Suggestions on how to create a long scrolling timeline

SkullyHB

Member Joined: Aug 29, 2009 21:04 Messages: 51 Offline

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Feb 20, 2011 12:03

I'm working on a promotional video for an organization that will have a 30 & 60 second version. As part of the video I would like to have a timeline that scrolls in across the bottom of the screen showing important dates in their history, and scrolls off the left side of the screen before the video ends.

My thought was to create a very wide graphic of the timeline and chroma key it into the video, and apply motion to scroll it from right to left. The biggest problem I'm having right now is that the text on the timeline is fuzzy and unreadable. The graphic is 8000 pixels wide to accomodate the length of the timeline (including some lead-in and trailing space for it to scroll on and off the screen). I've tried it in PNG & BMP formats.

I'm fairly new to this, although I've done other chroma keying with larger text graphics and it's worked fine. Is there a trick to make the graphics sharper, another approach I can use, or should I scrap the concept altoghether?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Filename	Timeline Graphic2.png	Download
Description	Timeline Graphic
Filesize	91 Kbytes
Downloaded:	232 time(s)

Filename	TimelineSample.mpg	Download
Description	Sample Output
Filesize	5638 Kbytes
Downloaded:	378 time(s)

PowerDirector 10 Ultra
Dell XPS Studio - i7 3.4 GHz / 8 GB RAM / Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

1Nina

Senior Contributor Location: Norway, 50km southwest of Oslo Joined: Oct 08, 2008 04:12 Messages: 1070 Offline

Feb 20, 2011 12:17

Hi Skully.

Maybe making a lower third might do?

Barry made a tut for PD8, it should work for PD9.

Making Lower Thirds : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9UxBKs9oi8&feature=youtube_gdata

Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Feb 20, 2011 12:27

You may be out of luck with that approach, although you're looking for something different, the principle here is the same - have a look at this :-
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15041.page#72750

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

SkullyHB

Member Joined: Aug 29, 2009 21:04 Messages: 51 Offline

Feb 20, 2011 13:12

Thanks for the input. I might have to change my concept, but for right now I'm still playing with it.

One interesting thing I've discovered is that if I insert the graphic into a panel in the Title Room, I can apply the chroma key and it comes out very crisp and readable - exactly what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, I can't apply motion to an image in the Title Room, so that doesn't solve my issue. It is curious though that the chroma works great in the titles, but not on the individual tracks...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 20. 2011 13:13

PowerDirector 10 Ultra
Dell XPS Studio - i7 3.4 GHz / 8 GB RAM / Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

SkullyHB

Member Joined: Aug 29, 2009 21:04 Messages: 51 Offline

Feb 20, 2011 14:34

Quote: You may be out of luck with that approach, although you're looking for something different, the principle here is the same - have a look at this :-
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15041.page#72750

Cheers
Adrian

Well, I think you were on target with that link. I remember seeing a discussion about how PD resamples an image when added to the timeline - that appears to be what is happening here. Because the image is so wide to accomodate the length of the timeline, PD not only resizes it to fit in the screen, it resamples it, so that when I stretch the image back to its original height it becomes bitty because I'm stretching the smaller image. Using a transparent PNG instead of chroma keying over the black minimizes the bittyness, but the quality is still degraded. My test of pasting it into the title room worked because PD doesn't resample the image when it is pasted into a title.

So unless there's a way to keep PD from resampling when adding to a video track, I'm going to have to find another way to pan the image at full size and import the panned version into PD as a video file (just as the poster in your link wound up doing).

Thanks to you and 1Nina for your assistance!
PowerDirector 10 Ultra
Dell XPS Studio - i7 3.4 GHz / 8 GB RAM / Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Videocentricity

Contributor Location: Long Beach,CA Joined: May 21, 2007 05:37 Messages: 394 Offline

Feb 20, 2011 17:01

I tried doing a chroma key on your PNG and indeed it is very fuzzy. Will investigate later.

Meamwhile I mad a GIF from it and was successful in creating the motion wished for - see attachments

Filename	time.zip	Download
Description
Filesize	2685 Kbytes
Downloaded:	407 time(s)


Filename	Timeline Graphic2.gif	Download
Description
Filesize	91 Kbytes
Downloaded:	209 time(s)

Filename	timeline.pds	Download
Description
Filesize	120 Kbytes
Downloaded:	417 time(s)

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