Thursday, 3 April 2014

Premiere - Video Effects

Within the Effects panel in Adobe Premiere you can find settings which add effects to each video clip. This is known as Video Effects. I am going to look into and experiment with a variety of these effects to give me some ideas as to what I could do with my DVD trailer. The screenshot below shows this Video Effects panel.


As you can see from this screenshot there are a vast quantity of effects to chose from. I am going to look into all of these effects and then write about a select few.

Adjust - Levels:
This is the first effect I have looked at, my reasoning behind looking into this effect is that both Photoshop and illustrator had similar settings and hence I wanted to compare these. To add this effect to my clip I simply dragged the Levels icon over to my clip. I then used the Effects Control to adjust the settings to this. The screenshot below shows the editable settings.


The settings in this panel adjust the colours in the clip. You could use this effect to add a certain colour tint to the whole of a clip or even just part. It could also be used to brighten or darken a clip. If this effect was used correctly it could work really well however it could also make the clip look unprofessional if it wasn't used effectively.

Blur And Sharpen - Camera Blur
This folder houses all the sharpening and blurring effects. I have decided to look at the Camera Blur. This is added to the clip in the normal way. I was then able to change the level of blur I wanted to add to my clip. This can be seen in the dialog box below. I personally don't know why you would want to blur out whole clips however you can use the Toggle Animation button which allows you to set points along the timeline of the clip. You can then adjust the blur percentage as the clip progresses which seems more useful.

Blur And Sharpen - Sharpen
As I previously looked at a blur tool in this folder I decided to look at the sharpen effect. This simply sharpened the clip. Like the blur effect I was able to change the percentage to either increase or decrease how sharp the clip was. I actually really liked the effect this sharpened clip gave and I would like to use this in my final DVD trailer. The screenshot below shows the sharpen effect in the Effects Control panel.

Channel - Blend
This effect was something I hadn't ever come across before. It involved blending two clips. The screenshot below shows the settings which I could change for this effect.


You can see from the above screenshot that I was able to select which clip I wanted to blend with, I was then able to decide what mode to use. In this case I chose colour. I then set the percentage and now my two clips where blended using colour. When looking at the two clips you can now see how the colours have been blended to look much more similar.

Colour Correction - Brightness/Contrast
This video effect is a standard effect across the Adobe suite. This effect simply allowed me to change the brightness and contrast levels of my video clip. This effect would enable me to make my DVD trailer brighter and hence I may look into using this effect. The screenshot below shows the editable settings of the Brightness/Contrast effect.


Colour Correction - Colour Balance
This video effect is similar to Levels. This effect allows you to change the percentage of colour used in the clip. For example you could change the Shadow Red setting to add more red into the image. This is not something which I particularly like and hence I probably wont be using this effect in my assignment. The screenshot below shows the editable settings for this effect.
Distort -Mirror
This video effect is slightly unusual as it effectively mirrors the chosen clip. The Effects Control panel allows you to adjust how much of the clip you want to be reflected in terms of a percentage.  This effect could be useful if you wanted to duplicate a scene or have footage which is meant to appear as a mirror. In terms of my own trailer I don't see how I could use this effect however with the right footage this could look really effective. The screenshot below shows the editable settings for this effect.


Generate - Lightening
This video effect is more like an add on than an actual effect. This effect adds strokes of lightening over the top of the clip. This effect would be perfect to create a stormy scene or work well with sci-fi films.  This effect has a wide variety of settings which you can change to edit the look of the lightening. This is in terms of where the lightening bolt starts and ends, the amplitude and segments to name just a few. The screenshot below shows the editable settings for this effect and then a preview of this in action. 


Generate - Lens Flare 
This effect is very similar to that of the one above. This effect adds a camera like lens to video clip. I am now 100% sure where I could add this effect however it does make the clip look less polished and I do like this. The main two settings which you could change to create this effect are the size of the camera lens along with the brightness of the flare. The screenshot below shows the editable settings for this effect and then a preview of this in action. 

Image Control - Black And White
This effect is similar to the previous which allow you to change the colour of the clip. This effect turns the clip black and white. This create the impression that the footage is old. This effect has no other settings to change it is simply black and white or original colour. The screenshot below shows the Effects Control panel and the clip.


Keying - Ultra Key
This effect is very different to any which I have experimented with before. It allows you to alter the colours of different aspects in a clip including different shadows, highlights and transparencies. This is something which you could tailor to almost any video clip and hence I aim to use this effect in my own DVD trailer where possible. The screenshot below shows some of the settings you can edit along with the video clip. 


Noise And Grain - Noise
This effect adds a pixelated cover over the top of the clip to give the impression of noise. The settings for this effect allow you to edit the percentage of noise added to the clip. The screenshot below shows the settings and this added to the clip. This effect is good however I question how and why I would use this for my DVD trailer. 

Perspective - Basic 3D
This effect changes the perspective of the clip. By adding a swivel and tilt to the clip you can change how the clip appears on the screen. You can then change the distance from the  image to determine how far back the clip appears. This can make the clip appear to be on a cinema screen. This can be seen in the screenshot below. This could be used in my DVD trailer however I think I would prefer to have  the whole trailer set to the same effect rather than having this effect added to one clip for example. 


Transform - Horizontal Flip
This effect works by flipping the image horizontally so that the image appears to have changed position. This could be used to change the effect the clip has on the audience. This could be used on almost all clips and could be used to make room for titles or credits. I feel this is an effect which I could use for my DVD trailer. The screenshot below shows the settings and a clip.



Utility - Cineon Converter 
This effect works by allowing you to add either lighter or darker scenes to a clip. This could be used to make a daylight scene evening. I personally feel this effect works better than the previous one that I found which effectively did the same job. This has a range of settings which you can change including changing the percentage of internal black and white points to darken and lighten the clip. The screenshot below shows this.


As you can see there are a huge variety of video effects which can be added to the clips of a premiere production. When creating my own DVD Trailer I aim to use at least some of these effects. Which effects I chose will be mainly down to which clips I end up using as different effects seem to suit different clips.

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