| eZeMotion iMovie plug-in |
|
| Written by Philip Roy | |||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 01 January 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||
The folks at eZedia provided me with a copy of their new eZeMotion plug-in the week before its release at MacWorld San Francisco. Of all the plug-in companies, eZedia's products are the most professionally presented and this new plug-in was no exception. Approximately a 5.5 Mb download, the installation was a breeze and (as with their other plug-ins) demo files and documentation were automatically placed in my document folder under OS X. Nice. The eZeMotion plug-in is quite advanced. It gives you the ability to animate movement across the screen of text, graphics and movie clips. The plug-in uses the concept of layers (you can have up to 10 in all) which can be used for custom titling, rotating images, scaling video and more. Also, for the more advanced user, graphics retain any transparency information, so images with transparent parts to them can be incorporated into your clips.
I was amazed at how quickly I was able to get used to the basic functions of the plug-in and have a piece of text fly into frame. Coming from a background of being an experience Flash user helped, but paths and placing objects on and off screen isn't too complex a technique to understand. Once the path is placed, you can double-click on it to alter some of its details, such as having the text travel down the path and reverse and travel back. The real power of the plug-in lies in the fact that you can have up to 10 layers, each one on top of each-other, each one with its own path, but I would guess that rendering an effect like this will place a strain on your machine at times. The interface isn't as intuitive as it could be. I found myself puzzled as to how to delete a layer that I didn't want until I realised that by selecting an object on screen and pressing the delete button, the layer disappeared. The fact that layers can't be reorganised will be disappointing to some people, but with a little bit of forethought, you can easily avoid any problems...although reordering would be great in a future version. It's great to see that there are tools to edit the path you draw, yet for the first time, I felt the eZedia documentation let me down, as I wasn't sure just what the buttons meant. This interface needs to be more intuitive, or at least have simple text or hints as to what some of the buttons do. If we are going to get the opportunity to 'draw' a path that an object travels, then perhaps some basic drawing tools need to be considered.
While the strength of the plug-in lies in its ability to create motion graphics, it does inadvertently remove the need for some other plug-ins...such as those that do picture-in-picture or place transparent images on screen. If you keep these images static, you're recreating the functionality that other plug-ins provide you. In this way, the eZeMotion can be seen to be quite a powerful tool to use. Given the fact that the plug-in incorporates aspects of other plug-ins, the price for it might be justified. As with all my plug-in advice, I would make sure this is a product you know you are going to use on a regular basis. It isn't really a product aimed at the novice user, but those wanting to continue to use iMovie and perform powerful visual effects while using it. So what could be improved? I'd like to see the tools for adjusting the path improved (and named and documented), such as those you might find in Flash. Even basic tools such as being able to choose a "straight line" tool would make drawing a straight path easier and allow users to quickly add in an effect. Perhaps some pre-set paths or techniques might make development faster? But it is the sort of plug-in I'm going to go away and have a think about...I've got some ideas for things to try already and I know it's going to be fun! Related Articles
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Comments (0)
 Write comment
This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.
You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
The views and opinions expressed in articles, blog entries, posts and reviews are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of NZMac.com and its readers. Authors are responsible for the integrity of their article's content and must guarantee that its publication does not infringe upon the proprietary rights of others.
