Using Video Effects in Studio

Pinnacle Studio doesn’t have built-in special effects, per se, but it does offer tools to let you modify the appearance of your video clips. Here’s a summary of the tools and effects available in Studio:

• Adjust color and lighting: You can modify colors and lighting in video clips using controls in the Adjust Colors toolbox. To open this toolbox, select a clip in the timeline and choose Toolbox➪Adjust Color. The toolbox appears above the timeline, as shown in Figure. Most of the time you won’t want to make any extreme adjustments, but you can correct color problems in video images with a little fine-tuning. If you’re going for a black-and-white look in your movie, you don’t need any special effects. Simply adjust the Saturation slider all the way to zero to remove color from the video image.
• Blur: As you might guess, the Blur slider blurs the video image. If you set the Blur slider to number one, it does a fair imitation of a soft filter. Any higher setting, though, and the image just looks, well, blurry.
• Emboss, Mosaic, and Posterize: These controls are of limited use, in my opinion, although they can be useful when you’re creating a custom background image (for a DVD menu, for example):

1. Emboss gives the appearance that your video image has been embossed into plastic or metal.
2. Mosiac changes the image into a pattern of colored square blocks. As you adjust the slider farther to the right, the blocks become larger, further distorting the image.
3. Posterize reduces the number of colors in the image to create a cartoon-like appearance.

• Vary playback speed: Studio has a really nice toolbox for adjusting the playback speed of video clips. To open this toolbox, choose Toolbox➪ Vary Playback Speed.
• Overlay graphics: You can use the title editor to lay simple graphics over a video image_ Hollywood FX Pro: Pinnacle offers Hollywood FX Pro, a tool that can create some advanced video effects. Hollywood FX Pro is available as a plug-in for Studio for $99.