The Portable GR-DVM1 Mini DV Camcorder (page 5)
A Pinch of This, A Dash of That
Video SpiceRack
($199)
Pixelan Software
4107 Harrison Street
Bellingham, WA 98226
(360) 647-0112
http://www.pixelan.com
tech specs
Producing digital video projects on a desktop computer is something like cooking a meal. Both activities involve a very large number of potential ingredients, and each gourmet chef or accomplished video editor will approach a given recipe or edit-decision list with a style and flair of his or her own. But there's a whole lot more to both cooking and video editing than tossing in spices and flavors at will; in other words, making haphazard use of nonlinear editing tools (such as plug-in transitions, overlays, moving titles, etc.) can have roughly the same effect as tossing a handful of cloves into a pot of spaghetti sauce.
The concept behind Pixelan's Video SpiceRack is to leave behind all of those super-fancy, techno-flash 3D transitions that many manufacturers of plug-in effects are currently flooding the market with, and proceed with a simple set of tools that will provide usable, tasteful results.
The Gradient Ingredient
Not actually a plug-in in the strictest definition of the term, the Video SpiceRack is a collection of hundreds of gradients for use in a wide variety of applications and situations. If you're an Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, in:sync Razor or Fast Video Machine user, then perhaps you're aware of the Gradient Wipe option available in these programs. A gradient wipe uses a black-and-white gradient image as a set of instructions for a transition effect. Suppose, for example, that you have a simple linear gradient that changes from black on one side of the screen to white on the other, with a subtle vertical shift through the various shades of gray in-between. Choosing this image as your gradient wipe pattern would provide a wipe from the left side of the screen to the right, but with a diffused-looking mixture of the two images where the two video streams meet instead of a sharp line.
This concept works equally well with a large number of gradient types. It's one part of the above-mentioned video editing applications that is completely user-definable; just make yourself a black-and-white gradient, then plug it into your transition and see how it works.
Unfortunately, when you take this trial-and-error approach to applying gradients as video wipes, the effects you end up with may leave a bad taste in your mouth. This is why Pixelan spent countless hours devising hundreds of video-friendly gradients and packaged them as the Video SpiceRack: so you wouldn't have to.
Dinner is Served
The Video SpiceRack gradients require no installation; they're simply a series of image files contained on a CD-ROM disk, and organized into several folders. Because the actual size of the gradient should match the size of the video project, the Video SpiceRack gradients are first divided into six folders, based on the resolution of the images. These resolutions are as follows: 320x240 (Web or multimedia projects), 640x480 (NTSC full-screen), 648x486 (Truevision Targa resolution), 768x576 (PAL/SECAM full-screen), 720x486 (CCIR-601 video output), and 720x576 (CCIR-601 output for PAL/SECAM).
Using the gradients is quite simple. In Adobe Premiere, for example, all you have to do is choose the Gradient Wipe effect, click on the Select Image button, then choose a gradient from the Video SpiceRack CD-ROM. You don't even have to copy the gradients onto your hard drive, if you want to save space on your system.
The transitions that you can come up with using the Video SpiceRack are very professional-looking and unobtrusive. Rendering times will vary depending on the system you're using and the specific gradient you're working with, but most won't tax your system like some plug-in 3D transition effects will. If you're looking for a way to spice up your nonlinear transitions without overwhelming your viewers, try making some gradients on your own and plugging them into your nonlinear editing software. If you find that creating a proper gradient for video use is more difficult than it looks, give the Video SpiceRack a try.
