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Question about PS's video editing capabilities for a small project.


T

Travelling Light

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Hi guys. I'm looking to recreate the opening credits in the video below, but I'm not sure if it's within Photoshop's video editing capabilities. Perhaps it's not the best software to create something like this, I really don't know. I've done a little video editing on PS, but not much, so don't really know what you can potentially do with it.





I'm looking to do a Knot's Landing opening credits parody/mash-up. Basically, I need to have different clips and some text scrolling across a black screen from left to right.
I would imagine this is either relatively simple or just not possible on PS, but either way it's the only software I've got. Could it be done on PS or would I need some other software to do it? If so, is there any free software out there I could do it on?

I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks.
 
Sure its possible.

You have full control over position, opacity and scale and can insert as many 'clips' as your system can handle.

That's not to say it will be easy, but PS is pretty basic where video is concerned which is a big bonus as it does make it easier than a dedicated video editing application.

There are plenty of video tutorials around and as its pretty basic it wont take long to get to grips with it......it IS memory intensive though so this may be a limitation and something to take into consideration.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
MrToM said:
Sure its possible.

You have full control over position, opacity and scale and can insert as many 'clips' as your system can handle.

That's not to say it will be easy, but PS is pretty basic where video is concerned which is a big bonus as it does make it easier than a dedicated video editing application.

There are plenty of video tutorials around and as its pretty basic it wont take long to get to grips with it......it IS memory intensive though so this may be a limitation and something to take into consideration.

Regards.
MrToM.
Click to expand...

Thanks Mr.Tom. It's good to know it can be done. The memory issue is something to consider for sure and I'm wondering if I should maybe download CC rather than use CS6 as apparently it has more memory usage. I've been having a look in the video tutorials section but so far I haven't come up with much as I don't even really know what kind of a search to do. I don't suppose you, or anyone, could point me in the right direction to one that would explain the functions I'd need to be using? If not to a specific video perhaps a suggestion as to where to look and what to look for?

Many thanks
 
No worries...

YouTube is your best bet....lots of video tutorials on there.

Essentially video in PS is just the same as any other layer, and you should treat it as such too. You can 'Add' clips which will appear in the Layers Stack as a 'Video Group' but you can also just a normal layer too if you wish via the normal methods.

The order of layers in the 'Stack' is just the same, transforming a 'Video Group' works just like a normal layer so in your case you would 'Add' the clip which would become a 'Video Group' in the layers panel....transform it to the right size, (convert to smart object first would be ideal), then use the 'Key' frames to position and move that 'Video Group' over time from within the time line.....which is as easy as positioning the Layer [video group] off screen, setting a key frame, then moving the layer to the other side. It'll auto keyframe there too so you don't even need to place a key frame manually....BONUS!

You can also add any 'effects' to a 'Video Group', layer adjustments, other transforms etc etc......and key frame them from the timeline. Anything that 'can' be animated will show under each layer in the timeline......so if it isn't there you cannot key frame it.

Like I said, just treat a 'Video Group' like a normal layer....the only difference is the 'layer image' changes over time......otherwise its just the same.

Of course it 'can' be far more complex than this but for what you want to do its fairly straightforward....the above may make it sound too simplistic but I think once you get into it you'll see just how 'un-complicated' it can actually be.

Regards.
MrToM.

EDIT:
Having re-read that I may be confusing you when I say normal 'layer'......what I really mean is a normal 'Group'....sorry for any confusion.
 
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Thanks so much for the detailed response Tom. And Happy Birthday!

Thanks to your advice I have checked out a tutorial on keyframing and now have successfully managed to get a clip moving across a black screen. There's just a couple of small issues.

As I have moved the clip manually when setting up the keyframe, it wobbles slightly as I didn't keep it perfectly steady the whole way across. All my clips will need to be the same size (not sure how to do that as I also transformed it in size manually) and move smoothly across the screen in a straight line and at the same speed. I'm sure there's a simple way to set up some kind of action that means the clips can be cropped uniformly and travel smoothly together at the same speed. Any suggestions?

Many thanks.


EDIT: Actually some of the clips will be larger but the majority will need to be a square of uniform size.
 
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No worries...and thanks.

Transform the clips down to a specific size by typing in the values...in pixels. Make each one the same value and they will all be the same size.

Same speed:
Have you tried putting all your clips into another 'Video Group'.......and then animating that one group?

Within that group you would need to arrange your clips into the right position relative to each other but when it comes to animating them at the same speed you just animate the one 'Group' rather than each individual 'clip'.

You can set up your 'clips' well in advance, overlay them to make sure the size is right, and then move them later....you don't have to do everything in a chronological order....you can mix it up to make it easier for yourself.

To move things horizontally use the SHIFT key when moving with the 'Move' tool....it'l constrain it to a multiple of 15deg [default]......one of those being horizontal.

That's what I'd try.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Thanks Tom. All good advice. Just to confirm, and sorry if any of these seem like silly questions but I'm still relatively new at this, each clip needs to be in it's own video group in order for me to place them in the correct position in relation to each other, right? That's what I have been doing so far. So then you're saying that once that's all done all those video groups can then be put into one video group which I can then animate?

At the moment I just have two clips on screen together but the playback is incredibly slow. I'm just imagining how it will be when I have 5 or more clips on the screen at the one time. Is there any way around this? Or that's something I'll just have to put up with?
 
Yeah, that's about it.

I'm not sure if you need to put all the video clips into a 'Video' group or just a normal group.....its been a while since I've had to do that, but whichever, the idea is to have all your clips in one 'group' which you can then keyframe. This will make it so much easier and more precise to animate all the clips moving together at the same speed etc etc......one folder rather than each video clip.

You can position each clip within that group depending on where they need to be in relation to the others but the main 'Right to Left' movement can be done with just the one group.

As to playback performance...yeah, it'll be sloooooowwwwwwwww.

What happens is that when you 'play' the video each 'frame' is loaded into memory.
This takes time to do so the video is pretty slow....and the more that gets loaded into memory the slower it gets.....but....

....once all the 'frames' are loaded into memory then the video should play a lot smoother as the 'frames' are accessed from memory rather than the hard drive....which is much quicker.

You should notice a very VERY thin 'bar' start to appear under the playhead as you play through the frames.....if you scrub the playhead this line will be broken but essentially it denotes those frames that are now in memory.....scrubbing over areas where you can see the line should be smoother than areas where you cant, but if you are still in 'play' mode then any frames you scrub over should get loaded on the fly.....system permitting.

Unfortunately this 'loading' of frames only happens till you hit stop.

If you 'play' the video again after hitting stop it has to re-load all the frames into memory again.....you'll notice the very thin bar will disappear when you hit 'stop'.....great....not!

This is just the way Adobe have written it and unfortunately again, Photoshops' memory management is virtually non-existent so its a pretty poor result all round if you don't have much memory in your system.

To be honest its pretty poor with lots of memory which is why video in PS is not bad as long as its kept pretty simple with reasonable output dimensions......forget HD 1080!

It may be possible to split the entire video into chunks and use some third party tool like FFMPEG to combine the chunks into one video but that really depends on the workflow and does rather make it a more messy approach.

For me PS does what I need it to.....simple video editing with possibly the odd bit of text added here and there so I've never really ventured in applications such as After Effects or Premier Pro but, if I needed to do anything more complex than the most basic of video editing then I'd consider one of these two....its what they are written for rather than PS which is in essence an image editor.

Dedicated video editing software will, or at least should, be much better at handling memory for video and so the whole process will be a much more pleasurable and useable experience.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Thanks. Actually I have been using HD 1080 clips! So, I guess I might wanna rethink that. That might help things a long a little. I'm gonna stick at it with PS for now and see if I can make it work as I don't have any experience with other video editors.

One other small thing. When I upload a clip into a video layer and then I go to crop it into a square, it crops all the video layers, not just that one. Basically I am having trouble getting each individual clip cropped to a square that I can then transition down into the correct size. Why is it cropping all the video layers? I'm sure there's a very simple answer to this!

Thanks again.
 
'Cropping' relates to the whole document....so every layer.

You should use 'Transform' to adjust the size of a layer.

You can access this by Ctrl + T or EDIT > TRANSFORM > ***

When transforming, holding 'Shift' will constrain, Ctrl will 'distort' and 'Alt' will mirror from the center.
You can use combinations if you wish.

As for the Video...well if 1080 is working for you then good, but expect it to slow down rapidly......1080 is pretty big and memory hungry...and even with a truck load of memory available to PS it just isn't very good at using it efficiently.

More memory isn't going to help anyway.....PS will only use (Ha ha) what it needs regardless of the available amount......setting the available memory too high is just a waste as PS will never use it.

Soldier on though.....I'd like to see how this turns out.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Thanks Tom. Yes, I've tried using transform, but if I want to have part of the clip cropped into a square Transform doesn't give me the option to do that. I can 'scale' it into a square, but then the image is distorted. Do you see what I mean?

Not sure how long it will take me, as I will be using lots of clips, but I'm curious to see how it will turn out myself!
 
Ah right...yeah, I see what you mean now.

In that case just use the ordinary 'Rectangular Marquee' tool to define the square area...use 'Shift' to constrain to a square marquee.

Make sure the correct video layer is selected in the layers panel.

You now have two choices:

A. INVERT the selection and hit DELETE. This will PERMANENTLY remove the excess pixels.
B. Add a layer MASK. This will have the same effect but in a 'non-destructive' way.

See if that works.
Sorry I mis-understood.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
That's great. I think I got all the tools I need to get going with it now. I'll let you know how I get on and will post the finished product. Thanks again.
 
No worries.

Its a viable project but I think you may just have to 'tweak' it slightly to keep within the limitations of PS as a video editor.

Looking forward to the result!

:popcorn:

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Hey Tom,

So, I've been pretty busy and am just coming back to this project now. There's one other thing I could use your advice with. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a perfectly simple answer to this, so it might be a dumb question!

I have my black screen. I have my clips at the sizes I want them and organized how I want them. The thing is in order to also also organize the clips which are off screen (but will later be scrolling on screen), unless I start moving everything bit by bit across the screen how can I see what I'm doing when trying to place and organize the ones that are off screen? You mentioned to put everything in a group and then scroll it along when it's all done but as far as I can see, unless I keep edging everything along from right to left there's no way to see what i'm doing off screen.

Would the solution then be to keep moving everything bit by bit to work on what I need to work on, then when it's all ready undo all that key framing and then move the whole lot in one go?

Hopefully my question makes sense!

Thanks
 
Good question.

The idea I had in mind was this:

You have all your 'clips' in one group.
Have all your clips in roughly the same place.....on top of each other.

Decide on how long your video is going to be and set that in the timeline.
Key the start and end of the group moving from right to left.

Then, from the start, position your first clips and move the others further along to the right.
Keep advancing, (by scrubbing the playhead or with next frame button), by one or two frames positioning the relevant clips as you go.

Its just a case of "move further along the group animation and position its contents as you do so."

By the time you get to the end all your clips should then be in the right place relative to the group.....which is moving slowly right to left.

You may have to jiggle the clips in order for them to start playing before they are visible but you can do that from the timeline once you have them positioned.

I had difficulty explaining that so if it makes no sense I'll try to do a video for you....that may be easier to understand.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Thanks for the quick response Tom. Yes, that does make sense, you did a good job of explaining it! Ok, I'm gonna try that.

My job now is finding all the suitable clips I need on youtube, which will probably be over 50 clips. Which then all need to be chopped into the right size. I've only got about 10 done so far. Might take a while, but watch this space!
 
Assuming you use Windows...(there may be a Mac equiv?)

If you haven't already check out FFMPEG.
(You'll need the [STATIC] Windows Builds from HERE or nav to them from the site)
Static build is top of the list.

There is also a GUI for it too...WINFF.

FFMPEG is exceptional at anything to do with video...re-encoding, resampling, re-sizing, extracting frames, colour balance, text, remove sound, conversions, CROPPING.....etc etc....you name it, it does it.

Its primarily a command line program but the GUI makes it pretty simple to use.....and it'll batch job videos too.

If your 'clips' need no sound and making as small as possible then this is the thing to use.....i can let you have the settings for that if you decide to use it.

Also if your 'clips' need re-sizing it'll do that too....although its not something I do regular it shouldn't be hard to work out the command line for it.....and the GUI can do them together.

Have a look at least......it looks very daunting at first ironically, but it really is a doddle once you've done one or two commands and it'll save you a shed load of time.....so much so that it means you really can experiment without losing too much time over it.......did I say it was bloomin' quick too!

WINFF will come with 'a' version of FFMPEG but its best to download the latest version from the above site and swap WINFF's copy for it.....(there are only 2 or 3 files).

Once you've compressed and cropped your 'clips' they should fit into PS more easily.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
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Thanks Tom, that's very helpful. I do use Windows, I'll have a look at it. As you may have figured out I'm not too tech savvy so let's see how I get on!

The thing is, with the clips, I am using 3 different frame sizes to crop them into and in each case I am just cutting out the face or face and upper body. So I'm not sure how much can be done batching them. I'm getting on ok doing it with PS and I get a bit daunted by new programs so I'll have a look and see. If it turns out to be much quicker than how I have been doing it it might be worth a try.

I don't want to be bugging you for every little thing, but I have been looking for a solution to this online and haven't found one, although I'm sure it's pretty simple. I'm looking to reverse one of the clips. I have mostly used the video editor for making gifs and have no trouble reversing the frames on a gif. But I can't seem to figure out how to reverse a video clip. Is that possible or do I need to turn it into a gif to do it?

Thanks again.
 
No worries.

Don't be scared of FFMPEG.
It will reverse your video for you.
EDIT:
Its actually pretty easy in PS to be honest....if your system is up to it!

The GUI makes it super simple to use, its tiny but very good...no major learning at all.....you just need the right code.....and I'm here to help you with that.

How are you cropping your video's at the moment?
Is it a constant distance from the edges of each clip?

If it is then the GUI has the cropping feature which you can do at the same time as removing sound and compressing....I dunno if it will work without having the clips in question to try but it may...and it would save a lot of time.

In between posts I did this...(Just watch the smaller sized video on this page...YT doesn't show video in its native sizes)


Its rough but its close.....and hands up, I admit it didn't quite work the way I intended but it was still super easy to do regardless.

Each clip was re-sized, compressed and had the sound removed in WINFF......I did around 20 clips which took seconds to process and I picked just the six for the example.

The clip was rendered from PS and again ran through WINFF, it came out at just 165KB....yes, that small.....ideal for Web Pages.

YOUTUBE buggers it up so it becomes unnecessarily large again and doesn't allow you to view at its native size (So just watch it here instead...its nearer the right size).....but hey ho...you can't have it all.

If the PSD of this will help I can let you have it for reference.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
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