Four elementary questions

TravisJ

Member Joined: Apr 12, 2019 21:02 Messages: 57 Offline

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Sep 12, 2019 20:04

Finished making a movie, and wanted to refine my knowledge to learn how to do these four basic things for future videos I produce:

1) How do I put some sort of a little "Ribbon" that could literally just be a solid rectangle, or some sort of a gradient-colored rectangle, toward the bottom of my video, that goes along the full lenth of the video and "finds the edges of the screen", such that I could place objects on top of it like a logo, or like some text, or something..? Even if it is some sort of a "bleed" horizontal ribbon that goes across the entire width of the Video, that is toward the bottom, that'd be fine. I found the "Color Boards", but couldn't quite determine how to make those be sort of shapes that exist WITHIN my video playing, instead of just being these big BLOCKS of color with a black background that really jam up against the video on the Timeline, rather than being sort of a child of and exist within the video.

2) How do I place pieces of text within the video? For example, in this video, it's an instructional video with "4 Parts" to it. So, when we get to the time in the video where I am sort of narrating and saying, "for the second part of the video, we will be talking about _________ ", how can I flash sort of a big "2" graphic on the screen, and then some sort of quick subittle for it that'll sit right there next to that big "2" graphic; and then I define for how long those sit there while I sort of am narrating that part of the video, for those seconds?

3) What's the best way for me to sort of type out subtitles for each thing that I am saying, as I am narrating the entire video, like many videos I see out on the Internet? I understand it is an undertaking and will require time and effort, but I just wanted to see what the best method is, for doing that, within Power Director 17. That is, how do I assemble the pieces of text, and show them and define within which frames of time they are on-screen, etc?

4) How do I blur little pieces of video that I have captured whenever I went to Plugins >> Screen Recorder , got a video that way as I was navigating through something on my computer, but had some sensitive information I'd like to blur out so that end-user viewers of my video cannot see this private information/sensitive information that is in the Screen-Record video I shot?

--TravisJ

StevenG

Contributor Joined: Jan 14, 2014 14:04 Messages: 513 Offline

Sep 13, 2019 08:14

It's probably best to break a post like this into individual questions so that you can get detailed answers rather than broadstrokes.

But that said, here are the short answers:

1) Just add a graphic of a rectangle to an upper video track, overlaying the entire video.

2) Use a title. Using opacity keyframes, you can make the number flash if you'd like.

3) You can prepare you subtitles as a TXT document using a program like Notepad. When you import the TXt document into your subtitle room, the program will break each line break in your document into a separate title, which you can then sync to your video.

4) I've created a tutorial demonstrating how to blur a face or object in your video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzKTcbPGLUM

TravisJ

Member Joined: Apr 12, 2019 21:02 Messages: 57 Offline

Sep 13, 2019 12:12

Quote
3) You can prepare you subtitles as a TXT document using a program like Notepad. When you import the TXt document into your subtitle room, the program will break each line break in your document into a separate title, which you can then sync to your video.

Thank you for all of the answers, @StevenG .

As far as this thing you mentioned about typing them up in Notepad, and importing them into my project, created a .txt file that literally just has the text

this is
a
test to see how
subtitles are
supposed
to
work.
yeah.

in it; and then when I am in my Subtitle Room in Power Director 17, right-click in the window, click "Import...", and choose this .txt file, I get an error, saying,

"There are no existing subtitles to replace. You must add blank subtitles first."

Like I said, I'm elementary, here; I'm probably missing some very basic step.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 13. 2019 12:13

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 13, 2019 12:27

Quote "There are no existing subtitles to replace. You must add blank subtitles first."

Like I said, I'm elementary, here; I'm probably missing some very basic step.

There are lots of answers out there that you can look up on your own. For example, using Google or Bing to search for "subtitle text format" might have gotten you this page, which explains how to format an SRT file and also shows you why your attempt won't work. There are also plenty of forum threads on the subject as well, like this one that goes into great detail.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 13. 2019 12:28

TravisJ

Member Joined: Apr 12, 2019 21:02 Messages: 57 Offline

Sep 19, 2019 20:05

@StevenG and @optodata , thank y'all; your answers have been very helpful.

However, have I run into a limitation of PowerDirector? I have insert five different "Mosaic" "Blur" fx tracks into my Project. And I am attempting to add more, because I need some more blurs on different parts of the video...am I limited to five fx Tracks, within my project, in PowerDirector 17?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 19. 2019 20:06

TravisJ

Member Joined: Apr 12, 2019 21:02 Messages: 57 Offline

Oct 09, 2019 03:53

People may not care a *whole lot*, but, since I made several topics here at these forums about how to do certain things in Power Director 17, all for the purpose of my churning out this first video I've ever end-to-end and completed, I've finished this first-video-ever of mine, and it's here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE-yZkyQp4g

God bless!

--TravisJ