Personalizing Your Home Video
In this article lets look into the personalization options available in muvee Reveal and how to tweak and shape your masterpiece.
One of the advantages of using the personalization options in muvee Reveal is that no matter how much tweaking you do, the quality of the resulting video is always maintained. The movie making engine applies all the personalization without compromising the quality of the final output.
One of the innovative features of this video editing software is magicMoments for video. Aside from transferring the video from tape to the computer, the next big challenge faced by aspiring home video makers is browsing through the digitized video and picking the important highlights of the video and excluding the not-so great portions of the video.
With typical Non-Linear editing, this is accomplished with what is known as In Point and Out Point marking and then using it or removing it. Alternatively it is also possible to split the video footage into multiple clips and then using the trim tools to select the portions of interest. Simply the user wants to be able to say I like it and I dont like it when he or she simply previews the video. Although the traditional methods work, this is not how the users think of the process.
magicMoments provides a simple interface that reflects the mental model of how a typical user would approach this selection process. Basically the user can watch the video and while watching (or even while scrubbing through the video - scrubbing is a process of moving the slider on the transport control area) he or she can simply highlight a second of video or a specific shot using a thumbs up button or exclude it using a thumbs down button. The muvee-making engine will use these preferences when constructing the final output. The best part is that these preferences are used even if a different style or music is used.
Although the latest cameras record videos in short clips, magicMoments is still useful to highlight a specific point within a shot. magicMoments feature is found in the drop down menu associated with the video. And this menu is shown when a video clip is selected in the media panel.
Another hidden but cool feature in the application is the ability to influence the automatic selection mechanism. The selection engine uses several heuristics to determine what could be possibly interesting for the user. This is done by analyzing the video for subjects or faces, amount of motions and brightness etc. These controls are accessible only if the production is set to match the music duration or manual duration. On Duration tab in the Personalize dialog box, set the duration to either Summarize to fit to music or Summarize to manual length. And expand the details panel by clicking on the details button on the right side of the dialog box. And you will see a description that mentions automatic selection and a link next to it. Click on the link and it will open up the dialog box with controls for selection bias.
For photos, there is magicSpot feature which enables the user to highlight the interesting portion within the photo. This selected region is used in an artistic way in a production. Most commonly Ken Burns Effect is applied using this region. This effect slowly zooms into or zooms out of the region, thereby providing a sense of motion.
The engine automatically looks for faces within a photo and uses that as the region of interest. If there are several faces, the engine smartly creates a virtual region to cover all or most of the faces. But in some cases, the engine may have not selected the correct region. The selected region is shown on the photo when you are in the magicSpot interface. If a wrong area is detected or if you need to change the focus point on a particular photo, it is easy to do so by simply moving the + on the photo.
The magicSpot interface also allows users to control the motion itself. In this case, you can specify a start region as well as an end region. This can be done by simply selecting manual magicSpot option and then moving or resizing the start and the end rectangles.
The basic objective of any home video is to be able to tell a story in an engaging way. And adding text and voice is very much part of this story telling angle. Captions, Title/Credits, and Voiceover are features you can use to add more personalization into your home video. Captions can be added for photos or portions of video. By default, captions are shown in the lower part of the video frame. However, it is easy to move it to a desired position. You can also manipulate the text by changing fonts, color and size.
muvee Reveal has a voice over feature which can be used to add some voice narration to the home video. Once you have created the final production that you like, you can access the voice over feature via the personalization button. You simply can play the video and click on the Record button when you need to add some narration to it. And once you have finished the narration, you can click on the Stop button. You can also find the audio mixer controls on the same tab. This will help you to set the desired volume level for each of the audio tracks in your production.
Another feature that truly personalizes, or brands your home video is the Logo feature, found in a tab in the Personalize dialog box. This feature allows you to show a logo throughout the video, similar to the channel logos you see on TV. You can select any image and set a suitable transparency value by using the slider. In addition to the logo, you can also add a permanent text message at the bottom of the video. This is very useful if you want to add a copyright notice or a link to a URL.
One of the best personalization options in the application is the ability to customize the styles. Since styles are the key ingredients to the production and they do add the emotion and mood to the video, manipulating the style settings can differentiate each production even if they use the same style.
You can find the style settings link in the style panel next to selected style. Clicking on this will bring up a dialog box with settings that are specific to the selected style. Each style comes with its own set of settings. Two of the common settings found in most styles are the ability to set the pacing and specifying a color casting on the video. I highly recommend that you try different settings for these options and see the variations. Since music also plays a part in the pacing of the production, the results of the same settings could be different if the music files used are different. There are several color options to choose from. Each of them tend to manipulate one or more colors in a video/photo. The best way is to discover the one that suits the video and your desired output.
Besides these two style settings, there are other settings which provide more control over artistic elements of styles. For example, you can increase the bounciness in Cube Twist style; or change the size of the shattered pieces in Hexplode style; or you can change the ornaments in the Reflections style. There are so many choices and combinations, the best way to see that is to tweak it and find the right one for you. Since the engine can construct the video very fast, it does not take long to do several experiments before deciding on one.
One of the complaints about automatic video editing software is that users always end up with similar output but with different source photos, video and music. So if a person makes two home videos with the same style it may look the same. But with this plethora of personalization options, it is possible and incredibly easy to make two productions with the same style; but make them distinct.
by: Emarson Victoria
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