-ins from third-party manufacturers. Different plug-ins perform different tricks. For example, Boris FX, among other plug-ins, creates 3-D digital effects on text and graphics. For a more complete listing of various plug-ins avail-able for Premiere, see Appendix B. If you need something a little more industrial strength than just a lone plug-in here and there, by all means try Adobe After Effects. After Effects works wonderfully with Premiere and can add incredible depth to your effects. To download a free After Effects tryout, go to www.adobe.com.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of filters from cameras. Camera filters are attachments that screw on to a camera lens and alter the appearance of your photos. Common camera filters create such effects as blurring the edges of a picture or altering the color. Like filters on a camera lens, Effects in Premiere perform a similar function in that they alter the appearance of video clips. Unlike photo-graphic still images, though, effects can alter the appearance of video clips over time, by animating effects. Also, Premiere Effects are much more exten-sive than a filter on a camera lens.

In this chapter, you learn all about organizing and applying single and multiple video effects, and how to modify these effects. In addition, you also look at several different effects, see how they’re used, and learn what kind of results you can expect from them. In no time, you’ll identify your own set of favorite effects that you’ll use frequently on your own productions.

Effects in Premiere can be found in the Video Effects palette. You can display this palette by selecting Window | Show Video Effects from the menu. The Video Effects palette is chock full of effects. In fact, almost a hundred different effects can be found in this palette (see the illlustration).

To Follow ALONG WITH THIS CHAPTER IN A CLASSROOM-LIKE FASHION:

		Create a new file in Premiere.
		Use a Multimedia QuickTime preset from the New Settings dialog box.
		Click the Custom button and navigate to the Video Settings panel.
		Change the Frame Size to 240x180*.
		Click OK.
		In the Project Window, import video files from the artbeats_clips folder located on the CD. As always, copy this folder to your hard drive before using it.
		Add a clip or two to the timeline.
		Save the Premiere file.

Because it’s important to familiarize yourself with the Video Effects palette to find just the right effect for your needs, let’s discuss navigating through this palette.


	NOTE The standard multimedia frame size is 320x240. The lesson clips we’re using have a frame size of 240x180. They’re small and compact because they’re being used for learning purposes.


	NOTE If you want to review the effects discussed in this chapter, project examples are stored in the Chapter 10 folder on the CD. To use these examples, copy the Chapter 10 folder and the artbeats_clips folder over to your hard drive.

The Effects Palette

The Effects palette is where you select, organize, and manage your effects. Just like the Transitions palette, effects reside in expandable folders.

To Expand A FOLDER IN THE EFFECTS PALETTE:

		Select the folder and click the left arrow.
		Close an open folder by clicking the left arrow.

If you look at the contents of the folders, you’ll notice the effects are depicted as icons. As you’ll notice in this palette, some icons appear as a filmstrip with the letter V on them. Others appear as a camcorder with a number 4. The filmstrip icon represents native Premiere effects and the camera icon represents plug-ins that have been imported from After Effects.


	NOTE When you apply an effect to a clip, a blue/green bar appears above the clip in the timeline, reminding you the clip has an effect associated with it. In addition, the familiar red render bar appears below the Work Area bar, which means the effect needs to be rendered before you can see it in the Program.

Apply an Effect to a Clip
Applying an effect to a clip in Premiere couldn’t be easier. The hardest part is deciding which one to use.

To Apply AN EFFECT IN PREMIERE:

		Display the Effects palette.
		Navigate to an effect you want to apply.
		Click-and-drag the effect to a clip.
		The Effect Controls palette for that effect pops up (see Figure 10-1). In this palette, you can further customize the effect for that clip with the various control sliders that become available to you. This panel and how it works are discussed in the next section.

That’s all there is to it. Effects are powerful and you can do a lot more than just apply them to a clip. As this chapter unfolds, you discover the incredible power of Effects as a creative tool.

FIGURE 10-1
The Effect Controls palette for an effect on a video clip

The Obsolete Folder in the Effects Palette

If you look at the Effects palette, you’ll notice one of the folders named Obsolete is dimmed out, meaning you can’t apply it like the others. You can see this clearly in the first figure in this chapter. If you expand the Obsolete folder, even though it’s dimmed, you’ll see it’s full of a long list of fil-ters. These filters are from an older version of Premiere and are obsolete in version 6. So why are they here? If you need to open a file from the pre-vious version of Premiere that used an obsolete fil-ter, you could do so. In fact, you can even apply an old filter to a new clip.

To Apply AN OBSOLETE FILTER TO A VIDEO CLIP:

		Select a filter in the Obsolete folder in the Video Effects palette.
		From the pop-up menu in the palette, select Show Selected. This will enable you to see and apply the selected filter, as shown in the illustration.


	TIP If you can’t see the Obsolete folder in the Effects palette, from the Video Effects pop-up menu, select the Show Hidden option.


		TIP The pop-up Video Effects palette contains various ways to help customize the management of your effects. For example, you can expand and collapse all folders from the Video Effects pop-up menu (see the illustration), as well as make new folders, delete old folders, and rename folders.

Drag the filter on to a clip in the timeline.
Although you could apply one of these old filters, there would probably be little need to do so. The new filters, including After Effects plug-ins, have replacement effects, which, for the most part, perform better than the old filters.

The Effect Controls Palette


	NOTE To see an effect in the Program view, it must be previewed (Timeline \| Preview or press Return to render) or scrub the timeline while pressing ALT (Windows)/OPTION (Mac).

Earlier, when we discussed how easy it is to apply an effect to a clip, you’ll recall the Effect Controls palette being mentioned. The Effect Controls palette not only keeps a running list of the effects applied to a clip, but it also enables you (in some cases) to control the way effects look on a clip from this palette. Each time an effect is applied, the parameters for that par-ticular clip (if any exist) will display in this palette.

In Figure 10-2, a Posterize effect from the Adjust folder has been applied to the artbeatsGlide.mov clip in the timeline. When the clip is applied, the Effect control panel displays with the name of the clip and an adjustment slider. This particular effect adjusts the number of tonal values on the RGB channels (that range from 2 to 255) of a clip. At a level 4 setting, you get four levels of red, four levels of blue, and four levels of green, creating a flatter color effect.

If you happen to close the Effect Control palette and need to access it again, select Window | Show Effect Controls. To see the effects on a particular clip, select the clip and the effects will display in that palette.

FIGURE 10-2
The Posterize effect is applied to the artbeatsGlide.mov video clip

Source: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing

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