Canopus Imaginate 2 Review

Although most people will create movies using moving pictures, you can also create interesting movies made from stills only. Place a number of stills in a row, add some nice effects and transitions and include some music. That is what Imaginate is about.

Introduction

Why use a separate editor for panning and zooming round stills, when this is being offered within editing programs, and even in some CD burning ones, especially when it is not a cheap option?

What Imaginate 2 offers is infinite controllability; every movement is keyframeable and it is entirely possible to create a complete movie from stills, with accompanying audio, from within Imaginate. Let's have a look at the process.

The process flow

There are two ways of working with Imaginate. You can either use a wizard to create the complete movie step by step using all kind of presets in a very fast way. In the wizard you have the option to build a movie with a few mouse clicks using one of the six templates with predefined transitions and music, or you can create a customized project where you have more control over the final result. But you can also completely go on your own giving you total freedom. The best way however is to first use the wizard and then adapt the result the way you want.

The wizard

The first step is adding the images. There is a standard duration of 5 seconds with a 1 second transition between images, but you can choose any length, and in fact 5 seconds is far too short if you want to really move across a photo. Before leaving the import wizard, you are given the option of choosing an audio file. This is useful if you wish to cut the movement to the soundtrack. Most common audio file types are supported, and you have the choice of making the project the same length as the audio if you wish. However this can be limiting, and you would probably make the clip without audio, and add it in at the end, or from within your editing program if this was part of a wider project.

Next you progress to the scene wizard to add motion. Here you can choose to add your chosen motion to all scenes [images], or to configure each scene separately. There is a wide choice, from generic, still, templates, 2 position or the more usual multi position motion.

Going Manual

If you choose the manual options it is necessary to move into edit view, where you get a timeline and the ability to keyframe accurately.

You can change position, scale, rotate and camera position. As well as physically dragging the part of the image you want displayed round the screen, you also have windows where you can drag curves for a wide variety of parameters. It is not a difficult process, though you do need to experiment if your results are not to make you feel dizzy!

Rendering

Once you have completed your clip, you render it, either as a DV AVI, or any Direct Show codec installed on your system. Because Imaginate is delivered with the Canopus DV codec, so you can also render it using that codec. However, one thing to be aware is that if you use it your file will not play on another computer which does not have this codec. It will need exporting from another editing program on that same computer using a different codec if you wish to use it elsewhere. Alternatively, you should install the Canopus codec on that computer as well.

Plugin

A nice feature of the program is that it also comes with a plugin for Canopus Edius and Adobe Premiere video editing software. We did not test it with Edius, but according to the manual it works like any other filter in Edius. By adding a dummy clip and apply Imaginate as a filter on that clip you can launch Imaginate from within the program. The plugin for Premiere simply means that you can import an Imaginate project as a normal clip. You cannot trim an imported Imaginate project inside Premiere, but you can apply all other effects available in Premiere. You can also launch Imaginate from within Premiere and make adjustments that way.

Conclusions

All in all, this is a great program, and a very useful video editing tool. It is easy to learn, and comes with a decent manual. It is not cheap, but certainly can add a new dimension to your projects.