Video editing question : app to composite with Photoshop style blend modes?

[Shifty Geezer]

I have a little animation I made edited with Magix Movie Edit Pro. Unfortunately I had to compromise to fit the limits of the software. Like most other video software AFAIK, it only supports linear interpolation between two images, and doesn't support Photoshop style blend modes. I needed Screen and Soft Light blend modes, so I had to create key frames in PSP combining background scenery and foreground elements. Sadly the end result produces a rather choppy background, where I want the background smoothly animated, and I'm unhappy with the result.

I've been digging through the internet trying to find a tool (preferably free or dirt cheap) that would let me combine two video streams, background and foreground, and blend them suitably. The one everyone talks about is VirtualDub but I haven't read or seen anything about it that suggests blending between streams - only applying filters to one video. I did have a look at it briefly, I think, but didn't get very far.

Anyone know of any solutions? Are there any video editing/compositing tools, perhaps script based, that allow such blends to be applied?

 

[Davros]

If your trying to make a smoother version of that youtube vid
Adobe after effects or a flash creation program
i know its not cheap but they do have a trial version (it may be not crippled enough and work long enough for you to finish your project)

ps: blend 2 streams background and foreground you mean a bit like rotoscoping ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, that YouTube vid is the one I'm talking about. I did consider doing it in Flash, but I picked the fading frames style by choice. I'm happy with the character animation as is, but I want the background smoothly animating. I have produced a video of the background so that's not a problem. The characters have an alpha mask and can be placed over the top just like an animation cel as I currently do.

The problem is to get the art style, I use two Photoshop layers style blend modes. For the characters to get the soft glow, I use the typical method of change the HSV+contrast, blur, and blend over the top with Screen blending. You have to do this with the background in place or the glow doesn't work. For the whole image I take a texture and apply it with Soft Light blending to add texture.

So the components I have are fine to achieve what I am after - a fully animated background and individual cels of the characters fading in and out - but I don't have a means to apply the image processing in situ as I combine the components together. I've had to apply my image processing on static 2D frames containg fore- and backgrounds and blending between, which results in the juddery background. I'm really surprised that video editing apps with blending between channels don't support more blend types than a straight LERP! You could achieve loads more with decent blend modes and .8bf filter support.

 

[Davros]

I dont know if this idea is workable but
can you break up your video into individual frames
I dont know about photoshop but paintshop pro has a batch processing mode would that do it

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I only have PSP7. Hmmm, I could possibly use AutoIt. If there's no better solution I'll give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion! Although the variable blend amounts will be a complete pig to automate.