Best way to do flashes in premiere?

truerachel · Post by **truerachel** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:03 am

Heya,

I'm working on my first AMV, and I have a few questions about how to do various flashes/quick cuts. If anyone could help it would be much appreciated. I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro...

1st off, does anyone know what the best method for doing quick white flashes is? I'm trying to match drum beats and the only way I've found is the strobe light effect...but that's difficult at best. There must be an easier way to insert flashes of white...

2nd, does anyone know how I would go about doing a particular effect...What I'm trying to do is place a semi-transparent video file over another video file and flash the semi-transparent video to drumbeats...would anyone know how to do this?

Thanks!

Jonny Bebop · Post by **Jonny Bebop** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:22 am

Well since you don't want to use the strobe light effect then the only other way i can think of is to cut bits out of the video where there is a "bump" (me doesn't know technical term

) in the audio signal. This is a longer way of doing it but it is a lot more accurate than using the strobe light effect. To do the 2nd part, just put the semi-transparent video on the video track above the one you want it to flash on and then leave the bits of video where there is a "bump" and get rid of the bits where there aren't. I hope i explained that correct, good luck!

Alex_Dragon · Post by **Alex_Dragon** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:10 am

I use a blank white BMP and drop it onto the video 2 track to sync drum beats in my videos.

godix · Post by **godix** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:14 am

1) Go to 'new' and choose new color matte. Make it white. Take that new color matte and put it on the timeline above your other video tracks where you want the flash. Most flashes generally look better if they're longer than a single frame, try making it 4 or 5 frames and have it quickly fade away instead of just disappearing.

2) Keyframes. Go look up how to do keyframing.

BTW: White flashes are rather hard on the eyes and by now they're somewhat boring. You may want to try things like playing with the brightness of the clip, making the flash some other color and at 50% transparency, flash to an effect rather than white (IE inverse), or some other method to make the flash a little more interesting and less likely to give people headaches.

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 11:06 am

Put a five-frame white flash where you want it. Turn on the opacity rubberband and start it at 0%, making it 100% on the third frame, then 0% again on the final frame. Then take that apex and sync it to the beat. Looks much better than just a white frame.

Alternately, I've seen people do things with white flashes in tandem with gray and black flashes, for a change of pace...

-DOKool

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 11:49 am

godix wrote:1) Go to 'new' and choose new color matte. Make it white.

You might want to consider making it not quite pure white, like, say, #F0F0F0. That'll make it a little easier on the eyes, esp. if you want to send your video to any conventions where it'll be played on the big screen and not on someone's computer monitor.

truerachel · Post by **truerachel** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 11:56 am

Awesome! Thanks for the help eeryone.

godix · Post by **godix** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:04 pm

Scintilla wrote:You might want to consider making it not quite pure white, like, say, #F0F0F0. That'll make it a little easier on the eyes, esp. if you want to send your video to any conventions where it'll be played on the big screen and not on someone's computer monitor.

True enough, i can't argue with that. I'd actually go one step further and say he should consider doing something else besides a flash in any color. Flashes have starting annoying me recently and are quickly becoming a pet peeve of mine. That's why I tacked on the last paragraph, those are all things I've seen/tried that gave the same general effect without being quite so annoying. Playing with filters instead of flashing can produce some interesting effects.

Jon McKee · Post by **Jon McKee** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:56 pm

Use an additive dissolve and make the white flash 3 or more frames long. Works like a charm, its what Fluxmeister uses.