Overlay Track Options

[melissaconway]

Hi there.

I rendered (in animation software) a series of .png files with transparency for an overlay in VidStudio. 150 of them that all need to be shortened from the default photo duration of 3:00 seconds. Plus, for each one, I will need to adjust the size of the overlay track. Is there a way to manage the entire track for these adjustments? Or a place to adjust the preferences..?

Thanks!
M.

[BrianCee]

Welcome to the forum Melissa, - I can give you some good news - and some not so good news.

First the good news - you can indeed adjust the preferences before you put your pictures in the timeline - simply click on "Settings" (top left of VideoStudio screen) from the drop down choose "Preferences" and a new panel will open - along the top tabs choose "Edit" and near the top of the pane you will see where you can change the default insert time and just above it a box you can check if you want fit to screen in the overlay track - click OK to leave the preferences panel.

The not so good news - you cannot change the display time of all pictures in the overlay tack at the same time - you can do it in the main top video track - but the programme writers obviously thought it would not be needed in the overlay track - but - there is a possible workaround for this one occasion - that is to delete the video in the top track and move all the pictures temporarily into the top track - you can do that as one by clicking on the first photo - then scrolling to the last photo and holding down 'shift' while clicking select - this will select all pictures - then left click over them and slide them into the top track - with them all selected now click on "Edit" and from the drop down choose "change photo/color duration" this will enable you to make a global change to all picture duration. then select all pictures and slide them back down into the overlay track and put your video back in the top track.

Strangely you can change the image size of all pictures together while in the overlay track - first select only the first photo and adjust it's size in the preview screen either by right clicking in the preview screen and choosing one of the preset options or by dragging the yellow boxes to the size you require. now right click over the photo in the timeline and choose "copy attributes" - now click on the second photo and scroll to the last and shift+select again to select all - now right click again over the block and choose "paste attributes" and all photos should change size.

easier to do than explain - but if you are doing anymore you can set your preferences first and life will be much easier for you.

[melissaconway]

I hope this isn't a duplicate post, but my first THANKS to Brian may not have gone through...either way, I wanted to add that there appears to be a constraint on photo duration - can't go lower than .1 of a second. My animation is the standard 30 fps, so it ended up longer than it would have been were I able to adjust it to the correct time.

M.

[lata]

Hi

The constraint, the smallest unit we can use in a video is one frame, I assume you are using NTSC which uses 30 fps.

If you add 30 images and set the duration to one frame then the project would last one second.
Render this to a video file, “same as project settings”

The video file will be one second, now you can if you wish apply “Speed and Timelapse” to alter the playback speed.
This will effectively add frames to the video. same effect as increasing the number of frames in the original PNG’s

Please confirm you are indeed using Ntsc and not Pal? (Project Properties)

[melissaconway]

Hi Lata,

Yes, Ntsc. The issue I would have with your solution is transparency loss after rendering. Unless there's a render setting in VidStudio that would preserve that? My .pngs are of snowflakes falling.

Thanks so much for helping me work this out. For the record, the duration I ended up with wasn't really a problem for me, but I can see how it might be for someone else.

M.

[BrianCee]

the last figure in the digital setting for multi images is frames Melissa - not seconds - you should be able to set one frame - does your frame setting run from zero to 29 before going back to zero - should do on an NTSC setup.

[melissaconway]

Ooooohhhhhh. Got it. I didn't realize there was a little f at the end there.

Thanks, guys!

M.