Studio Artist Tips

In this tutorial we’ll be exploring the use of Studio Artist 4’s Temporal Image Operations for processing movie files.  Temporal or time based image operations are effects that use multiple frames in a source movie to build each effected output frame. The example above is a single output frame that was generated using a temporal rank filter.

Studio Artist processes movie files with Paint Action Sequences (PASeq).  You can think of a PASeq as a script that details the series of processing steps that are need to produce a certain artistic effect. So any time you want to process a movie file you need to build a PASeq to implement the a particular processing effect you want to achieve.

Studio Artist 4 includes a new temporal image operation mode. Temporal means time based.  These new processing effects work with multiple video frames over time to implement their effects. For an introduction to temporal image operations check out this tip.

When working with temporal image operations you need to have a loaded source movie. Temporal image operations also don’t have the normal Ip Source options associated with standard image operations in Studio Artist since they are currently designed to only use the source movies as input (not the canvas or other layers). If you don’t have a movie file loaded as your source they won’t seem to do anything other than pass the source through to the canvas.

The section below shows off a few of the different temporal image operations used to process a source movie file. These are just a few of the different temporal processing effects you can work with.  All of the video processing examples we’ll discuss below were generated using the same source video footage of a skater on a black background.

Each of these examples was created with a simple PASeq that contained one temporal image operation action step. The PASeq used for the first example is shown below. The others are similar, the only difference is that they use different temporal image operations, but they are all just single step PASeqs.

Temporal Difference Matte

An example of processing the skater source movie with the temporal difference matte is shown below.

This effect tries to extract motion taking place in a series of video frames and encapsulate it into a single output frame.

Temporal Rank Filter

An example of processing the skater source movie with the temporal rank filter is shown below.

This particular example was generated using a max algorithm for the temporal rank filter. So it’s combining together the brightest information across multiple frames into a single frame. This particular setting works well for this example’s source video due to the light skater moving on a black background. Different algorithm settings will dramatically change the visual appearance of the effect.

Temporal Time AxisRotate

An example of processing the skater source movie with the temporal time axis rotate effect is shown below.

This effect essentially rotates the stack of video frames so that what was the time axis becomes a spatial axis and vice versa.  It’s great for ethereal special effects when working with video that has motion.  Depending on the scan direction you can extract moving objects while removing background detail, or generate more abstract motion effects that encapsulate motion over time like the one seen in this example.

Temporal Scan Tracker

An example of processing the skater source movie with the temporal scan tracker is shown below.

A let to right scan setting was used for this particular scan tracker effect.The scan direction is going to interact with movement in the video.  Movement in the direction of the scan motion will be extended, while movement in the opposite direction of the scan direction will be deemphasized.  A vertical scan would encapsulate the horizontal motion in the video very differently.

The scan tracker is also great for generating static panorama images from video pan sequences.

For More Information

An introduction to temporal image operations can be found here.

A Studio Artist News post that provides an overview of what you can do with temporal image operations is available here.

The PASeq presets used in this movie processing tutorial series are available for download here.

This tutorial has focused on using temporal image operations for processing movie files to generate movie file output. But temporal image operations are also great tools for 2D artists that allow you to generate static images derived from video sequences. You can do things like encapsulate motion in a video over time into a single static 2d image, or create panorama images from video pan sequences.