Moving filmstrip in Adobe Premiere

Adobe Premiere is probably the most versatile video editing programs on the consumer market. It is certainly not cheap, but once you have found your way around in the program you will discover the almost endless possibilities. In this article we wil give you an example of a great effect and explains how to do it. It is assumed that you have a basic knowledge of Premiere, but this article is also worth reading if you don’t.

This is an adaptation of an article that I originally wrote for LabDV in August 2002. The original article can still be found here

The Effect

The effect that is demonstrated in this article is a filmstrip that moves from the top to the bottom of the screen. Each of the frames is in the filmstip contains a different scene that actually plays while the filmstrip moves through the screen.On the right you see a frame from the clip. Click on the image to download the clip in (MPEG-1 format, 2.8 Mb).

Step 1: Creating the outline of the filmstrip

Although you can do the whole movie at once in one project it is easier to first produce a new video file containing the scenes in the filmstrip in a separate Premiere project.This is done with the Adobe Title generator. Using the basic shapes in the left hand menu you can create the frame with rectangles with a black fill and small rounded squares with a white fill.

Because the ‘holes’ are recurring items and need to be equally spaced in the filmstrip, it is the easiest way to first create them at a random location and then adjust the size and positions by inputting the numbers in the right bottom section of the Title window. See the red circle in the picture above. Make sure that you distribute them evenly over the height of the frame and that the first and last one are half the distance away from the edge of the frame. Once you have the outline ready, you can save it as a title template. If you like the template that you can download it for use in your projects: filmstrip.prtl.

Step 2: Adding the outline to the scenes

Next is to overlay the filmstrip on the scenes. This is an easy job. Load the scenes that you want on the timeline, import the template in your project, place them as an overlay on an extra video track and export it to a new file. Personally I have chosen to place all the scenes that I wanted right after eachother on a single timeline and export them to a single file. This file then contains all the scenes that I want to use for the scrolling filmstrip.

Step 3: Determining the motion parameters

The most important issue to take care of is to make sure that the scrolling frames are perfectly in sync. You don’t want a gap or an overlap between the successive frames and they need to move at exactly the same speed.

Going from Premiere 6.5 to Pro, Adobe changed the coordinate system. In Pro, units are equal to pixels which makes calculations easier. However, here we will explain how it works in Premiere 6.5.The Coordinate System used in the Motion Menu of Premiere 6.5 is defined in such a way that the frame size is 80 units wide by 60 units high. Position 0,0 is in the center of the screen and the top left corner is -40,-30. The image size that I have chosen for the scrolling clips is 30% of the original frame size. So the height is 0.3 x 60 units = 18 units. As the starting point I place the clip just outside the visible area. The Y-coordinate should be -30-18/2 = -39. When the clip has moved exactly one framesize downward, the Y- coordinate is -21. Next are -3, +15, +33, +51. In this row, Y=51 is the first position that the image is completely outside the visible area. This is 5 steps.

So, if we make the starting position of a clip Y=-39 and the ending position Y=+51, the next clip should start exactly at the time 1/5th of the duration later than the first clip.

Step 4: applying the motion

Adobe also changed the way motion must be applied going from Premiere 6.5 to Pro. In Pro, Motion is a fixed effect in every clip and you need to set parameters and keyframes in the Effect Controls window. In 6.5 and below, you need to rightclick on a scene on the timeline and select Motion. The window as shown below will pop up.

As start position I set -22, -39 and as end position I use -22,+51. (the -22 is a X- coordinate that determines that the filmstip will be placed on a nice position in the left half of the screen). The best way to create the positions by selecting the Start and End positions and input the coordinates (see the figure above). Once you are done you can save the settings in a template file by pressing the Save button. This file can also be downloaded for use in your Premiere project: motionsettings.pmt .

We have also created a settings file for use in Premier Pro 2.0 : movingframe.prfpset and for Premiere Pro 1.5: movingframe1-5.prfpset

Step 5: Putting it together

Since a number of scenes will be visible on the screen at the same time you will need a number of video tracks. In my case I need 5. And because I want to keep the main track open for a back ground video or picture, I am only using overlay tracks Video 2 through Video 6.

Start to put the first scene from the movie containing the filmstrip on track 2. I found that I will get a nice speed with my motion template if I use a duration of 10 seconds. This also makes life easy because 1/5 of this duration of 10 seconds is exactly 2 seconds (so, the next scene needs to start 2 seconds after the previous one). You can do that by dragging the in or out point, but it is easier to define the in-point and then input the length through the duration menu.

Now put the next scene on track 3 overlapping the first scene. The starting point of the second scene should be exactly 2 seconds after the starting point of the first scene (as determined above). Continue putting scenes on the following tracks always making sure that the length of each scene is exactly 10 seconds and that the gap between two successive scenes is 2 seconds. Once you have reached track 5 you can put the next one on track 1 again and drag it against the very first clip. You can continue like this with as many clips as you want.

This is how it should look in Premiere.

To create the movement of the scenes you can use the motion template that was created in the previous step. Select a scene and open the Motion menu. Press the Load button and select the template. Repeat this step with each of the scenes and you’re done. Alternatively you can also copy the Motion settings from one scene to another through the menu Copy and Paste Attributes.

That’s it. If you preview the timeline or export it to a new file and play it back, you will have a perfect scrolling filmstrip with moving pictures.