I have really enjoyed working with digital video and photos, but I can't figure out how to do an edit I want. I'd like to cover up part of an image during a clip or, better yet, superimpose an image or another video clip on top of part or all of the original. The only options I've found so far have been using a picture-in-picture, or using a title. The P-in-P option is good, but would be limited to a single rectangular area. The title option is limited to the shapes I can generate with text, and most editing packages aren't very flexible about placing the text. Perhaps this is too ambitious to expect from a consumer-class package. I do it all the time with photos and audio, but I understand video is a different animal. I'm currently using Nero 6, and I'm happy with it, but I'm willing to get something else (within a budget) to get this functionality. Any experiences or recommendations? Thanks!
I don't know what you are asking for sure, but with Roxio EMC7.5, you can insert a video clip on top of another video clip and resize it to what you want. It is square, though, which just makes sense. Nero is extremely limited when doing video editing of clips.
Thanks Bruce. Inserting a second video clip is what I referred to as Picture-in-picture, and that's not too bad of an option. With digital photos and some relatively inexpensive software, it's easy to remove objects from a picutre, or change their color, add antennae to your in-laws, or whatever. I'm looking for a way to tweak the contents of my video the same way. For example, a video of my kids in a play shows too much of the audience at the bottom. I'd like to be able to trim that off, or cover it up. Sometimes, the distracting elements of a scene are smaller or more integrated. I'd like a way to manipulate a video clip the way I do pictures, frame by frame, or better yet, do one frame and have the sw copy that change to a range of frames. It's been hard for me to understand how flexible the tools are by reading the product info, that's why I've come here. Can someone explain what the Overlays and Chroma-keying features described in Roxio's EMC7.5 do? Could I create my own overlay to hide the audience, or use chroma-key to turn the back of their heads black?
I haven't used the chroma in EMC7.5, but I use overlays all of the time, and that is exaclty what you want you use to hide part of the audience. You could use a color panel as an overlay, and size it to hide the audience for whatever portion of the movie that you need it.
It doesn't look like EMC has a trial version, so I can't play with these features before I buy. Can anyone tell me about Chroma Keying?
