Sams Teach Yourself Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours

Introducing Premiere's Video Effects

This hour marks the beginning of a three- hour "video effects" section. Premiere 6.5 ships with 79 effects, and dozens more are available from third-party providers.

Take a quick look at the Video Effects palette. I've illustrated part of that palette in Figure 11.1. (The screen resolution would have to be set to 1280x960 to display all the effects.)

As a convenience Adobe created 14 categories to organize these video effects, but you'll find that one category can sometimes seem a lot like another, and video effects in different categories can be very similar.

You'll notice there are two Video Effects icons: the one with the V is a standard Premiere V ideo Effect, and the one with the number 4 is an Adobe After Effectscreated effect. We'll look at the AE effectsthey tend to be a little wilder and more involvedas well as the After Effects software in Hour 13, "Wrapping Up Effects with After Effects."

You apply video effects much like audio effects, by simply dragging and dropping them to a video clip or the Effect Controls palette for a selected video clip. As with audio effects, you can add multiple video effects to a single clip. But unlike multiple audio effects, adding more than one video effect to a clip sometimes has surprising and unpredictable results.

I'm going to have you briefly try out a few video effects just to get an idea of their variety and value. Then I'll ask you to put them aside while you tackle keyframes and motion/shape settings.

Task: Convert a Clip to Grayscale

I'll begin with Premiere's simplest video effectBlack & White. It converts any clip to grayscale (shades of gray). Follow these steps:

1. Add a brief video or linked video/audio clip to your timeline. Select the video portion of that clip by clicking it with the Selection tool.

2. Open the Effect Controls palette.

3. Open the Video Effects palette by double-clicking its tab in the Transitions/Effects palette.

4. Open the Image Control file folder and drag and drop Black & White on the clip on the timeline or to the Effect Controls palette. As with audio effects, this action adds the video effect name to the Effect Controls palette. I've illustrated this in Figure 11.2.

   Figure 11.2. After the Black & White video effect is applied to a clip, it appears in the Effect Controls palette.

The Black & White video effect happens immediately. The video image in the Program Monitor screen shifts instantly to a grayscale image.

You may note that the Black & White video effect has no options. It's either on or off. In this case, because the little f is visible next to its name, it's on.

Alt/Option-scrub through your clip to see the Black & White effect "in action."

Task: Try the Camera Blur Video Effect

Black & White is as basic as Premiere's video effects get. To move things up a notch , try the Camera Blur video effect:

1. Remove Black & White from the Effect Controls palette.

2. Open the Blur file folder and drag and drop Camera Blur onto the timeline or the Effect Controls palette.

3. This effect has one control: Percent Blur.

4. Click Setup to view the Camera Blur Settings dialog box.

5. Move the percentage slider to see its effect in the Preview window (see Figure 11.3).

   Figure 11.3. Camera Blur has only one optionPercent Blur.

As with most video effects (and audio effects), Camera Blur has a keyframe optionthe little grayed-out box next to the f . I'll explain keyframes in a few minutes.

Experiment with the following simple video effects:

Facet Found in the Pixelate file folder, this effect is reminiscent of Gauguin paintings. It creates a smooth oil paintinglike effect by clumping together pixels of similar color values. As with Black & White, there are no options.

Crystallize Found in the Pixelate file folder, this effect creates a distorted mosaic by placing adjacent pixels into solid-colored polygons. Choose a value from 3 to 300 pixels per polygon. A setting of 5 works nicely .

Pointillize Found in the Pixelate file folder, this effect is reminiscent of a Seurat painting. But even at the lowest setting (3), the chunky points don't match his fine style. Pointillize does work well with landscapes .

Replicate Found in the Stylize file folder, this effect divides the screen into tiles and displays the whole clip in each tilefrom a 2x2 grid to 16x16.

Solarize This effect is found in the Stylize file folder. By blending between a negative and a positive image, Solarize makes your clip look like film briefly exposed to light during developing. A setting of 0% leaves your clip unchanged, whereas 100% turns it into a negative image.

Before moving to keyframes, I want to take you through a few more basic-but-useful effects.

Task: Apply the Spherize Video Effect

The Spherize effect distorts your image, making it look like someone's pushing a basketball against it. Here are the steps:

1. Remove Camera Blur from the Effect Controls palette.

2. Open the Distort file folder and drag and drop Spherize into the Effect Controls palette.

3. As shown in Figure 11.4, this video effect has one numeric value and an additional control: Mode. Adjust these as desired. Here are some points to keep in mind:

   • Adjusting the Amount setting from 100 to +100 either "pushes" or "pulls" the clip into a spherical shape.

   • Under Mode, you face three options: Normal, Horizontal Only, and Vertical Only. Normal looks like a ball, whereas Horizontal Only and Vertical Only expand out and squeeze in along their respective axes.

   • The little buttons (+ and -) beneath the preview window let you zoom in on or away from your subject to more clearly see the change in shape, but this does not affect the final effect.

   Figure 11.4. Spherize offers two options to create the appearance of a basketball pressed against your clip.

Take a look at three other effects from the Distort file folder:

Pinch The "pull" move squeezes/pinches the center of the image. The "push" move bulges out the image like Spherize.

Shear This is the "fun-house mirror" effect. It distorts your clip along a line that works much like the Path Text tool. Drag the line's two endpoints around the perimeter of the box, create "handles" anywhere on the line, and drag and contort that line. The effect of your handiwork shows up immediately in the preview window.

Zig Zag You can create pond ripples and other radial effects with Zig Zag. The Amount setting (-100 to 100, with 0 being no distortion) represents the magnitude of distortion and the reflection angle. Ridges is the number of ripples (direction reversals), and Style sets the general appearance (Pond, Out from Center, or Around Center).