Hi CS -

Are you going to share your discovery? Since you originally posted that question, I've been playing with ways of doing it.

At first I was making alpha transitions, but couldn't get a transition to replicate the closing - then opening look of an aperture.

The I started building an animation (which is still incomplete) to overlay over a transition point.

Cheers - Tony

P.S. and your other question about using a hexagonal mask... the answer is yes. You just need to make a mask like the one attached then import it into PiP Designer. It can be resized and moved as you wish.
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ynotfish --... I may if it warms up just a little bit here .... yet in October!

I thought when I posted that ... that someone would ask for such. NOW, the only thing is, HOW DO I DO THAT? lol

Seriously, I've tried to post just a screen shot and I haven't been able to quite figure THAT out even ! But I'm sure I can figure this out if I take the time to do so.

So, do you have any words of encouragement or advice/instruction as to how I would post my results?

I created individual frame images at each stage of the shutter closing. Then I 'green screened' the opening in each of those images and created a PIP and used the ChormaKey to make a PNG that allows the 'green screen' part to show through on each frame. I reduced the frame duration (was only available after the PNG was created and inserted into the timeline)- then with each frame at 1 frame in duration set them in order - Largest opening to smallest - THEN BACK to largest opening again.

My set of images have 14 going in one direction. So the whole set, closing, then opening, are 28 frames long. Might be 30 as I come to think of it but that's not important.

SO, how do I 'capture' that sequence' of 28 or 30 frames and post? I don't know... yet. Will work on it. But I hope I explained HOW I did it to someone's understanding.

It was a bit of work - key for me was understanding how the PIP and ChromaKey worked and getting the shutter operating vid clip - then snapshotting each frame of the shutter operation.

CS PD13 Ultimate - Build 3516, WIN 8.1, 64 Bit, 16G RAM, Intel Core i5 4460, CPU @ 3.2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT720, Graphics Memory(total avail.)-4093MB
LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Drive

Hi CS -

Seems like we both arrived at a similar conclusion. Transitions won't do it, but animation will.

Here's what I got up to... two aperture transition overlays, one slightly quicker than the other. They're on DirectorZone as PiP Objects at http://directorzone.cyberlink.com/detail/124826828 and http://directorzone.cyberlink.com/detail/124826827 The quicker one looks better to me.

Attached are a produced video showing them in action and a screenshot of the timeline. I used no transitions - just lined up the "fully closed aperture" point with the end/start of each photo.

To share yours you could just attach some screenshots of the animation in action or a video showing how it works.

Cheers - Tony

P.S. I lifted the frames for the animation from an alpha channel video (which would work fine directly). You can download it here - http://www.mediafire.com/download/899642b6iif298a/camera+shutter+alpha.mov
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Oh man! It looks like you used the SAME shutter video clip that I did! Iris/shutter looks identical. And the motion looks similar. Only difference is that I took snapshots of each incremental closure of the shutter and then turned them into individual PIP images.

Then, like I stated above, I lined them up on the timeline and reduced there duration to 1 frame each. So my 'transition' (careful using THAT word here as we(you and I) KNOW that this isn't a transition as defined by PD) - runs through much more quickly than you example video that you posted. And I used a different, single shutter sound - I think the one that came with the clip - but I cut it down to jsut one shutter actuation.

The PIP duration is a bit awkward to set - as I do NOT see where I can do the duration of the PIP in the PIP Designer. I had to save each PIP and then once they were inserted into the timeline, THEN I had to right click edit each image and set duration for each image! I have 15 frames/images of closure and 15 of opening too! - so this is quite a lot of duration 'resetting'.

Which begs the question - Is there some easier method to setting the clip (PIP shutter images I made) duration attribute? I tried to select the whole group of shutter images and I can't do it that way !

Should have read about the Keyboard HotKeys FIRST I suppose - but still would be nice to select several clips or images or PIPs at once and set duration for the whole bunch that I select - instead of having to go into each individual image and set duration.

Tried 'grouping' the objects(just all the shutter PIP images on the timeline) - that would not let me select set duration though.

I'll try to get this PrtSc thing to work (next thread update). PD13 Ultimate - Build 3516, WIN 8.1, 64 Bit, 16G RAM, Intel Core i5 4460, CPU @ 3.2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT720, Graphics Memory(total avail.)-4093MB
LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Drive

Hey CS! Great work!

To make it easier to apply I tried to build it as a PiP Object, which slowed down the motion. Yours looks much better.

Cheers - Tony
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Thanks Tony! You know I just kept thinking about it and then thought about the PIP capability - I hadn't really used it before this though. SO I looked into it and ... viola! lol

Optodata or jcard... or someone..... may have told me about this - I can't seem to find his earlier responses to me when I was trying to use transitions. He might have said to do this and I was not able to understand. So I want to give credit to him/them - if they suggested this and I didn't know what they were talking about at that time! I DO NOW.. lol.

Yea, I like the faster 'transition' and I've gotten several audio clips now of different shutter sounds. I can slow them or speed them up to vary the sound effect.

Did you see the 'new thread' I started? I'm having to create this in every project - was hoping that I could somehow create a 'macro' that I could call upon in any project!

take care,
CS PD13 Ultimate - Build 3516, WIN 8.1, 64 Bit, 16G RAM, Intel Core i5 4460, CPU @ 3.2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT720, Graphics Memory(total avail.)-4093MB
LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Drive