Like in a dream effect with Cinelerra

I was trying to figure out how to make a “dream effect” with Cinelerra – you know this effect used by filmmakers to show that a character is dreaming or to give sort of beauty to a sequence – … so I shot a baby hummingbird (with my camcorder). Believe me or not; this effect is also called “instant sex” trick.

seems like I made an excessive use of the blur effect

Open Cinelerra. Prepare your project (size, framerate, color model etc) in Settings -> Format according to the media you will use or the destination of your final work.

When done, load the video you want to modify twice on the timeline just  like in the following screenshot:

The part of the video you want to modify must be loaded twice.

In the second track,  insert a brightness/contrast effect and a blur one by dragging/dropping them from the resources window to the timeline.

We should insert them in this order: brightness/contrast effect on top of blur effect. Right click on the effect bar and move them top or down.

Click on the little magnifying glass to change the values of the effects.

For this how-to I chose these values:

- brightness: -0.0600   contrast: 1.800

- blur: 20

Add effects and deinterlace your video (if needed) with the deinterlace effect.

In the previous screenshot, as you can see, I deinterlaced my video (with the deinterlace effect).

If you use a progressive file format you can go directly to the forth step of this how-to.

Two links to understand what (de)interlacing is ==>100fps.com hardware.info (see the picture).

Cinelerra offers different deinterlace filters. The Bob & Weave one seems to be commonly used.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the special ingredient:

For the first track, change the overlay mode to Addition and adjust the opacity to 50% for example.

That’s all Folks!

Change brightness/contrast, blur, opacity values to get the effect you want to make.

Go in the wild to shoot some birds…  and don’t forget to warm your balance.

Note1: Bad new; overlay modes don’t seem to be keyframable .

Note2: I’m not sure if this is the better way to make this effect but I’m not unsatisfied of the result. If you have other methods I would like to test them.

Other how-tos playing with overlay mode:

- Vignetting-in-cinelerra from M4rci.

- Cinelerra: efecto lapiz from facilware.com

Stop-motion animations with Cinelerra: the “PESCI” example.

Let me introduce you to raffa, an italian music and art teacher and active member of the Cinelerra and Lumiera communities. She uses Cinelerra at school for months now making nice projects with her pupils. “PESCI” is one of these projects. They even got a prize for it.

Find a brilliant idea.

Make sketches as your storyboard.

Stop-motion is a simple way to make good quality movies with low budget. You’ll see.

Go in the wild with your camera to take some photos.

Decompose all movements you want to show with several photos. Each photo is called a frame. Stop-motion is an animation technique.

Awesome! Isn’t it?

When your pictures are all in the box just put them in a folder somewhere in your computer.

If it’s not the case already, the frames should be renamed in a chronological basis. Something like frame0001.jpg, frame0002.jpg … frame0003.jpg etc etc.

Load the pictures into Cinelerra.

We could load all files like we did in the previous tutorials (Files -> Load files -> insertion strategy) but for this exercise we will use another solution:

• Download and install this piece of software ==> seven-gnomes
• Just drop the folder containing your frames in the first tab of the software.
• A .toc file appear in your folder. It contains a list of all the frames and the framerate they should be displayed. This .toc file can be edited with a simple text editor.
• Now you can load the .toc thing into Cinelerra like a normal video file.

Note that you can use other tools to make the image list ==> image lists tools

For example raffa chose Img2list ==> raffa’s howto page.

Look: Frames loaded as a list appear like a normal video file on the timeline.

Play the whole thing to see your animation. It works? I’m proud of you.

Add some effects, a sound track.

You can also edit the frames in your favorite bitmap manipulating program to add virtual object to your movie but that is another story.

Other stop-motion animations made with cinelerra:

- check raffa’s vimeo page.

- Linda and Tim’s wedding made by Shannon Smith.

How to pan in an image (Ken Burns effect)

Ken Burns effect consist in zooming and/or panning in an image. This effect give the possibility to take maximum advantage of a single still picture. Note that this picture should be large enough.

Let’s take a big image on the internet.

We find really nice photos on flickr! Look this one I found ==> panorama. It was made by Jasmin Cormier and released under creative commons license.


Now we prepare our project and load the image. Settings -> Format : 720×576, 25 fps. Then Settings -> Preferences -> Recording tab. In “Video in” set the import images duration to 10 seconds for example. My total project actually last 49 seconds due to the sound track I chose. As usual this part is up to you considering the effect you want to create. Now we load the file: File -> Load files. We choose the image and take Replace current project as insertion strategy. OK. The image is now right on the timeline with a duration of 10 seconds. Let’s give it a longer duration (50 s for example) by using the little arrow that appear at the edge of the picture in the video track. Done? If done by playing the timeline you will see only one picture that doesn’t move during 50s. Last thing: activate the Generate keyframes while tweeking button 


OK. Let’s give that some movement! To accomplish this mission we will use the camera tool and keyframing. Keyframing? Yes. It’s the operation that consist in choosing two different events at two points of the time and letting the software calculate the intermediate events by himself. Clear? No? Just follow me:

• Go at the beginning of you project (ie time = 00.00.000). In the compositor window, activate the camera tool (Adjust camera automation)… and now the tool Info (the question mark button). In the dialogue box that appear enter these values: X:518.9438 , Y:135.6880 , Z:3.0000. This will zoom on the water-closet and make it appear at the bottom right of the screen.
• In the timeline window use now the manual go to tool to go the instant of time 7s. Then in the camera tool dialogue box enter these values : X:497.9438 , Y:-117.3120 , Z: 2.5000. The compositor window shows now the paper.
• Let’s do the same at the time 13s with the following values: X:-20.0562 , Y:-128.3120 , Z:2.8000.
• Done? Now go to the beginning of your project and play the whole thing.
• You got it.

Well this project is a bit complex to continue this tuto till the end. You know now how to use the camera tool and you are aware of what keyframing is. Almost all effects in Cinelerra are keyframable.

Additional informations: You can view the keyframes you created and the curves symbolising the camera with View –> Camera X,Y or Z. For a comfortable view click on the Fit all autos to display button. Here is an extract of my project:

Good job. Add some other effects to ameliorate the image. Why not some blurs?

You’re done.

How to load images to make a simple presentation (slideshow).

Presentation (slideshow) is the easiest way to begin to learn Cinelerra. Let’s see.

Some photos of my country from Arnaud Bertrande’s point of view.

First let’s prepare our project. Launch Cinelerra. Then Settings -> Preferences -> Recording tab. In “Video in” set the import images duration to 2 seconds for example. This means that the images are imported with a duration of 2 seconds. You will be able to give them the duration you wish after. Now let’s define the format of our project. Settings -> Format. This part is up to you. It depends on what you want to do with your final video (internet video, dvd, archiving, hd video etc).


Load the images. Files -> Load files… Browse the directories and select the images you want to load. Cinelerra can use media directly from a dvd-driver, an external hard disk, an usb-drive … You can either load a single image (with a duration of 2 seconds) or several.  Choose the Insertion strategy and apply.

Notes on Insertion strategy:

• Replace current project delete all you have on the timeline and load the pictures in different tracks. One picture per track.
• Replace current project and concatenate tracks delete what you have on the timeline and load the pictures in one single track.
• Append in new tracks keep what you have on the timeline and load the pictures in new tracks.
• Concatenate to existing tracks paste the pictures in existing tracks
• Paste at insertion point load the files where the insertion point (ie the vertical line that move on teh timeline) is.
• With Create new resources only the pictures don’t appear on the timeline. They are in the media folder in the Resources window.

We will use the second option for this project: Replace current project and concatenate tracks. We could equally choose Concatenate to existing tracks since we have nothing loaded yet.

OK. Our images are now lying on the timeline. Let’s give them the duration we want. Some pictures can last 3 seconds, others just a fraction. For that we go on the edge of each image in the timeline window (a little horizontal arrow appear), left click, drag to the right or to the left. You’re done.

Images are loaded. Durations are set. Let’s add some transitions between each pictures. Dissolve transition (Resources window -> Video transition) is the most common transition but Cinelerra give the ability to create your own transition. (see ==> http://www.assistcg.com/index.php/component/content/article/63.html). So just drag a transition and drop it at each junction. Right click on the transition icon to adjust the length and… Voila!

Add effects (why not a gradient effect?), an audio track. Render the whole project (Files -> Render). That’s all.

Introducing MakeFx

Hi all,

How to pan in an image? How to make credits? Can Cinelerra load multiple images to make an animation? How good is the motion tracking effect? How can I add panoramic sound in my video? What format/codec is better to …? That’s some of the questions users usually ask on the Cinelerra’s IRC channel. These questions concern either basic features of the software or more complex one. That’s what MakeFx is all about. It’s aimed to gather users’ knowledge of open video tools in general and Cinelerra particularly in one place. New users should find here simple tutorials to show them at last what is possible to do with this interesting software.

To make it easy for readers and writers we chose to take the following rules:

One: Anyone who knows Cinelerra can post a tutorial. He will be considered as an author. Just send us a mail to subscribe.

Two: The tutorial should be presented in this formatted scheme:

• a descriptive title that announce in short what you will present in your tutorial,
• a short introduction (facultative),
• a short video (hosted by vimeo for example) that shows the effect you make,
• the written tutorial decomposed by numbers. Photos (hosted by photobucket or flickr) can be added to the tutorial if necessary.

Title, Video and Text.

In waiting LUMIERA (The new emerging NLE for Linux) have fun folks!