Cinelerra: Making a Header, Work with the "Title" Video Effect Print E-mail

 

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In this tutorial, NLE Cinelerra will be used to create a header in a Web 2.0 style, without the use of external raster graphics editors. Though, we admit that the same thing is much easier to make in any other editor, such as Blender, for example.

       
When you work in NLE Cinelerra, remember, that this editor works only with absolute file paths. Therefore, it is desirable to create all projects only in the /home directory of OS Linux.

1. Open NLE Cinelerra (we used Cinelerra CV). Create a new project, better larger, such as 1080P/24.
To make work on creating static header more comfortable, change location and amount of windows in the editor as shown in Figure 1.
Save project: File >> Save as ...

 Figure 1

Figure 1

2. The minimum requirement for starting work in Cinelerra is presence of any images or videos, located on a track of TimeLine. Usually we take ready materials that have been made in any raster editor, but we can make images and videos directly in Cinelerra.
To do this, delete all tracks and leave only one empty video track.
Select one frame, for example, the second one, and render it to Jpeg format with the name Black.jpeg .
Load rendered file to Resources window, "Media" folder. To do this, go to "File" >> "Load File" >> ... . Don't forget to select insertion strategy "Create new resources only" in the popped up window.
Save the result (press "S" button).

    To create a pure white image, load black image on a track (file Black.jpg). Add video effect "Invert Video" to the black image. The image will become white. You can get other colors (red, green, blue ...) by changing filter settings.
Render white image to Jpeg format with the name White.jpeg .
Load rendered file to Resources window.

3. Create one video track and put white image on it. Add video effect "Title" to the white image. Type name of the header, for example, - "MakeHeader". Note that shadow in this filter is always of the black color and is not feathered. In our example, we need a hard black shadow with offset 3px, and we'll make grey color for letters with Value = 0.4. Figure 2.
Render the resulting image to MakeHeader.png and load to Resources window.

Figure 2

Figure 2
 

4. Delete all tracks again. Make two blank video tracks and put the same  file MakeHeader.png one above the other. Turn off visibility of the upper track (click the green arrow on the left). Add  successively three video effects to the lower track: "Invert", "Blur" (10px), Brightness/Contrast (brightness value - 0,160; contrast value - 3,000).
Turn on visibility of the upper track (click the green arrow on the left again). Overlay mode - Multiply. Fade - 0.7. Figure 3.

Figure 3

Figure 3

Result: the image header in the Web 2.0 style.
Render the resulting image.

5. More often a transparent background will be required for further animation. To make a transparent background, put image of the header on a track, add "Chroma key" video effect to it with parameters: Slope - 16; Threshold - 16.
To see the effect, add another one track with image of white color under a track with the effect for using in the capacity of a background. Before rendering image with transparent background, don't forget to turn off visibility of a track with white background and check "Use Transp".