CoreMelt ImageFlow V2:
Introduction
ImageFlow Fx is a pack of 18 plugins for generating slideshows or animated backgrounds from folders of images directly inside Final Cut Pro / Motion / Final Cut Express or After Effects.
All the plugins have the same basic workflow:
- Add the Generator plugin to your project
- Select "folders" or "image wells".
- Select a folder of images.
- Select a time per image.
- Hit play and see an animation straight away.
- Adjust and tweak animation parameters, masks and picture frames.
All VeeYou plugins appear in the "Video Generators" folder in the effects panel
NOT under "video filters".
Whats New in V2:
Images, movies, sequences and layers of video can now be added using image wells:
Aside from folders of images or movies being the source for ImageFlow FX generators, you can now drop layers of video straight from your project into image wells to use as the source.
Select the "image wells" option from the "from" drop down menu and drag your layers into them or straight from the bin.
ImageFlow FX free plugins now live in their own folder:
You will see two folders of plugins in the generators section of your plugins list, "C2 ImageFlow - Free Plugins" and "C2 ImageFlow - Instant Montages"
Enhanced RT preview mode:
In FCP/FCE ImageFlow plugins do not delay rendering while loading images if the RT quality mode is not “high”, instead a place holder image is shown. Final renders always delay rendering until the images are loaded.
More Fitting options:
You can now choose the option “Fit Longest” from scaling type which will scale the longest
side of the image to fit in the project resolution while keeping the aspect ratio the
same.
ImageFlow Fx loads movies and compositions as well as still images:
ImageFlow Fx can create dynamic montage animations from movies and quartz compositions as well as still images. Use the “Load” control to choose if images, movies, compositions or all three are loaded from the selected folder. You can choose two different modes of movie playback, when selecting “Time mode” -> “From Start” each movie starts playing the moment it fades on, when selecting “Time mode” -> “Continuous” each movie is constantly playing from time zero and loops back to the start when it finishes.
WARNING: you may find extremely long render times if you point ImageFlow to a folder of HD movies, we do not recommend you try using ImageFlow is this fashion. Especially when using the “multi” plugins which play up to 8 images at a time you should scale down your content before attempting to create montage animations. You will get best results using content in a codec which is designed for realtime playback with lowest overhead, we recommend transcoding your content to Photo Jpeg codec for this reason. Avoid using MPEG4 or H264 content if possible.
Motion Blur Can now be rendered in all hosts:
All plugins now render with motion blur in Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, Motion and After Effects CS3/CS4
Global Preferences:
Press the "globals" button on all plugins to access the global preferences for all coremelt v2 plugins. Global preferences than can be enabled or disabled for each plugin include Motion Blur and Color Clamping ranges.
Graphical Texture/Mask Pulldowns:
Masks or built in textures such ad the imageflow frames now appear as thumbnails in the menu to allow you to select them easily. You can also add your own masks to the CoreMelt Masks menu by creating a folder in your home directory "~/Library/Application Support/CoreMelt/V2 Vector Masks". Any PDF, AI or PNG image files placed in that directory will be available for all CoreMelt plugins to use as built in masks. You can customise other texture browsers in the same way, a full list of directories is in the full documentation.
New Vector Based Masks and Frames:
All built in masks and frames in CoreMelt plugins are now vector files which are rasterized at the fly at the full project resolution.
Quick Start:
After Effects CS3/CS4
- Create a new composition
- Create a "solid Layer" using the "Layer" > "New" > "Solid" menu.
- Bring up the "filters" panel
- Browse to the "C2 ImageFlow - Instant Montages" folder
- Drag one of the ImageFlow generators onto your timeline
- Select what type of media you wish to animate from the "load" drop down list
- Click the "choose" button to choose a folder containing the media you wish to animate (JPG, TIFF, PNG, etc or MOV, DV or Quartz Compositions)
- Select the tempo you wish to use under the "Secs per image" slider. You can also change the "rest time" which is the amount of time each image will stay still on the screen before the next image starts to animate onto the screen. A "rest time" of 0.75 and a "secs per image" of 4 means that each image will rest for 3 seconds, then the animation of the next image in the sequence will take one second to transition on.
NOTE: In FCP5 and Motion 2.1.2 you must specify the correct timebase for the project (eg 25 FPS for PAL or 29.97 for NTSC) or else the lengths of time each image is on the screen will be incorrect. - Alter the other settings until you have achieved the desired result.
Motion 3.0
- Create your project
- Browse to the "generators" - "C2 ImageFlow - Instant Montages" folder in the library
- Drag one of the ImageFlow generators onto your project
- Bring up the generators "Inspector" panel
- Select what type of media you wish to animate from the "load" drop down list
- Click the "choose" button to choose a folder containing the media you wish to animate (JPG, TIFF, PNG, etc or MOV, DV or Quartz Compositions)
- Select the tempo you wish to use under the "Secs per image" slider. You can also change the "rest time" which is the amount of time each image will stay still on the screen before the next image starts to animate onto the screen. A "rest time" of 0.75 and a "secs per image" of 4 means that each image will rest for 3 seconds, then the animation of the next image in the sequence will take one second to transition on.
- Alter the other settings until you have achieved the desired result.
Final Cut Pro & Final Cut Express
- Create your project
- Browse to the "video generators" - "C2 ImageFlow - Instant Montages" folder in the effects library (please note: Video Generators)
- Drag one of the ImageFlow generators onto your timeline
- Bring up the "controls" panel
- Select what type of media you wish to animate from the "load" drop down list
- Click the "choose" button to choose a folder containing the media you wish to animate (JPG, TIFF, PNG, etc or MOV, DV or Quartz Compositions)
- Select the tempo you wish to use under the "Secsper image" slider. You can also change the "rest time" which is the amount of time each image will stay still on the screen before the next image starts to animate onto thescreen. A "rest time" of 0.75 and a "secs per image" of 4 means that each image willrest for 3 seconds, then the animation of the next image in the sequence will take one second to transition on.
- Alter the other settings until you have achieved the desired result.
Motion Blur:
Final Cut Pro & Final Cut Express:
Motion blur is built into FCP by default, but only renders using the CPU, not the GPU, and must be manually activated in all plugins.
The vTwin FX Engine's motion blur renders using the GPU and is up to 4 times faster!
You can also use CoreMelt's Global Preferences feature to turn motion blur on or off for all plugins at once to greatly streamline your workflow.
To do this:
- Drop your ImageFlow generator onto the timeline and bring up the plugin's controls
- Click the "Globals" button
- Click the "Motion Blur" button
- Ensure the "Enable motion blur" checkbox is checked
- The "Samples" drop down list enables you to set the amount of samples of each frame will be used to generate the blur. The higher the sample rate, the more realistic the motion blur, but the higher the render time. 24 samples generally gives the right result.
WARNING: Using samples higher than 24 will greatly increase your render time. - The "Shutterangle" slide increases or decreases the amount of motion blur by increasing or decreasing the time in between in sample. The higher the shutterangle, the more motion blur is added.
After Effects:
Motion Blur in After Effects is activated by using the "motion blur" toggle in the layers panel.
You have to ensure the composition motion blur button (1) is toggled as well as the motion blur toggle for each individual layer (2) is toggled (see above).
Activating motion blur on CoreMelt plugins will automatically render motion blur using the vTwin FX Engine's GPU accelerated motion blur feature.
Motion:
The inbuilt motion blur in Motion uses the GPU by default and therefore implementing CoreMelt's motion blur was not required.
To edit the motion blur settings:
- Open your project settings - Edit menu > Project Settings (cmd + j)
- Click the "Render Settings" tab
- Edit your samples and shutter angle values (see above for descriptions)
- To view motion blur in your viewer:
- Got to the view menu > motion blur (opt + m)
Motion blur is turned off or on for your final render according to your viewer settings, you can manually turn on motion blur for your final render by:
- Export your project - file menu > export (cmd + e)
- Clicking "options" in the export window
- Go to the "Output" tab
- Uncheckin the "use current project and canvas settings"
- Check the "motion blur" checkbox
List of Plugins and Parameters:
Blur Fade:
Blurs and Fades the images/movies together over time allowing you to set the blur to be along the x axis, y axis or both.
Card Flow:
Cardflow plugin creates a variation of the popular itunes "Cover Flow" with frames, masks and random crop options.
Carousel - FREE Plugin:
Carousel plugin animates your images in circular or spiral animations with full control over
camera position.
Circle Around:
Each image circles around from behind the image infront. The movement can come from left to right, or top to bottom.
Continuous Random Pan - FREE Plugin:
Slowly fades from one image to the next with constant random movement. This plugin works best when you zoom the images so that there are no edges visible.
Dissolve Over:
Dissolves the next image in the sequence over the top of the previous one. The next image come up with a cross fade from the previous one.
Fall Forward:
Each image falls forward revealing the next image behind it, as if the images were stacked in a deck of cards standing up vertically.
Flashcard:
Makes each image flash up in sequence over the previous one. Although this is very similar to dissolve over it makes the next image come up only once the previous image has disappeared, and this effect has additional options for random crop and random spacing.
Falling Cards:
Creates an effect similar to a bunch of cards falling from the sky.
ImageBricks:
Creates a "brick wall" montage of all the images within your folder and cycles randomly through the folder over time.
Warning: Unlike the other ImageFlow plugins this plugin will load every image in the folder so we recomend you scale images down before using a folder containing many images.
Image Film Strip - FREE Plugin:
Creates a scrolling film strip of images in the folder. You can position the film strip in 3D space using the built in controls. The filmstrip is not infinitely long, if you zoom out too far you'll see the edges of the strip fading away to nothing. You can combine this with the built in Final Cut Pro "Curl" effect to make some nice backgrounds for opening titles.
Image Grid:
Creates a grid of random images, alternating the images and empty gaps across the timeline. You can control the amount of images on the grid, the number of images acrossa and down, time per image, image order, and randomisation seed as well as adding masks and a BPM counter.
Image Stack:
Creates random piles of images with random rotation and spread where new images keep appearing on top of the pile continually or until all images in the folder have been rotated through.
Layers to Camera:
Creates and animation where the images flow toward the camera with a controllable depth blur effect and adjustable random x,y and z position.
Specific Parameters:
Camera: set the camera rotation and position.
Depth Blur: turn on blur as the images get closer to camera (may be slow to render)
Max Blur: set the max blur width as the image is at camera
Light Wipe:
Light Wipe plugin transitions between every images with a soft glow effect with angle, softness and glow tint controls.
Liquify In:
Dissolves in the next image in the folder over the top of the previous one with a liquid rippling effect.
Multifader:
Animates up to eight images at once with a fade in and fade out across the screen in any direction. Each image is offset slightly behind the last with optional randomness in x,y and z.
Multigrow:
This effect is similar to "multifader" except each image grows and then shrinks back to nothing instead of fading in and out.
MultiPop Forward - FREE Plugin:
Scrolls your images/movies across the screen and zooms one forward at a time as they scroll.
Multiswoosh:
Up to eight images at once fly towards the camera and curve gracefully to either side. Uses a similar offset pattern as multifader and multigrow. Uses simplified "speed" and curve controls.
Panels Transition:
Makes each image turn into the next through one of four transitions based on breaking the image into squares.
You can select from "dissapear", "fade", "shrink" or "spin" transition types. The "spin" transition type is shown above. This effect works best with images which are the same aspect ratio as all images are scaled to match the first image in the folder.
Polaroids:
Puts a white border around each image and makes each image change into the next through a flash bulb effect similar to a camera flash.
Random Move Over:
Makes the next image fade over the top of the previous from a random direction.
Shutter Images:
Changes the images with a camera shutter closing effect with controllable shutter type, number of leaves, and shutter width.
Specific Parameters:
Shutter Type: choose the style of shutter image
Shutter Width: adjust width of the shutter
Num Leafs: choose how many leaves the shutter has around the circle
Stills Grid:
Displays up to eight images at once randomly in a grid pattern with any number of horizontal and vertical squares.
The arangement of images and which set of images are in use changes randomly after the desired number of seconds. You can also change the amount of images which are filled with the "fill ratio" parameter to choose to only fill for example 50 percent of the squares randomly.
VideoWall Zoom:
Creates a wall of images/movies, one of which zoom in to fill the screen, then zooms back down and another zooms in to fill the screen.
Zoom in and Stop:
Makes the next image curve in from above and "land" over the top of the previous image.
Zoom Up:
Animates through the images in the folder with each image zooming up from nothing to replace the previous image.
Detailed Description of Parameters Common to all Plugins:
Load: Select your media type.
- Images: You will be using a folder of still images
- Movies: You will be using a folder of movies
- Compositions: You will be a folder of Quartz Compositions
- All of the Above: Will load all images, movies and compositions within the folder
Choose Folder: Choose a folder containing a collection of images to use for your animation.
Time Mode: Movies and Compositions only. Allows you to choosethe moment of time where your movies and/or compositions will start playing from with the animation.
Secs Per Image: the number of seconds that each picture will be on screen for.
Loop images: You can choose to make every generator effect stop playing images after every image in the folder has been shown once by unticking this checkbox. Default behavior is to keep repeating the images forever.
Rest Time: The percentage of time that the image will "rest" before moving onto the next image.
Blend Mode: choose "none", "add" or "over" to effect the way each image is composited over the other images created within the plugin.
Time Offset: you can use this to change where the animation starts in the sequence of images, eg you can start at the seventh image in the folder instead of the first by specifying a time offset of seven times the "secs per image".
Pos: reposition the center of images created by the plugin.
Scaling Type: select one of four ways of how images are scaled relative to the project size
- "As Is": keeps original pixel size, scaling value 1 means a 800x600 pixel image will be rendered at actual size 800x600 in your project
- "Fit Width": fits the width of each image to match the project width and maintains aspect ratio.
"Fit Height": fits the height of each image to match the project height and maintains aspect ratio. - "Fit Both": fits the width and height of each image to match the project width and height regardless of aspect ratio.
Scaling As Is: scales all the images up and down in proportion to each other. If you mix
different resolution images in the sequence they will stay their relative sizes to each other but with scaling of 0.5 each image will be scaled down to half of it's original pixel size.
Scaling Fit: When this option is chosen the scaling parameter scales each image relative to the project size instead of to it's absolute size.
Randomize:
- Image Order: Sequential plays each image in the order it's listed in the image folder by name, random generates a random ordering based on the "seed" parameter. Change the seed to generate a new random order.
- Seed: each plugin will render the same arrangement of randomness and same random image order with the same seed value, change the seed value to make it generate a new arrangement of random layouts.
- Random Crop: turning this on will randomly crop each image and scale down the frames and masks to match the crop value.
Min Crop: this sets the smallest crop percentage area picked by random crop, eg min crop 0.5 means that it will never crop the image less than half of it's original size.
Stills Color: recolor the images with a tint effect
Image Mask: check the "enable mask" box to turn the image edge mask on, this makes the following options appear.
- Invert Mask: Inverts the black and white areas of the mask, so reversing the area of the mask.
- Choose Mask: Use this drop down menu to select one of the 24 built in mask shapes. If you
select "Use Image Well" then a mask image well appears which you can drop your own mask layer into. - Blur Mask: Tick this to soften the edges of the mask shape.
- Blur Strength: Amount in pixels to blur the mask shape.
- Mask Position: Move the mask around the layer with this control
- Mask Scale: Scale the mask in both X and Y together.
- Mask Aspect: Adjust the aspect ratio of the mask shape to stretch it in X.
- Mask Rotation: Angle in degrees to rotate the mask.
- Picture Frame: check the "apply frame" box to turn the picture frame overlay on.
select the frame with the drop down box. To use your own frame drop a image with
transparency into the Picture Frame well and select "use image well" in the drop down menu. - Scale Within Frame: adjust this parameter to scale the images up and down within the frame. If the frame is thinner, you need to set this value higher.
Show Filename: select "show filename" to show the filename of the image over each image. You can adjust the font type, font size and y position of the text over the image.
BPM Options: If you are editing to music and know the bpm of your music track you can enter a BPM value instead of a "secs per image". Tick the "use bpm" box and then enter the BPM, you can then change the BPM modifer to for example make the image change every four beats by setting the BPM modifier to x0.25.
Supersampling: This setting makes the plugins render at a higher resolution than the sequence setting and then scale the output back to to the project settings. Setting this to levels higher than the default will slow down rendering but improve the quality of final output by eliminating aliasing artifacts.
MultiFader, MultiGrow, Multiswoosh specific parameters:
These three effects work differently to the other effects in the pack. They allow you to make up to eight images at once fade over the screen or grow/shrink over the screen or curve towards you. They use the following additional parameters:
Num Images: This selects how many images are displayed on screen at one time.
Image Movement: each image will move from the min value to the max value in x,y and z over the time "secs per image" You can use the built in presets to load different animations and see how to specify your own image movement.
Random Spread: make this larger or smaller to control how much randomness is added to each images x,y or z depending on which flags are checked.
Tips for best performance:
Although ImageFlow Fx works with any resolution images, ImageFlow Fx relies on being able to stream textures to your graphics card fast enough for real time performance. For best results scale down the images to just higher than your output resolution. Eg if you are working in PAL/NTSC then you will get good results with images scaled to 800x600 pixels. For HD you will get good results if you scale the images to 1440 pixels wide. (HDV is only 1440 pixels wide native resolution).
WARNING: you may find extremely long render times if you point ImageFlow to a folder of HD movies, we do not recommend you try using ImageFlow is this fashion. Especially when using the “multi” plugins which play up to 8 images at a time you should scale down your content before attempting to create montage animations. You will get best results using content in a codec which is designed for realtime playback with lowest overhead, we recommend transcoding your content to Photo Jpeg codec for this reason. Avoid using MPEG4 or H264 content if possible.
How to rescale a folder of Images using iPhoto:
You can easily use iPhoto to scale any set of images to a desired resolution.
- Place all the images you want to use into a folder by themselves.
- Start iPhoto.
- Import the entire folder of images into your library.
- Hold shift and drag across the set of images you want to use.
- Select "Export" and then tick the "scale images no larger than" option and select the desired horizontal resolution.
- 6) Select a new folder to write your scaled images into.
Click here to view a detailled tutorial on the CoreMelt website.
Making your own Picture Frames:
You can make your own picture frames to place around images. You need to create a
transparent overlay saved in PNG format using Photoshop or another image editing program.
Load up one of the default frames in the folder "/Library/Application Support/CoreMelt/
Picture_Frames_HD" to see an example.
Support Options
You can post support questions to the CoreMelt user forum or use the support form on the CoreMelt website.
We recommend you use the Forms as then other users can see your questions and their answers.