Overlaying two videos?

[Superully]

hi guys,
i'm using pinnacle studio 8, but unfortunately the program only offers one video track, however i've got two videos which i need to overlay and run simultaneously.
one of the videos should run in the background, the other one is a simple animation with titles and graphics and a large part of the second screen is white, therefore i'd like the white part to be transparent, so that you can see the first video running in the background. can anyone follow me?
i guess there is now way to achive this with pinnacle, so i was wondering whether there is an easy-to-use program (since i'm no expert) which allows me to overlay the two videos and choose white as a transparent color. i'd then need to output the "merged" videos to one single mpg- or avi-file so that i could use it again in pinnacle!
i hope you guys understand what i'm talking about and could offer me some help - i need this for a project at university, so it's pretty important.
cheers ...

[Gees]

I use Ulead VideoStudio for simple overlays (it has an overlay track), but it does not have alpha transparency feature the way you need it.

The more robust prog- MediaStudioPro could do it easily, but it's more expensive & a higher learning curve (compared to VS), although both have trial versions.

Is the white a border? If so, you could crop it to lose the white and then place the result as an overlay in Video Studio, no problem. You can chose size & placement.

But if you need to remove white behind the text, you'll need to go the MediaStudio (or comparable) route.

Hope that helps.

[Superully]

nope, not a border! it's simply a video where most of the screen is white - and this i'd like to be transparent

[Gees]

Then I'd say try a trial version of MediaStudio Pro. :c)

[Superully]

problem is: i'm no expert and english is not my mother tongue, so learning to do stuff like this in a program i don't know might be very tricky, but i'll try ...
thx a lot for your help, perhaps someone else has to offer another approach

[Gees]

You're welcome. Good luck. :c)

[overloaded_ide]

OK, something I also wanted to do!
I was told it could not be done by someone that used to do animation and video specail effects long ago. I was sure he was wrong!!

Ok this is what I want to do, and maybe similar to the original posters question.

I want an Alien standing beside a building, and I want a guy coming out of the building to talk to the alien. All that would be done on location with real people.

Then I want to have a Spaceship I can overlay flying over the building and landing, then taking off and flying away.

Of course the result in the finished movie is the spaceship flies over, lands, alien and man talk beside building, man goes into building ailien into ship and flies away!
Simple right?
I got the people, the building and even my own alien! Now how do I fly the ship over and make it land then fly away is the problem without a frame by frame edit?

I could do it in animation, but I need it to look real, not like a cartoon!

I'll look in the tools section for a trial version of MediaStudio Pro, but I don't see it lighting up in red
If I don't find a link, who makes it or where can I get the trial version?
And does it really work? I hate those 15hr downloads then find something doesn't actually do anything! Like so called trialware that does not save files! Lattely I haven't found much of that though.

[Gees]

here you go: http://www.ulead.com/msp/trial.htm

[housepig]

Overloaded_ide -

you want to look for an editing program with Chroma-keying options.

if you have a physical model of a spaceship, you film it in front of a solid-color screen (can be a piece of painted fiberboard). pick a color that does not appear in the frame otherwise, a bright neon green is pretty common.

film your spaceship in front of the green screen. import that footage into your editor, and use the chroma-key settings to make the green area transparent. now you have a spaceship on a transparent background, composited into your other footage.

if you don't have a physical spaceship, but want to use 3D software to create it, you can use something like Blender to create and animate a video against a virtual green background, and do the same chroma key effect.

[racer-x]

You can do all this easily in Premiere, but it costs $. I read somewhere that Movie Maker 2 also does overlays. I never tried it, but it's free!

[housepig]

I'm pretty sure Zwei-Stein can do chroma key as well, and it's freeware.

haven't messed around with it much, though - the interface & workflow didn't appeal to me.

[--juggernaut--]

I would also suggest Adobe Premiere. It is an excellent video editor and can do all the things you asked about. It does, however, have a learning curve involved since it is fairly advanced. See this site for some good tutorials to get you started:

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/tutorials.htm

As mentioned above it is quite expensive, but Adobe does offer a trial version. Not sure if it's fully functional though. Also not the "latest and greatest" version but should more than suffice.

[BubbaJones]

I would go with Vegas 4 instead, apparently Premiere only has a 3 hour timeline and that's all you can edit. What a waste of money.

[housepig]

I would go with Vegas 4 instead, apparently Premiere only has a 3 hour timeline and that's all you can edit. What a waste of money.

a. how often do you have more than 3 hours of footage that you need to use an NLE to edit?

b. what's to stop you from editing in 3 hour chunks, then joining the output files after the fact?

I'm all for Vegas as an alternative to Premiere, but that seems like a bizarre argument to me.