many hands make something something
Monday, 22 December 2014 14:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
(I did not get round to posting this on Friday like I said I was going to! But I have a really good reason, of course. You see, what happened was LOOK OVER THERE A DRAGON *runs away*)
frayadjacent asked Vidding with Lightworks: the good, the bad, the hairpulling?
This whole post comes with the caveat that the only other program I've used is Windows Movie Maker, so that's my only basis for comparison!
The most frustrating thing that I've encountered about Lightworks is the updates. Which seems counterintuitive but there's no way to put off updating and there's no way to go back to an older version so if, say, an update BREAKS EVERYTHING you're stuck until someone on the forums works out how to fix it. This is the major reason why I'm planning to look into alternatives: the fear that another update could come along and mess things up again. :/
(Though, having mentioned the forums, they are definitely one of the good things about using Lightworks: there's a lot of knowledge and helpfulness on there. Once I've worked out the technical vocabulary to describe what it is I want to know, I can usually find an answer.)
The other thing I don't like about Lightworks is how counterintuitive bits of it feel - I tend to learn by trial and error, so this is really tricky for me! I spend a fair bit of time yelling "why did you do that, I didn't want you to do that" at it. Also, I've been using it for over a year and I still try and use CTRL+Z to undo. /o\ Plus, there isn't really any information on how to use it: just the forums and a few video tutorials on the basics. (And video tutorials make me want to bite things in frustration. Stop explaining how to open the program and tell me what I actually want to know!)
But onto the good stuff! The best thing about Lightworks is just how much you can do with just the free version. I've still only really scratched the surface of the effects package (and have barely touched any user created plugins) but pretty much everything I've wanted to do I've been able to. Transitions, lots of colouring stuff, zooming in on clips because the character I want is in the background (I'm also considering using this feature to deal with source that's in different aspect ratios, rather than faffing about cropping stuff at the clipping stage), speeding up and slowing down (to be fair to the most recent update, this has just got a lot easier), adding motion to still images... I don't really understand about masking yet but it looks like there are plenty of options for that too.
Also, NON-LINEAR EDITING. :D I couldn't go back to linear editing now if you paid me. (Well, maybe if you paid me. How much are you going to pay me?) Obviously this isn't a Lightworks specific thing but I am so glad it's something Lightworks offers: it's the one thing I HAVE to have in a vidding programme.
Those are my feelings about Lightworks! I don't recommend it wholeheartedly, but I do like it most of the time. (If anyone's thinking about trying it out and wants a guide to the basics of using it, I'd be happy to try and put one together, with the caveat that it would probably contain a lot of "there is probably a better way of doing this" and "I don't know why this works", and so on. ;))
frayadjacent asked Vidding with Lightworks: the good, the bad, the hairpulling?This whole post comes with the caveat that the only other program I've used is Windows Movie Maker, so that's my only basis for comparison!
The most frustrating thing that I've encountered about Lightworks is the updates. Which seems counterintuitive but there's no way to put off updating and there's no way to go back to an older version so if, say, an update BREAKS EVERYTHING you're stuck until someone on the forums works out how to fix it. This is the major reason why I'm planning to look into alternatives: the fear that another update could come along and mess things up again. :/
(Though, having mentioned the forums, they are definitely one of the good things about using Lightworks: there's a lot of knowledge and helpfulness on there. Once I've worked out the technical vocabulary to describe what it is I want to know, I can usually find an answer.)
The other thing I don't like about Lightworks is how counterintuitive bits of it feel - I tend to learn by trial and error, so this is really tricky for me! I spend a fair bit of time yelling "why did you do that, I didn't want you to do that" at it. Also, I've been using it for over a year and I still try and use CTRL+Z to undo. /o\ Plus, there isn't really any information on how to use it: just the forums and a few video tutorials on the basics. (And video tutorials make me want to bite things in frustration. Stop explaining how to open the program and tell me what I actually want to know!)
But onto the good stuff! The best thing about Lightworks is just how much you can do with just the free version. I've still only really scratched the surface of the effects package (and have barely touched any user created plugins) but pretty much everything I've wanted to do I've been able to. Transitions, lots of colouring stuff, zooming in on clips because the character I want is in the background (I'm also considering using this feature to deal with source that's in different aspect ratios, rather than faffing about cropping stuff at the clipping stage), speeding up and slowing down (to be fair to the most recent update, this has just got a lot easier), adding motion to still images... I don't really understand about masking yet but it looks like there are plenty of options for that too.
Also, NON-LINEAR EDITING. :D I couldn't go back to linear editing now if you paid me. (Well, maybe if you paid me. How much are you going to pay me?) Obviously this isn't a Lightworks specific thing but I am so glad it's something Lightworks offers: it's the one thing I HAVE to have in a vidding programme.
Those are my feelings about Lightworks! I don't recommend it wholeheartedly, but I do like it most of the time. (If anyone's thinking about trying it out and wants a guide to the basics of using it, I'd be happy to try and put one together, with the caveat that it would probably contain a lot of "there is probably a better way of doing this" and "I don't know why this works", and so on. ;))
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Date: 23 Dec 2014 08:42 (UTC)OTOH: free is awesome! I wouldn't whole-heartedly recommend any of my NLE programs either, but a big reason for that is cost. I appreciate that a lot of labor goes into these products, but man...especially Adobe stuff, which is just astronomical for a non-rented (creative commons) version. :(
And yeah, I made my first vid with iMovie, and I'd never go back either. NLE is where it's at.
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Date: 23 Dec 2014 13:16 (UTC)Yeah, agreed. In theory I would be ok with paying for one of them, but... not quite that much, especially since I know I probably wouldn't use a lot of the functionality I'd be paying for.
In retrospect, I think the only reason I finished my first vid was because I had the whole thing storyboarded out in advance...
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Date: 25 Dec 2014 15:42 (UTC)Also re: masking, I actually can add a little information here because masking was one of the features I looked into fairly closely (and casually keep an eye out for in the new version updates). If you want to mask based on colour or brightness (i.e. make-everything-blue-disappear or something) then yes, it has a lot of good options. Or if you want to create simple matte masks (i.e. I'm going to use this black and white image of a circle to make a circular filter) then again, you can do that.
What it doesn't have is a masking pen tool by default. Like in Photoshop where you draw around something and cut it out? It doesn't have that. But there is a user-made effects plugin that does a reasonable job of approximating one. I think it the mask has like...12 maximum points that can be added (so like, it can never be more complex than a dodecahedron). But if for some reason you needed a more complex mask I don't see why you couldn't just use the plugin more than once...
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Date: 5 Jan 2015 09:57 (UTC)Ah, I see! That's good to know, thank you. I definitely want to try masking at some point, I just haven't yet found a situation where I want to use it!
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Date: 17 Feb 2015 00:41 (UTC)I used masking several times on the Mounties vid: I used it to isolate the "We Fight Evil" shield for the opening credits, and then twice more to remove on-screen text. The first draft also used a mask to add a super-corny effect where you're looking at the final clip through an ever-shrinking circle in a field of black video-eating-up-ing-ness.
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Date: 17 Feb 2015 12:18 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Feb 2015 02:01 (UTC)1. Put the video with the text on a lower track, like V2.
2.Put "video black" on a higher track, like V1. (Video Black is available as a right-click on the "new edit" button.)
3. Add an effect to the video black: Matte - Simple 2D Shape.
4. Reverse foreground and background colors, so that the shape is black and the background is white.
5. Add a second effect to the video black: Blend.
6. Select "Multiply" for blend method. (Black is zero, and zero times anything is zero: the black will stay black. White is one, and one times anything is itself: the white will become transparent.)
7. Fiddle with sliders until the black covers the text, but not things you don't want covered. If your background is dark enough, you might need to click/unclick the green dot on the "Blend" effect to turn it off and on so that you can see where that black shape actually is.
I used this twice to cover text -- the middlesub clip at 0:28, and the first two frames of Wendy and MM dozing on the steps at 1:50. In both cases I used keyframes to change the shape of the black shape. With the sub, it was because the sub was moving, the sub wasn't actually black, and I was trying to pass the black oval off as a contour on the sub. With dozing-on-the-steps, it was because the boundary between Ida's dress and MM's trousers was moving, and I needed to move the shape to keep it off of her dress. If you frame-by-frame dozing-on-the-steps, you'll see that the text removal is far from perfect, but it's the sort of thing you can't see
from a moving horsewhile the video is playing.I also used the same technique, inverted, to isolate the "We Fight Evil" shield in the opening sequence.
Would you like screenshots? They're no trouble.
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Date: 26 Feb 2015 11:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Feb 2015 16:40 (UTC)I spent a little while trying to work out something similar for replacing text on a noisy-but-static background (when I had a text-less frame that I could use for reference), but couldn't quite get all the parameters to work. I might give that another go at some point, though; I was limited by time, and I hadn't yet figured out how to flowchart three or more tracks of effects together.
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Date: 2 Mar 2015 11:06 (UTC)