Cinelerra Tutorial: Lighsaber Effect

How to make a lightsaber effect in Cinelerra. There are a lot of good tutorials out there about this, but none specifically for Cinelerra, so I thought I'd contribute one.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• cinelerra
• tutorial
• lightsaber effect
• video effect

[LegitFish]

When I am trying to move a certain point of the lightsaber perimeter, it creates a new point instead; when I click on the point to move it, the program simply creates a new one next to the point which I want to move. This is aggravating because I can't figure out how to move certain points of the lightsaber perimeter. Can you advise me about what I might be doing wrong?

[cybridproductions]

@LegitFish When you initially create the mask, Cinelerra does sometimes create two points in the same place - I think you can see this occur in the tutorial, but it should not do so after that. You should be able to click on the point and drag it. The only thing I can suggest is clicking very carefully. If you click anywhere *other* than one of the already created mask points, then you WILL create a new one. Is it possibly you are clicking next to the mask point rather than *on* it?

[LegitFish]

What version of Cinelerra do you use?

[cybridproductions]

@LegitFish this was made on 2.1 CV. I now have 2.1.5 CV and I think 2.2 will be available shortly. As to your previous question, sorry for not replying sooner; I've never actually tried that but the top track should simply replace the tracks beneath it, so I don't think you'd get a more red effect - that said, sometimes in Cinelerra, I do notice a very minimal level of bleedthrough even when I'm using masks (like a tiny bright/dark shift), so try it and see?

[haxfactory]

Oh, did you hear Lightworks went open source back in April? It's getting ported over to Linux and Mac OS X in Q4 2011. It's definitely going to be the best open source video editing platform on Linux (don't know how good Autodesk's commercial stuff is though).

[cybridproductions]

@haxfactory yes i'm definitely looking forward to it. i'm a BIG fan of Cinelerra but it lacks a large enough community and enough developers to keep it as up to date as it needs to be (no diss intended; the people who maintain it do an AMAZING job of providing a fantastic, free program, and one I use a LOT). So yeah, nervous about the learning curve for a new program but very excited to see what it's like.

[reuven2001612]

is that ubuntu?

[LegitFish]

@cybridproductions,

Yes, that is possible. Thanks for the advice.

[LegitFish]

Can you make the lightsaber more red by adding more of the exact same red color blocks on separate tracks at the same place in the timeline?

[haxfactory]

@cybridproductions i'm in the lucky situation of having not really found a workflow in any program yet. i've traveled back and forth between pro program trials on windows, cinelerra, and imovie hd on my old powermac g4. i am impressed with cinelerra especially having been written from the start as an open source product. lightworks started closed source probably has a more stable base for that reason (despite how much i love open source, close source software does tend to be more stable).