The new coming of Adorage Volume 10 is for us an opportunity to present you Adorage. This first tutorial is an overview of this superb video effect software. Here is a small video of the software (courtesy of proDAD):

Be aware that some features of the software described below are exclusive to version 3.0 (your Adorage version will be updated while installing Volume 10). [If you want to see what can be achieved with Adorage Volume 10, see bottom of the page]

Use in Studio :

Adorage can be used either as a transition between two clips, or as a filter applied to a clip, so it is available in Studio at two different locations.

Either in the proDAD group transitions as an image representing "Adorage logo" :

Or as a filter (plugin) in the proDAD group :

To start Adorage, you double-click on the transition on the timeline and then press Edit in the opening window :

Or, in the window that open when applying the filter, click on Edit AdorageUI :

Main window :

When Adorage opens here is what appears :

The main window is composed of :

• zone 1 : catalog of effects
• zone 2 : video preview
• zone 3 : effect proceeding steps

The catalog of effects :

Adorage and its wide effects include more than 10,000 effects (if you own all the volumes). A catalog for sorting, searching and organizing effects is available. The effects are divided into different groups and subgroups.

Right clicking on a group opens a context menu with various options :

The first one, Properties, allows to change the name of the group and enter a comment :

This comment will show off  when positioning the mouse cursor over the group :

You can also :

• create a new group with New group.
• copy a group with copy, then paste it where you wish with paste. The option paste without group will paste all subgroups of a group but without the top node group (extracting them from the group).
• Clone group is to copy and paste a group but without choosing the level where to paste it because it paste it automatically at the same level as the copied group.
• delete a group with delete Group.

Another function can be very valuable, Group data + Export/Import effect(s). It can save and/or load a configuration to a .dat file (in case you made some modification on an effect, and want to re-use it later on, or transfer it to a colleague, friend, or to us for making it available to everybody !!).

Right-click on an effect opens a menu virtually identical to that for a group :

Only two functions differ :

Properties : at the bottom of the edit window you can determine the type of effect :

• Standard - effect : for a standard effect.
• Reference for group / combinations : when selecting the group, this effect will apply automatically in the preview window, instead of the first in the list of effects of the group.
• Combine effect with reference : combining the characteristics of this effect with the reference effect. Warning it does not work with any combination of effects. This function is extremely powerful, because you can combine multiple effect together !!

The option Effect to group creates a group with the same name than the effect and store the effect in it :

Last interesting option which is common to groups and effects, the Search function:

By using keywords, you can search an effect, a group or both.

The preview area :

When moving the mouse over the area, icons appear on screen :

It can pause playback or restart it.

The bottom two arrows allow to apply to video the next or previous effect in the list of effects.

Very interesting function, clicking on the top arrows will display a multi-screen with a different effect for each of the seven thumbnails :

All effects take place simultaneously in real time and you can easily choose the one you want to apply to video. To return to full screen double-click on the top arrows, or on the front thumbnail.

Effect proceeding steps :

Four steps :

• Video A, Video B : you can select the source files. If Video A and Video B are different, the effect applies as a transition, if they are the same, the effect applies as a simple effect to a clip. Take note that you can change the video source (instead of using the timeline video clip, you can choose another video, picture or folder containing multiple pictures). In addition, you can choose the entry point, position, etc... Very interesting for fine tuning the effect.
• Mixer : determines how the two movies will have to appear on the screen. The principle is the same as 2D Alpha Magic transitions in Studio. It uses a greyscale image file which will serve as a mask for viewing videos. For example in effect Airplane Start, Video B will appear following the rear contours of a plane flying on the video.
• Smoke : allows the creation of particles or smoke-like effects. In effect Airplane Start it creates the drag effect on the rear edges of the aircraft.
• Overlay : overlay area of an object on the video. In effect Airplane Start, it's the aircraft.

I explained earlier that you could combine two effects in the catalog of effects. In fact, it does not work for all effect, due to the fact that for each step we can not use a process twice. For example, if one wishes to combine the effect 007 and the effect Airplane Start, as in Overlay you can not select both the gun and the plane, it does not work. Other combination are possible and very interesting.

By double-clicking on the icons Video A, Video B, Mixer, Smoke or Overlay you enter the heart of Adorage and complete the setup of the four steps of an effect. We will see some of these parameters in a future tutorial.

If you tick the Preview box, picture for each stage become animated.

The Menu button :

In the top right of the preview, the Menu button allows access to the software general settings :

Adorage : provides information about the software, its version, the author, additional packages installed and the number of groups and present effects.

Preview-size : changes the size of the video in the preview window.

Processing :

• toggle between 4/3 and 16/9 or 16/9 and 4/3.
• Show videos : either original videos appear or still pictures representing them.
• Show animations : shows the effect with fluidity or only a few intermediate images.

Management : we can force Adorage to recalculate full effect and to clear the cache file that stores the images he calculated.

Export sequence : allows you to export the rendered video without getting back in Studio.

Well, I hope that this tutorial is helping you in better understand Adorage and that you will now experiment by yourself! For the time being, simply choose an effect in the catalog and apply it. We will see later on how we can modify some parameters to understand how powerful it is.

It's not so bad because with the number of available effects you may have trouble to make your choice. As my grandfather used to say : too much effects kills the effect !

On my side, I done this small video to show you some practical example, used as "filter/effect" or as "transition":

And now, have a look to what you can do in few clicks... (courtesy of proDAD):

Bonus :

Let us go back to the possibility of export of the catalog of effects. As discussed in our news Backup Adorage effects catalog I'll show you how to make a backup of your effects and how to use this backup if needed.

From the moment you feel that your catalog of effects is stabilized (eg after installing your packages) I advise you to save it. For this, right-click the Root level, Root data, Export effect(s) :

Warning, for the entire catalog is saved, I specified that you must right-click the root level !

You save the .dat file naming it settings.dat and placing it in a safe place. The days where you want to set back your original catalog (for example following an unfortunate suppression of an effect or group of effects), I propose two methods to achieve. A method a little tedious but which works every time and a more intelligent method, but that everyone may not necessarily apply :

• Method 1
  
  Delete one by one all groups of effects. For that, it's easy. Right-click a group and hit Delete group. Once remains only Root in the catalog of effects, right-click it, Root data, Import effect(s) and load your settings.dat.
  I called this method tedious because if you have multiple groups of effects, it takes time to erase all.
  If you import settings.dat without making housework in advance, your catalog of effects will be filled with duplicates. It's an Adorage minor bug.
   
• Methode 2
  
  For those who have installed the pack 10 of Adorage and therefore the version 3.0.57, open Adorage in Studio, click the "Ado" icon in the upper-left corner of the Adorage window, then below "Available packages list", in front of "Settings from", note the path for the settings.dat file. Close Adorage.
  All you have to do is to replace this settings.dat in Windows Explorer by the one you recorded previously.
  
  For others, you will have to find the settings.dat by yourself. The paths are the most likely C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\proDAD\Adorage\settings.dat or C:\Documents and settings\your username\Application Data\ProDAD\Adorage\setting.dat or C:\Program Files\AdorageI-GfxDatas\settings.dat. The file should weigh several Mo. In fact approximately 1 Mo for each package installed. Once found, replace it with the one recorded previously.

Caution : Before making the substitutions, I advise you to make a backup of the settings.dat file that you replace.

That's it. At the next Adorage opening, you'll have recovered your original catalog.