This tutorial will teach you how to use Studio to reproduce one of the video effects the director of Star Academy regularly applies during the show. Indeed, one sees from time to time that the image will become monochrome. But a special kind of monochrome ...

Introduction :

A monochrome picture is not necessarily black and white.

We could transform this ... :

into this :

In fact, a black and white image is a grayscale monochrome image. The image above might be called a "blue and white", it is a bluescale monochrome image. It is as if we had simply applied a blue filter in front of the camera lens. The problem is that this type of filter lets less light pass. The picture gets darker. Whites don't remain white and blacks that are not pure are turning blue.

The effect we see in the Star Academy avoids this problem by maintaining or even exaggerating the contrast of the image. Blacks get under-exposed and whites over-exposed. This is what it looks like :

This tutorial will show you how to achieve this.

Let's go !

Step 1 : Delete color

To get the image to black and white, apply the Black and white effect in the RTFX Studio Plus category . To apply an effect, open the Video Toolbox, click on the plug shaped icon, Add Video Effect and select the effect you want by pressing OK :

In the setup window of the effect don't change anything :

Step 2 : Get color back

To make the image "Color and White" use the Tint effect in RTFX Volume 1. To add an effect click on Add New Effect :

In the setup window simply indicate that black should be changed to black, and white must be changed to the color you want. For this, you have to click alternately on the two squares next to Change Black to and Change White to :

Use the classic Windows colour picker selection window :

The Amount to Tint slider is used to adjust the intensity of the effect :

Step 3 : Low and high lights setup

With the Lighting effect from BWPlugins we will make the blacks darker and the whites brighter :

You must use the Add slider to intensify the white and the Fill slider to darken the black :

Add set to 13 and Fill set to -20 will be a good compromise.

Conclusion (almost) :

It's finished !

What, there's a problem ? I only used shareware plugins ? You want the same thing but with freeware? Oh boy ! Miracles happen in churches, not on the DV website !

Well, ok, since you insist, I'll show you how we can do exactly the same with free effects.

You will need the effects created by Werner Löttgen. Let's go to our links page to get his address and a good description of his website.

Effects installation :

You'll have to install the WLFilter101 pack for Studio 10 and WLFilter091_en for Studio 9. To do this, unzip the .zip files and copy/paste the .xml and .fex files to the correct folder :

In C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio xx\Plugins\RTFx create a WLFilter directory and copy/paste all contents of WLFilter101.zip. Extract WLcolorlook.fex and WLcolorlook_en.xml from WLFilter091_en.zip and copy/paste them in C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio xx\Plugins\RTFx\WLFilter.

Step 1 + 2 : Everything monochrome all at once

Apply the Black and white 2.1 effect :

The first thumbnail under Settings must be selected and under Coloring use the sliders or the RGB values of the desired colour :

You can find these RGB values in any Windows color selection window :

Step 3: Low and high lights setup

Color Look will be used in this step :

By increasing Dark value, you increase darkness of the black and by reducing Light you increase brightness of the white. Values like 77 for Dark and 169 for Light are a good compromise :

Final result :

Whatever the method, the result should be pretty close to this :

Bonus :

We'll try to go a step further and stick a little closer to what the director of the show does. Very often this effect is used during duets. Each singer is filmed in close-up by a camera and the director shows their faces simultaneously on the screen, a face to the left and a face to the right..

We will have to use PIP (Picture In Picture) in Studio.

This time there will be no "free vs charged", all the tools we use will be free. The PIP tool integrated with some versions of Studio is very efficient and user-friendly.

You will need effects created by Jan Peter Riegel. As mentioned above, you can check out our links page to get his adress and a good description of his website.

Just download the Setup-JPsEffects_1.1.2.exe for releases up to Studio 10 or the Setup-JPsEffects_1.1.4.exe for Studio 11 and 12 then launch the .exe.

Making the PIP is not difficult. What is difficult is to make it pleasant to watch. In other words, the choice for framing the faces while shooting will be most important. The character you want to appear to the right of the screen should be filmed right frame and the one that should appear on the left should be framed on the left.

Let's go. Place your two videos one below the other in Studio and successively apply the Transform 2 effect which is in JPs Effects - Form category :

Transform 2 lets you apply nine successive effects to the image. We choose whole clip so that the effect applies to the entire duration of the clip and move x to be able to translate horizontally the video. The amount slider or its positive or negative value can move the video as you like :

After some trials and possible application of a little zoom effect we reach this kind of result:

You can soften the transition zone between the two videos using the Transparency effect in JPs Effects - Misc category to each clip :

Transparency can make a part of the video transparent, if necessary, by creating a kind of transparency gradient. Set Type to Vertical, choose the width of the vertical band with the Value slider and the width of the gradient with the Border slider. Checking Invert or not, will apply the transparent zone on the right or left of the image :

After some tests and possibly a repositioning of the videos with Transform 2 needed to overlap the transparent zones we get this :

It is certain that from the outset if the characters were filmed on similar and rather uniform or blurred backgrounds (depending on the zoom level and the distance between the camera and them), the result is easier to obtain.

That is what all this may result with the next two finalists of the Star Academy 2009 (if it still exists). Let's call them Tom and Jerry to preserve their anonymity :