Exporting video from PhotoShop to iMovie?

[MacMythos]

My goal is to obscure certain areas of video frames so that that area will not be readable in the film. I first edited the video in iMovie. Then I imported the video to PhotoShop and selected the approximate 150 frames that required work. I used the healing brush tool in Ps on each frame to wipe out the details I wanted to eliminate. I exported the video back to My Movies and was able to access it in iMovie where I planned to edit it into another film and upload to YouTube.

When I viewed the 10 second segment in iMovie, there was only about half a second that was visible and it looked very low quality. Most of it was just black.

Any advice to get me on the right track? Maybe there is a simpler way to achieve my goal than using PhotoShop? (The filters in Imovie aren't going to work for my purposes.)

 

[spinnerlys]

What format and codec did you use to export the video in iMovie? Did you use that exported video directly in PS (what version?)? How did you save/export the video from PS and what format and codec did you use? Does that exported video play fine in a video player like QuickTime Player or VLC?

 

[MacMythos]

Thanks for reply Spinnerlys.

I will try as best as I can to recall what I did.

It is Ps4 that I am using. I went to Ps4 and chose File>Import>Video Frames to Layers.

A dialogue box opens and offers iMovie Events or iMovie Projects. The projects are listed but they are not able to be highlighted for selection. Simple enough(?)...I just selected Events and chose the event I had stored which contained the clip I wanted. I brought it into Ps4 and chose the frames I needed to work on. Then, I planned to export back to iMovie to edit in the Ps segment in place of the original segment.

When I Exported, it was guesswork and I suspect that is where things may have gone bad. I went to File>Export>Render Video....

A dialogue box comes up. I am quite sure I chose the same folder in iMovie Events as the segment I worked on in Ps came from originally. File Options were left on QuickTime Export and I selected MPEG-4. Settings, I did not touch because I don't understand what any of that means. I remember trying a custom size. The format/shape was not the same as the frames in iMovie--not that really mattered because the segment I PhotShoped was not useable anyway.

I do not know what a codec is so I can't answer that for you.

Looks like this could be rather complicated for me but I'll try if you think you can help.

 

[MacMythos]

Bump

Anyone willing to do a step by step with me?

 

[MacMythos]

BUMP BUMP

C'mon, this must be a technique that is used all the time. I'm trying to use Ps4 to wipe out the copy on road signs in my video frames...so it is not possible to tell the location the video was shot.

Is there no one who has done this or is it just that you can tell from my posts that this is way beyond my skills and I should just forget about it for a while??

 

[handsome pete]

BUMP BUMP

C'mon, this must be a technique that is used all the time. I'm trying to use Ps4 to wipe out the copy on road signs in my video frames...so it is not possible to tell the location the video was shot.

Is there no one who has done this or is it just that you can tell from my posts that this is way beyond my skills and I should just forget about it for a while??

I haven't worked with video in photoshop much. In the past I had dealt with importing filmstrip files. So I tried out your method to see how it works (in CS3). I ran into some of the same issues you came across (lower quality, blank frames, etc.). I don't know if I did something wrong, but the import/export menus seem fairly straight forward. So maybe the video import feature in CS3 is buggy? I tested this with a 10 frame ProRes file by the way.

This type of task is often much better suited for a video compositing program, like After Effects. I'll look more into this with Photoshop, but an alternative would be to download the AE 30 day free trial and bang this out there. I'm pretty sure there isn't a watermark during the trial period.

Edit: Ok, so I just tried it again and it worked for me. To tell you the truth I don't think I did anything different other than opening up the animation palette and navigating through my frames there. I also tried another method by opening up the video file directly through the "Open" command and not "Import." That worked as well, but doesn't allow you to open up a select range of frames, so that probably won't work for you. Either way, try reading up on video in Photoshop in the help section. Maybe there's an issue with iMovie. Unfortunately I don't have access to that.

 

[MacMythos]

I.......try reading up on video in Photoshop in the help section.

Thanks, Pete. Also, thanks for putting me on the track of After Effects. I have that but have never used it. I am really just learning all this stuff. There certainly is a lot if you go looking for new things to do with your computer.