Natural Transitions with Timelines
- What is the Magic Trick ?
- 1 / The Core Problem
- 2 / Solution : use Asynchronous Timeline
- 3 / Copy Behavior
- 4 / Segments with an Intro
- 5 / Playing Segments from the Dashboard
What is the Magic Trick ?
Download and open this project :
Start the first part, and at some point, go to next column. You should see a jump-cut. Not nice.
Now, launch the second part and when the « ghost » is on the screen, launch the next column. Do you see the difference ?
The only difference between the two timelines, is unchecking the Synchronized option. When the timelines are not synchronized, we can have smooth transitions.
Well, let's switch to another case to explain all this ...
1 / The Core Problem
Classic editing softwares, such as PremierePro or FinalCut, use regular timelines with a « red cursor » representing the playhead. In Millumin, you will find the same concepts.
But what's happening in a real live situation ?
For our example, let’s introduce an UFO :
... and Ben representing an actor on stage : this is important because Ben and the UFO don't have the same timing.
Now, we want the UFO to capture Ben, just when he arrives : but we don't know exactly when, because he's supposed to be an actor !
For example, if Ben is a bit in a hurry and arrives in advance at the « capture point » : when you start the next segment of your timeline, an horrible jump-cut appears.
No, we don’t want a jump-cut here : what we want is a smooth transition !
And we don't want to use a fade-in/fade-out transition, or training for hours to get the perfect timing.
2 / Solution : use Asynchronous Timeline
That's why we built the asynchronous timeline, a kind of time-relative timeline, allowing you
to « postpone » a segment until current one is finished. Yes, forget what you know about regular timelines in PremierePro or FinalCut, and let’s talk about this new feature.
To enter in this mode, simply uncheck Synchronized button, just as before :
We are now entering the new playing mode for this Millumin's timeline. We gonna split the action in two parts : a first part where the UFO enters the scene, and a second one where Ben is being captured.
So let's show timeline's segments first :
You can now split the timeline with different segment : just put the red cursor on the point you wanna split, then press the Split Segment button.
For info, you can hold SHIFT to snap exactly between the two videos.
We will also rename the segment for better understanding.
Ok, lets play the timeline to see how it goes.
You can observe that when Ben is ready, we can click on the next segment, and Millumin will automatically wait until the end of the loop, before launching the capture sequence.
This is the default behavior : "wait" (Millumin is waiting the media to be finished, before going to the next segment).
Of course, you can imagine that Ben is a real actor on stage. Easy, isn’t it?
Please note that segments have 2 play-modes : "loop" and "play once".
3 / Copy Behavior
Now, Ben is on UFO's planet. He is surrounded by hundred of UFOs. Hopefully, Ben is finding a « rain button », to make run away the UFOs.
We want the rain to start exactly when Ben hits this « rain button ».
But there is problem : if the UFOs video is still playing, we will have again, an horrible jump-cut. Something like this :
But the problem remains if we wait until the end of the loop : the UFOs will run away before the rain even started. In brief : the UFOs and the rain must be played all together.
In this situation, the copy behavior is pretty useful (instead of the wait behavior).
And here is the final result (Millumin copying what is remaining, from the previous loop) :
Again, you can imagine that Ben is a real actor, and that this « rain button » is triggered on stage.
4 / Segments with an Intro
The next scene will show a planet arriving on screen. Since this is a new step in our scene, we create a new segment. For the example, we will use a simple animated image (made of a few position keyframes).
Unfortenatly, our segment is looping, so the planet enters the screen again and again.
To fix this, let's add an "intro" : so the planet arrives once, then the rest of the animation will loop.
5 / Playing Segments from the Dashboard
Now, we will see how this is working in the dashboard. Basically, all your timelines are available as medias in the library, and all you have to do, is dragging them into the dashboard.
And by using the edit mode, you can extend you medias across columns :
On each column, you can choose the segment you want to play from the timeline. You understand why it's important to name them correctly !
Note that, by default, Millumin automatically dispatches segments across columns.
Finally, here is the whole story in our dashboard : you can launch the different column at any moment, Millumin will respect the timings to perform natural transitions. A time-watch will be displayed during transitions, showing you when it will be finished.
You can try it out this tutorial with this project :
