Adding a Scene Event

Now that you have an understanding of the larger view of how Video Post works, let’s go back and create a queue from scratch. First we’ll add a scene event. A scene event can be any sequence of frames from any viewport in your scene.

1.  Reset MAX. Open your waterburst_4.max from the last chapter or load it from the Chapter 11 folder on the CD.

2.  First, let’s make it a little more interesting for ourselves by adding a second camera. In the Create Ø Cameras tab, click the Free button. Click in the right side of the front viewport to create a camera.

	NOTE If you prefer, you can create a target camera instead and manipulate the target. The following steps allow you to practice using just the camera navigation tools to manipulate your camera.

3. Right-click in the left viewport to make it active; press C to change it to a camera viewport. Use the Dolly button in the viewport navigation controls to pull the camera back so that you can see the scene. Right-click the viewport label and choose Smooth+Highlights.

4.  Using Dolly, Truck, Pan, and Orbit, maneuver your camera so that it looks about like the view in Figure 12.2. If you like a different view, use that, as long as it’s different from the view in Camera01.

5. Open Video Post by selecting Video Post from the Rendering menu. Click the Add Scene Event button.

6.  This brings up the Add Scene Event dialog box (Figure 12.3). Choose Camera02 from the drop-down menu. Uncheck Lock Range Bar to Scene Range and Lock to Video Post Range. Set Scene Start to 126 and Scene End to 135; leave VP Start Time at 0 and set VP End Time to 9. This means that frames 126 through 135 will be the first 10 frames rendered in our queue.

FIGURE 12.2  Get a different view than the one in Camera01.

FIGURE 12.3  Add Scene Event dialog box

	NOTE Notice that Enabled is checked. If you uncheck this box for an event, that event will be grayed out and ignored when the queue is executed.

7.  Click OK to close the dialog box. You now have a scene event in your queue. Leaving Video Post open, go back to the scene and save the file as videopost01.max.

You can change these settings at any time by double-clicking the event in the queue, bringing up the same dialog box. If you change the range bars interactively by dragging in the window, the VP Start Time and VP End Time will be changed accordingly. The Render Options button brings up the same options that we saw in the Render dialog box in Chapter 11.

Adding an Image Input Event

Now let’s cut to a pre-rendered image event. An image input event can be any image file or any sequence of frames from a movie file.

NOTE One thing to consider when adding image input events is video compression. If your file has already been compressed (as ours has), rendering again with compression will degrade the image substantially through double compression. In our example, we are simply demonstrating a cut, so it doesn’t matter. In a real project, you would render your initial files with a minimal compression such as Animation, or even uncompressed (Full Frames), and then apply compression for the final cut in Video Post.

1.  Open videopost01.max from the CD or continue working with your scene. If you don’t have Video Post open, choose it from the Rendering menu.

2. If the Camera02 scene event is highlighted, click somewhere else in the VPQueue pane to deselect it. (If an event is selected, the next event added will be nested with it.) Click the Add Image Input Event button. This brings up the dialog box shown in Figure 12.4.

3.  Click the Files button. Choose the waterburst.avi file that you created in the last chapter or from the Chapter 11 folder on the CD, and then click OK. Click the Options button. This brings up the Image Input Options dialog box (Figure 12.5).

4.  Under Frames, enter frames 136 and 145 in the From and To fields. This means that we will render 10 frames of our original shot between frames 136 and 146. Uncheck Loop at the End, leave Step at 1, and click OK to close this dialog box.

5.  Back in the Add Image Input Event dialog box, set the VP Start Time to 10 and the End Time to 19. So the 10 frames we just chose will render in the queue just after the 10 frames of our scene event. Click OK to close the dialog box.

FIGURE 12.4  Add Image Input Event dialog box

FIGURE 12.5  Image Input Options dialog box

Before we move on, let’s discuss the other options available in the Image Input Options dialog box. If you check Do Not Resize or Custom Size under the Size section, the Alignment options are enabled. If you’re bringing in images of different sizes, you can position them with these controls. The Presets give you a visual image of the placement. Coordinates allow you to set an exact X and Y value, in pixels, where you want to position the image. Custom Size allows you to set the exact dimensions that you want your image to be stretched or compacted to.

Step is just like Every Nth Frame in the Render dialog window. The Step set to 1 means rendering every frame in the range; changing it to 2 would render every other frame, and so on. Loop at the End repeats the chosen series of frames to fill the duration of the range bar (between VP Start Time and VP End Time).

© 2000, Frol (selection, edition, publication)