[Kdenlive-devel] Introduction

[Oceanwatcher]

On Wednesday 03 June 2009 04:06:59 Dan Dennedy wrote:

> As we discussed in the forum, and I as mentioned here previously, I do
> think we need to cleanup the names of the transitions. Let's put aside
> the issue with the Composite transition for the moment. I am thinking
> namely about "Luma" and "Wipe." I had proposed a new one named
> "Dissolve" that would become the default - basically a featureless
> version of today's Luma. Then, I think Wipe should be called Slide
> (please confirm). Finally, what is currently Luma would be called
> Wipe. Do you agree? JB, are you ok with this?

I think it is a good idea to pick up on what is the normal thing to use in the 
industry. It makes it easier for experienced editors to start using the 
program, and for anyone that use Kdenlive, they will be able to relate to 
things if they read a general book about editing.

Dissolve - is the name used for an effect that takes two video clips and fades 
from one to the other in the transition. You will sometimes hear people call 
it crossfade, mix and a few other things depending on language, but the most 
known term is dissolve.

Wipe - this is a group term for a lot of effects. Common for all of them is 
that they do not resize either outgoing or incoming picture (two other 
standard terms :-) ).

One list of these wipes (the SMPTE wipes) can be found in this document:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-smil-boston-20000622/smil-transitions.html

The names used in this document (under Taxonomy...) are quite familiar and 
would be very ok to use. Let me know if you have any questions. If you need to 
see examples, I will try to find videos that show each of them.

A wipe can normally be customized to a certain degree:
Softness of the edge
Border/thickness of border
Border color
Reverse direction

All SMPTE wipes have a number and these numbers are used when making an EDL to 
be used in some other systems. EDL's are not used too much any more, but 
sequence data still need to be moved around. As I am not a programmer I can 
not be totally sure, but I would be very surprised if they do not use the 
standard SMPTE numbers for these wipes in the AAF format that is more and more 
common for moving sequence (timeline) data.

I can try to get a list of the names used in MediaComposer and post it here 
(just need to reboot into Windows...) There are other wipes than the SMPTE 
ones, but those we can talk about later :-)

Another word on effects: Please try to aim for single track transitions as soon 
as possible with a special button for dissolve and drag and drop for the 
lesser used. This is actually the most important on the effects side. If you 
want to make a priority, drop all other effect, only do the dissolve and make 
it work exactly the way it should. An editor can live without effects in 
general. The only one he really needs sometimes is the dissolve.

A little fact tidbit for those that do not know:

Anything else than a clean cut used to involve a lot of work. Even tv news had 
to be shot on film ( not toooo long ago :-)  ) and the only way to do this was 
to cut out the two pieces that would overlap, send them to a laboratory. They 
would then copy them together (called an optical) and send back a new piece of 
film that had to be spliced in to the right place. It was expensive and took a 
lot of time, so this was only used very rarely. And it was used with a 
purpose. BTW - if you edit film the manual, analog way, it still has to be done 
like this!

The two main purposes for using a dissolve was

1. A jump in time - show a picture of a man working. Dissolve to a new picture 
of him several hours later, still working.

2. A jump in geographical location - show a man leaving an office in New York, 
dissolve to him entering an office in London.

The examples might not be too great, but you get the idea :-)

Regards,

Oceanwatcher