4 - Create Your Personal Transitions

The DLP0 sample project is a set of mostly geometric patterns that can be used between any two clips in Movie Maker. The A1st sample project has a more unique dog transition. Geometry or pictures, the transitions are made the same way.

You start with a picture that you want to use to make a transition from. It might be your family crest, one of your child's first drawings, a picture of a friend or loved one, a pet horse...... whatever you want.

Like video editing, maybe something works great when you least expect it to. And maybe your great ideas get hurriedly replaced by new great ideas. It's easy to try one, refine it if it shows promise, or discard it.

A • I'll use one of the open spaces in the A1st sample project to add a new transition.

If a project, like A1st, has only a couple transitions, then that's all you'll see in MM2.... you won't see 30 empty spaces with blank transition icons in the MM2 collection.

Gradient Editors

There are 4 gradient editors included in Transition Maker 2, and the first in the menu, the Scan Converter is considered the classic one. I'll use that to step through this section of the tutorial, and then comment on the others.

There's a 5th menu option for creating gradients... the User Defined Filter Editor, which will also be discussed later.

B • Transition Maker 2 produces a certain kind of transition, one that inside Movie Maker 2 is called a gradient wipe. It's one transition type of many. With it, you wipe away the first picture or clip being shown in your movie, and replace it with the next one that's being transitioned into.

C • Note that the top blue bar says the project is DPL0. But I want to be in the A1st project, so I'll open it from the Scan Converter using File > Open Project > A1st.

D • Press the 'Load Sample' button to open a picture file that you want to use to make a transition. I'll use Patrick's cat picture from the A1st subfolder, the file named CatA.jpg. You can follow along using the same one or use your own. Remember, this is the picture you will be transitioning into when in your movie project, not the image or video clip you are leaving.

The picture file can be a .bmp, a .jpg. or a .png file. The .png files provide the best results but any of the 3 types will work. I'll use a .jpg file for this tutorial.

E • My favorite way to use TM2 is to transition into video clips. I'll start in Movie Maker 2 with the clip I want to use. At the exact frame of the transition, I'll take a snapshot of the frame, saving the .jpg file to the Transition Maker 2 project folder, and splitting the clip at that point so the saved picture perfectly aligns with the starting frame of the video clip. I'll do the splitting in the collection bin for a higher quality still image.

F • Here's the Transition (Gradient) Editor with the CatA picture open.

• The smaller middle 'Sample' image is the source file itself.

• The left pane shows the edges of the image(s) in the picture, kind of like a sketch of the subject. This is your working pane... the program automatically figures out where to put the center point to get you started. You can see from the image that it put the center point kind of right on the cat's nose. That's a good guess, but maybe I'd like to have the focal point be the cat's left eye instead.... here's where I select the spot that I'd like to be the focal point of the transition.

Press the 'Animate' button and you'll see the transition previewing in the right window. Try the left eye, the right eye, the ear, or anyplace else you think the gradient transition should eminate from. The animation preview will cycle until you press the 'Pause' button. See the differences in the preview changing the location of the focal point results in.

G • Like all aspects of creating a movie, there are endless possibilities, and choosing a gradient from one picture is no different. There's never a right one or wrong one. Change the settings and select those you like, and remember that you can have many transitions in the same set or project. If you can't choose between some of them, use them all.

Play with the various options in the middle of the working window... you could end up enjoying it so much that you'll forget that the goal is to make a transition for a movie. They are fun to tweak.

Try the different scan directions, borders and types of edges... here are just a few of the possible gradients that you can make from the single cat picture, just by selecting different options. Each will work fine, but differently.

H • To help you decide, there's a Preview option built into the gradient editor. After opening the window, press the Animate button to watch it in action.

The main reason for this extra preview window is to show the transition at work with a colored image instead of the grayscale one. It'll help you assess the nuances of how the gradient will work. Watch it as you test various settings. The actions in both windows automatically stay in sync as you check the results of using different settings.

I • And, to make the preview even better, click on the Start and End image thumbnails, and you can select any pictures on your hard drive to use for the transition preview.

The border settings include pixel dimensions and color. The replicate option turns the single transition image into a grid of smaller images... toggle the X and Y settings to set the number of rows and columns up to as many as 9 in each direction - use as many as 81 checkerboard squares instead of the large single one. These border and grid settings are only for preview purposes; they are not added to the saved transition.

Q. The transition preview window includes border size and color, and a grid instead of a single image. Why? they arn't then built into the saved gradient. How do they help the preview?

A. When the Preview is called by the Project Editor, a button is shown that will transfer those preview settings to the Project. Keeps from writing down the color, border size, x and y reps and typing them in. The reps of course are only of use on geometric patterns, not on transitions derived from a sample image

J • When you're ready to save a gradient to be your transition, use the pull-down menu > File > Save Gradient as PNG (or JPEG --- your choice, but the PNG seems to work a bit better in Movie Maker 2). The Save Gradient button automatically uses the PNG option.

Save it in the project's working folder, in this case the A1st folder. I'm saving the lower right one in the collage of 9 pictures above (the one that looks like a real black cat), and saving it as a CatA.png file.

Once your gradient file is saved, you'll then use the Project Editor to add it to your project, a growing set of transitions. That will be covered in the next tutorial section.

This completes the main instructions for using the Gradient Editor.... there are a few more advanced features that you can explore now, or come back to later. If you're ready to move on at this point, go to Section 5 to package your transitions into a project and publish them. To explore additional Gradient Editor features, keep going.

Additional Gradient Editor Options

Beyond the classic Scan Converter covered above, the pull down menu has four other gradient editing options:

• Gradient Generator... a grayscale pattern-making utility

• Gradient Factory... this utility uses the Filter Factory plug-in that you can use in Photoshop and IrfanView, but customizes it to the greyscale images used for Movie Maker 2 masks.

• Gradient Filters... this feature adds the Extract function for darkening/lightening dull starts and ends, and is a less complex screen to work in than the classic Scan Converter.

• User Defined Filter Editor... make your own filter... save it and it'll be in the pick list of filters to apply when making transitions.

Gradient Generator...

This feature is kind of different in that it doesn't work on or use a source image.... it's more for generating geometric black and white masks that can be used as transitions, ones that don't depend on a source image to get started with. Reminds me of computerized doodling, a great thing to do between video sessions filled with intensive driving inspiration.

Doodle while you watch TV and save those that are really cool.

The simplicity of the above opening window doesn't show enough, so I'll illustrate it with a doodle in process. Using the Animate option helps a lot to see how the transition will work in a movie.

Save the image as a new gradient file whenever you want.

Gradient Factory...

The TM2 Gradient Factory was unabashedly copied from the wonderful Filter Factory for Adobe products. It is a proper subset, with the difference being that this TM2 version deals only with generating Grayscale images.

Grayscale PNG files are generated from mathematical equations, to be used as transition patterns in TM2 and MovieMaker2. The TM2 Gradient Factory is integrated in TM2, in addition to the Gray Mask editor. The equation approach offers all of the Gray Mask Editor capabilities (albeit slower) and for the adventuresome, the "unlimited" possibilities of writing equations to describe the gray transition patterns.

This feature was introduced in version 1.3.0 of July 19, 2004. With it's use of equations, it is exciting to the matematically inclined. With it's easy and fun to use interface, it appeals to everyone.

Start with the drop down list of 89 built-in equations. I picked #50, the Non-Symetrical Swirl, to show you what one looks like.

There's an in depth TM2Gradient Factory section of the TM2 Help file to guide you through all the details of this feature.

When you finish your gradient, save it as usual.

... and for the mathematically inclined, save an equation any time you want by using the main menu > Save current equation... and open any saved customized equation by using the menu.

Gradient Filters

The Scan Converter set to Gray scan can do the same filtering, but the Gradient Filters adds the Extract function for darkening/lightening dull starts and ends, and is a less complex screen to work in. The Scan Converter can sometimes do more interesting things with the filtered gradient... there's not much difference - call it software 'feature creep'.

User Defined Filter Editor...

Remember the drop-down list of filters in the Transition Maker. It includes any user-defined ones. Here's a feature that lets you make those filters.... make your own filters and then use them when making transitions.

You might recognize the names of some of the standard filters in the drop-down list.

Start with a standard filter, make changes to it, give it a new name, and save it using the Save Filter button. It'll save it to the default folder, available for later use in TM2.

Filters you create and save will automatically be in your filter library, available for transition development.