Fyre! Part1: Manipulating Fyre.

You like to play with fire but you don’t like to burn your fingers. Don’t you?

Hope

Thanks to Kendra Springer for this nice music.

Fyre draws chaotic figures (fractals) based on the Peter De Jong formula. You can use Fyre either to make still pictures or little animations.

• Fyre gallery on flickr
• Kenneth Hammond’s fyre artwork on deviantart

Playing with Fyre.

When you launch Fyre, it always starts with the same parameters. Same Width and Height of your final picture, same background and foreground colours, same minimal exposure and gamma, same values for the A, B, C, D parameters etc etc … As a result whenever you start Fyre, you’ve got the same figure (sort of rounded triangle).

Fyre at starting

To change this original graphic, you can either enter your own values for each parameters or use the Tools which will let you increase or decrease these values on mouse gestures.

For example: From blank project (Go -> Defaults);

• change the background and the foreground colours,
• increase the exposure and the gamma,
• Choose a tool (eg: Tools -> AB/CD).  Click on the figure and move the mouse to modify the values.
• Check Emphasize transient in the parameter panel and change the Initial conditions.
• Take random values for the A, B, C, D parameters with Go -> Random parameters

Choose a tool, modify the values. You know now how to manipulate Fyre.

Export your Art.

Abstract from the readme file: “All the images you can create with this program are based on the simple Peter
de Jong map equations […]. For most values of a,b,c and d the point (x,y) moves chaotically. The resulting image is a map of the probability that the point lies within the area represented by each pixel. As you let Fyre render longer it collects more samples and this probability map and the image becomes more accurate.”

So the images are calculated by the processor(s) of your computer. The longer the calculation last, the better the “quality” of the graphic is. That’s why you should take care to check View -> Pause Rendering each time you don’t want it to go further.

OK. It wasn’t really entirely made by you but you are proud of your Art. Fyre gives you the possibility to save it to .png images or .exr (OpenEXR). You will be able to keep the alpha channel if you chose a transparent background (or foreground) for your stills. For animated images that’s another thing.

Make the flames dance.

Animations are made through the animation window. It consists in choosing fixed figures named “keyframes” so that the software can calculate all the frames making the transition between these keyframes. You choose two key-frames, a duration and a speed (with the spline) and the animation window calculate each figure making the transition in-between.

• Ignite Fyre. Start a new fyre or keep the default one.
• View -> Animation Window.
• Add : The current figure is added as a new keyframe in the animation list. Modify the duration and the speed (with the spline).
• Back on the main window to draw another graphic. When done, add it in the animation window as a new keyframe.
• etc etc

Play your work. Flames move.

Depends on size, framerate, quality, oversampling you choose for the final render… and speed of your CPU(s),  rendering process will last just a while or ages.

Rendering this 640×480 project of 3’07” at 24 fps with quality 1,00 took me about 9 hours!! with my two cores athlon 7850. Rendering process for animated images cannot be made currently through cluster nodes.

Status bar gives information on the iterations done, their speed and the corresponding duration and quality for the figure drawn.

The generated .avi file is huge (almost 4 Gio for my project). To insert it into Cinelerra and add a sound track I had to convert it with Handbrake. The resulting file (.m4v format with mpeg-4 video codec, 5166 Kbps) was easily handled by Cinelerra.

Other tools using (or not) fractals:

– Flam3 through Qosmic frontend.

– Context Free Art

– Flame from escapemotions.com

References:

– Fyre: Iniciaciòn a la creaciòn de figuras caoticas from Joaclintistgud

– Fyre page on visualcomplexicity.com 

What’s new in Cinelerra 4?

About a year since its release, I finally managed to get Cinelerra 4 running on my system! Applause!! Thanks, thanks.

Cinelerra 4444444444444!

TRY IT!

I finally figured out that the binary packages on heroinewarrior website were not .deb archives for ubuntu distro.

To get Cinelerra 4 no need to compile it. Just download the tar.bz2 archive of your architecture and untar it. Once done, run ./cinelerra in a terminal in the folder that appeared.

After a symlink ln -s /lib/libbz2.so.1 /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1.0 to get rid of an error, I was able to test the beast on my Fedora 10 system.

Get it running and follow me.

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS.

There are numerous new features in Cinelerra4 but not enough to alert the media.

Let’s see.

Masks are keyframable in real time

This is one of the best new features. With Cinelerra4 masks attributes changes are now recorded in real time. This means you will be able to blur somebody’s face and follow it by moving the mask in real time. Moreover it is now possible to change values for several keyframes at the same time by selecting them.

It can be an arduous exercise but masking a detail in real time can be very useful.

Two new effects and other nice things

• Swap Frames effect (New): it gives sort of trembling effect to your video. It doesn’t have many options.

swap frames

• Lens aberration effect (New): No need to describe it. It is another really nice feature.

Two lens effects applied on this video.

• Ruler and Angle tool (New): Maybe useful when using with the perspective effect for example.

ruler and angle tool

• 2 Points motion tracking tool (New): Well I still have to figure out how to use the first one.

"2 point motion tracking for faster rotation tracking."

• Musical notes in the synthesizer (New):  Well … don’t know if it can be interesting. I’m not a musical guy.

I'm sure it will make you want to play piano.

New audio file format

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) from Xiph.org. Cinelerra4 can import/export flac files. Not really the big feature (imo) but it’s a good thing to have the choice.

flac flac flac flac

Pretty icons to select Insertion strategy

Once you got their meaning these icons simplify your life.

pretty and useful

Other good news

• Cinelerra can read .wma, .wmv, and .flv files. Seeking in these files formats works half the time, though.
• Attach effects to multiple tracks simultaneously from the Audio & Video menus.
• Better asynchronous frame decoding.
• ID3 tags handled by mp3 parser.
• Spectrogram horizontal zoom & colour.

NOW THE BAD NEWS.

These are not that numerous.

Let’s see.

No compatibility with Cinelerra2.1!

You will not be able to open your old .xml projects created with Cinelerra2.1 in Cin4. I tried and either I couldn’t find my keyframes (camera, masks, overlay) or Cinelerra crashed (or hung) instantly. Too Bad!

Cinelerra still can’t capture from firewire

Unless you are a lucky guy (like SimAV), you still will need kinodv or dvgrab to record your video from firewire.

Bezier mode for curves?

is this bezier curves?

Some useful options disappeared

• Where is my manual goto tool ? Gone.
• Can’t import still pictures with a longer duration. The option is not in Settings -> Preferences -> Recording -> Video In.

– An article on Cinelerra4 on LWN.net by Forrest Cook.

– A test of the Cinelerra4 OpenGL engine from Marmottux.

Masking, masks, masquerade, Carnival!

In this how-to I will replace my shadow with another one by applying a mask on the first one. Masking permit you to isolate a specific region of a picture for special treatment.

While I’m smoking my shadow is drinking water because it is dehydrated.

This little video was inspired to me by a photo from Clarisse a nice girl of the Netlog social network:

“You should not give too much freedom to your shadow” Clarisse.

To make this effect I had to do all the sequences in only one take.

Why? Because the use of mask for these sort of videos needs same weather, same light, same background, same camera position (or same move) etc …

You already know: 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 on the first track of the timeline.

The video I want to modify: my shadow is smoking just like me.

If you apply a mask right now on your video it will appear like a black hole drawn on the picture.

How to draw a mask:

• In the compositor window click on the Edit mask tool . The mouse pointer change for a cross pointer that indicate you can draw right on the picture.
• Use the splines to make a shape that surround the subject(s) you want to eliminate. There you guess that’s where this technique can become arduous: if the subject is moving you will have to follow his movement by modifying the mask shape or moving it (with Ctrl Alt Click).
• The Show tool info button (question mark button) open a dialogue box and give you more options to change the mask:  mode, opacity, smoothness of the edges… I let you discover them.

The mask appear like a black hole in the picture. Substract alpha mode eliminate the subject, multiply alpha mode isolate the background of the subject.

Now you can load the video containing the new subject in a track below your first track. That’s all!

In fact steps 3 and 4 can be inverted but well it’s an how-to.

Last word: Masks are keyframable; that means you can change their attributes along the time using keyframes (which are viewable with View -> Mask).

There are different methods to isolate a specific region of a picture. It is possible for example to select an object by it’s color. Drawing a mask with splines is just one of them.

Masking is also used to blur someone’s face for example, to emphasis a character by bluring his surroundings, to make clones, or other artistic effects.

Another use of masking with Cinelerra.

What about a contest to imitate this sequence of Lucky luck cartoon?:

What about a contest?

Other videos made with Cinelerra playing with masks:

– Being by myself from devapea

– Cinelerra masking from Tatucik

– Mi clon y yo from pedroIramon

– Core 2 duo from zoelans

– Clones from strongpiggie

– Cinelerra Magic from Kris Czerniawski

– Intro Guerrilla y nuevos movimientos sociales from Victor Zamora

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 (link)
• 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 (original size). 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!