Table of contents

▪ Introduction
▫ Introduction 2
▫ About this manual 3
▫ Allow us to introduce ourselves 3
▫ Registration 4

▪ Manual
▫ Basic notions 5
▫ Mixer 5
▫ Mixer Settings 6
▫ Fader 6
▫ Alpha masks 7
▫ Video sources A and B as masks 8
▫ Additional adjustments 9
▫ Start- and end point of the alpha masks 10
▫ Smoke or particles 11
▫ Smoke and Particles Settings 12
▫ The direction of the particle stream 12
▫ The random feature 13
▫ The overlay graphics 14
▫ Settings for the overlay graphics 15
▫ The features of the overlay graphics 15
▫ Animations 16
▫ Position, Size and Rotation 17
▫ Video A/B and video source A/B 18

▪ Manual Addendum For Adorage Manuals of Volume 2 and higher 19

▫ VEGAS Video Plug-in 20
▫ Pinnacle Edition DV Plug-in 21
▫ Premiere PRO Plug-in 22

1
Thank you for purchasing the Adorage Magic. We would like to establish and introduce
our company into the market of video editing on PC platforms. By purchasing this
product, you the customer have put your trust in our company. We know you will be
very enthusiastic regarding the features of this program and also for the many other
products that will follow.

While creating this product our goals were the following:

- to create a program that is easy to learn, so that you would not forget how to utilize the
program after a period of time
- to realize your creative ideas easily
- to be able to multiply the possibilities and not just add them
- but most important, to offer results that an expensive system would only be able to
and to have results that were never seen before

We feel strongly that we have accomplished these goals, especially the feature of
compositing with computer animations. We have included in the package several
animations and we have also given you the freedom to create animations by yourself, but
this is just one of the many possibilities offered by our program.
We also created for this product a very detailed manual just in case there are still some
things that are unclear to you or any problems that may arise.

Do not forget to register this product so that we will be able offer you better support.

You can reach us at this address.

2
By now you have noticed that the Adorage Magic offers a multitude of possibilities.
We wanted to give you the chance to use and enjoy this product for as long and as fast
as possible so we took the time to design the program's surface as clear as possible.
The best advantage is the interactive and the fast preview because you can immediately
see the effect each button has.
We also took an additional effort to write a manual as clear and detailed as possible, but
most of all easy. The main focus was set on the online help, so that you can preview and
watch the results immediately by utilizing the online-help.

This manual consists of several sections:

1.) online-help that you can retrieve by clicking on the question mark on the top right of
the program surface and on the function button for the information that you need
(a pop-up menu appears)

2.) a comprehensive online-help that goes into detail and that you can reach by clicking
onto the green information symbol within the "pop-up window".

3.) a section of the manual that touches upon the basic ideas that provide you with an
overview of operating the Adorage Magic.

We are

proDAD Software
Pro Digital Animation Development

Gauertstr. 2
78194 Immendingen

Tel.: 07462-9459-0
Fax.: 07462-9459-79
Inet.: http://www.prodad.de
@.: adver@prodad.de

3
 Very important!

Please send us the registration card that is enclosed in this package. This will enable us
to offer you better customer service and support. If by some mistake you did not receive
a registration card with your product, please send us a copy of your receipt along with
your address to address. In that case you can send the registration via fax or by mail.

We will not confirm your registration right away when it is received but you will receive
the latest information, updates and special offers, which will be the confirmation. Your
information will be saved in an internal and secure database.

Thank you very much!

4
The mixer is the area where you can make the first adjustments for transitions.
These adjustments relate mainly to the manner in which video player A and B are
mingled.
This can occur in various ways:

1) as a normal and soft transparency in which all dots have the same transparency
values

2) as a transparency structure, gradually growing and therefore taking over the picture

3) as a statically transparent structure with a fixed and determined individual value of

transparency for every single dot

4) animations of the transparency structures of 2) or 3)

A lot of possibilities for adjustment join this variety of mixing-manners, as there are
coloring additions, motion or adjustments related to the running off of the transition.

Default settings

With the default settings you create a contour less "soft" transition (as item 1. above).
That is to say the procedure of transition is distributed onto the effect duration and all
areas of the picture, each pixel, change their transparency in the same speed.

Here you can take a look at possible settings in this range.

In order to obtain a structure in your transition you need alpha masks.

5
The fader

The first changes

You can make the first changes with the sliders Fader start position and Fader end
position.

The fader is responsible for the intensity in which the one video-source is shining over the
other. You have two extremes at your disposal: maximum of video A or maximum of
video B, the steps in between produce an overlapping or a shining over.

Remind yourself of the fader lever known from the non-digital range, the analogue fader.

This lever usually could be pushed either back or forth. Lever to the back showed more of
video-source A and the lever forth let video-source B shines through more.

The percentage values of the sliders work the same way:

- at 0%, that is slider all to the left, video-source A can be seen with maximum
intensity and video B not at all.

- at 100%, slider all to the right, Video-source B has the maximum intensity and Video
A is not visible.

Start and End

These adjustments can be made for the begin and the end of the effect.
The motion (the transformation) from the start-setting to the end-setting is
distributed equally onto the effect-duration.

Please note that the rendered effect seen in connection with the remaining video material
could result as a very sudden appearance of the actual video-source or as hindering its
vanishing.
This happens for instance when the value of the start-position was not set to 0%, the
video-source would then of course appear abruptly.

On the other hand this abruptness could as well be a welcome feature, especially
combined with antecedent or following long-term effects. A special form of this is the
duration transparency which you can obtain by choosing the same percentage values for
start and end.

NOTE: If the alpha mask is not a threshold-file these sliders always have effect,
no matter what function is added later on, that is to say : they do not depend from
any other preset in order to be selected.

This way for the transitions with structure: the alpha masks.

6
 - What is an alpha mask?

Alpha masks allow structure and motion in the transition

Usually, but not necessarily, alpha masks consist of black and white pictures (grayscale).
They decide about the shape visible during the transition, they also work like stencil-
masks or like many little single faders, one on each pixel.

In this simple example the second scene would shine through with a
triangular shape. It does not need to be a mere black and white picture,
because the more nuances we have the softer the transition is. Like in
the following example:

In this example the triangular shape can only be guessed, since the
triangle was gradually reduced receiving at every single step (256 of
them) a brighter color nuance until it was a thoroughly white small pixel.

Adorage can handle alpha masks in two manners:

The second example used as a threshold-file lets gradually grow the triangular opening in
which scene two is visible. The brighter areas receive a sooner transparency than the
darker ones. Adorage distributes the gradual flow from the brighter to the darker areas
evenly onto the effect duration.

With that not only a structure was brought into the transition, but also a motion.
The first example would cause a very abrupt movement, because it consists only of two
color nuances, which are difficult to be dispersed onto the effect-duration.

Used as alpha-file the single grayscale works as a small fader on the actual pixel and
therefore it decides about the mixing relation of the two pictures for every single pixel by
itself, and this for the complete duration of the effect.

In the second example above you would see scene two more distinctively in the middle of
the frame, in triangular shape it would vanish towards the frame border and scene A
would gradually take over and become more intense at the border of the frame.
The first example would create a sharp and statically division between scene B as a
triangular cut out and scene A as its border. This is why this kind of picture (with less
nuances) is able to offer its best results when used as an alpha-file.

In order to select the kind of alpha-treatment just use the item "features of the
mask", either as threshold-file or as alpha-file. You can make this setting at any
time without needing to load any new alpha mask.

7
Still, it is not necessary for an alpha mask to be a grayscale picture, because the
brightness nuances are the essential part of it, so that you could use any kind of picture
you like, even one of the video-sources themselves.

1. grayscale pictures (alpha masks)

2. video-source A and B
3. animations of alpha masks

Click here to see the additional settings that apply on all the three kinds of alpha masks
the same way.

Video-sources as transition structures

This application of alpha masks is already a specialty, because we do not just take any
kind of picture for an alpha mask, like a grayscale alpha mask, but nothing less than one
of the two video-sources.
At the first glance one might wonder why we should take a picture to serve as its own
transition mask. Until now we simply used a soft transition in which every single part of
the picture would transform in the same speed, now we add a structure and a motion to
it.

Please select in the area "features" first the item

video-source A. As you can see the original
picture seems to dissolve.

Now please select the item video-source B,

now it looks like the picture is drowning into the next one or like the second picture is
about to materialize.
This is takes place because the brightness nuances are taken as mini-faders for each
pixel. This is of course not at all a "perfect" alpha mask.
Why not?

The shift from the brighter nuances to the darker ones is distributed onto the effect
duration.
Perfect alpha masks offer a permanent fluent motion, that is to say there are no jumps in
the running, because almost all of the 256 nuances are contained in the picture.

In order to produce such "perfect" alpha masks some tools are required tools that
certainly were not applied on the video material. But this is on the other hand not as
annoying since the shape of the transitions does follow the form of the picture.

8
The sharpness of the contour

At both treatments of alpha masks you can decide about the sharpness of the contour,
that is to blur and therefore to thicken the border between scene A and scene B, or to let
it become finer and with that thinner.
With this setting you can adapt the impression of the effect more to you own video
material, a very soft (blurred) alpha mask gives the normal soft and structure less
transition an additional and more interesting form.

Also you can decide how much of the coloring of the border to be visible.

The coloring of the border

In this area you can make a selection of the color to shine through within the structure
border. You can choose between color, textures and one of the two video-sources.
The color is to be selected as usual in the system, as well you won’t encounter problems
while creating your own color.

A texture is nothing else than a picture which usually is tending to a specific color or that
contains a known structure (like a brick-wall). Instead of just using an even coloring you
can also dispose of color structures. Certainly this is an additional element of design,
especially in connection with similarities of shape between the alpha mask and the color
structure.

Video-sources can not only be used additionally as alpha masks but also as textures for
the border coloring. Again, this is a function that does not seem to be sensible, a least at
the first look, how should a scene colorize itself? But you can play around with different
sorts of picture distortions, e.g. try the smoke feature and let the scene dissolve for an
endless time.

Chapters of their own are the settings for the start and end point of the alpha mask and
the possibility of positioning, scaling and rotating.

9
Now we do know that alpha masks consist of many brightness nuances between white
and black. These brightness nuances are taken, depending from the use of it (threshold
file or alpha-file), as the moment of beginning of the transition or as value of
transparency for the single pixel.

The start and end sliders do show an effect when handling with a threshold
file, but at first they won’t have any effect on the normal alpha file, because
the alpha file is a static transparency. Only when operating with an
animation out of alpha files you will be able to see a result.

Threshold file
If the brightness nuances were numbered, one could say that the sliders specify from
which number on the alpha mask is supposed to have an effect respectively until which
number.
The default setting is 0% for the beginning and 100% for the ending of the effect, his
induces the alpha mask to completely run through.
Let’s say you set the slider to 50%: video B will appear already and more of a sudden at
the beginning of the effect and with more intensity, like if the alpha mask already had
run through its first half. As consequence only the second half of the alpha mask is
distributed onto the effect duration.

What is this setting for, if video B appears harshly and abruptly?

Imagine that with Adorage you have produced a picture in picture effect, which is existent
in a certain length as a long term effect. With this setting you receive the chance to softly
blend out the picture in picture. This is just one of the examples for an application of this
feature, there are no restrictions to your creativity.

Alpha file animations

Animations, actually and really, consist of a series of single pictures. Adorage has the
possibility to process animations even in the range of alpha masks. Such an animation for
an alpha-file could look e.g. like video B been constructed like a brick wall, one stone
after the other. The start and end point settings declare from which picture to start the
animation and at which to stop it.

Here some additional information related to animations.

10
Smoke or particles tail

A specialty of this program is to be able to take the change of a pixel as release for a
small particle unit which for a while still contains the information of the picture. With this
additional feature you can create the impression that the picture is dissolving into smoke,
because these particles remain a while and then slowly disappear, like a comet tail.
For the adjustments please double-click onto the smoke preview and activate the
checkbox "use smoke", with that you can make all further adjustments.

Intensity

The stronger the particle stream is, the more the veil containing the remaining picture
information becomes distinct. Since these particles are generated by the change in the
picture, with this feature you decide about for how long e.g. the border coloring will be
visible.
The default setting is 5% in order to have at least a small effect. Of course you can
increase the intensity by using the slider or by directly typing the intensity factor.

Frames of acceleration

The stronger the intensity of the particle stream is set, the longer it takes for the veil to
dissolve. That means that you might have to adjust a certain amount of frames at the
end of the effect to allow this dissolution. The effect is accelerated of the amount of these
frames so that only the smoke remains. With this feature an abrupt ending of the effect is
avoided.

Smoke particles can receive a direction or a rotation.

11
The direction of the particle stream

Smoke particles can receive two different directions to flow two, these two adjustments
can be combined.

At the sides of the smoke preview you can see four sliders, two for the horizontal
direction and two for the vertical. The sliders all together divide the picture into four
parts, for which you can set an individual direction of flow.
This division brings the advantage that you can set a slow flow towards the borders as
well as some which are going to a distinct direction.

Above you can see the flow tendencies towards the borders, slow ones and flowing to
the bottom left.

Please compare with a picture WITHOUT smoke addition.

12
The rotational impulse

The directions mentioned above can be combined with a

rotational impulse which turns around the center of the
screen. As you can see at the bottom edge of the triangle, the
example is showing a rotation counterclockwise. With the
actual slider you can set the strength of the rotational
impulse for both directions. Since the rotation is related to
the center of the screen, the outer particles flow faster than
the inner ones, therefore the tail is more distinct at the
outside. This can be used to emphasize a rotation maybe
already existing e.g. in the alpha mask.

In order to work against the steps visible in the example

above you need the random feature.

Even if all the motions in Adorage really run very fluently one cannot abolish the technical
reality that is related to some settings of the speed of the running, out of which some
jumps result in the flow. This is always happening in the range of the picture exchange:
an object (e.g. a ball) can pass the camera so fast that in that time the camera could
create three pictures only. The motion from one picture to the other is very abrupt.
The same with e.g. the alpha masks the change of which is distributed onto the effect
duration.

In the normal processing the motion is still very fluent, but if smoke is added, something
like a memory of the last picture position is created. Then the jump from one picture to
the next is much more distinct between two edges of the smoke.
In order to somehow avoid the effect of steps we added the random feature. This feature
randomly distributes the edge dots of the picture change, therefore the edges turn to be
less distinct.

13
Adorage Magic has a feature that is revolutionary for the home made and semi-
professional productions namely the possibility to very easily and fast lay graphics
respectively animations onto the video picture.
Hereby Adorage offers an outstanding quality of the overlaying without any fringe at the
edges nor any blurred borders, as they are known from e.g. blue box techniques.
The trick lies in the technique of the alpha-stencil, all graphics receive a stencil that
shows the exact silhouette of the graphic. The advantage is, besides a high quality, the
fast rendering.

With this software you received many graphics and animations, please take a look at our
examples:

An overlay graphic as frame for a picture in picture effect. Or

see below an animation of overlay graphics as introduction for a
transition.

If you want to lay your own company logo onto the video, then
why don’t you just take Adorage for a long-term effect; the
rendering time will be very short and preparing the graphic is
nothing more than a child’s play.

This is how overlay graphics look like.

14
To create a graphic or an animation you can use any paint or ray tracing software. The
format of the picture (JPEG, TIF, AVI,...) is secondary, almost all are supported. Same
thing with the size of the picture, because they are all scaled to the needed size. The best
results are obtained of course if you choose the video size for the picture also.

Certainly you do not want to lay the whole picture on the video, because it would cover it
completely. We have to extract the wished object out of the picture. All we need for that
is to just take out its silhouette from the picture. This is called stencil mask. The stencil
mask is nothing else then a black picture containing the white silhouette of the object.

Let’s take a look at one example:

In the range of the overlay graphic we have to load two pictures:

1.) the stencil that marks the areas in which the video picture (black) and the overlay
graphic (white) are to be visible

2.) the actual graphical material

This technique is very similar to the alpha file in the range of the mixer.

The white silhouette is very easily created with the layer technique of the most modern
paint programs respectively automatically produced by the ray tracing programs even for
animations.

15
The definition of animation contains any scene in motion, since the computer never cares
about the source of the pictures, either from a video, drawn or rendered from a
computer.
Like in the video technique the motion is produced by showing many single pictures one
after the other. The only differentiation important here is the kind of format in which
these pictures were summed up. The various formats distinguish themselves by different
quality, compression and display speed, and are therefore differently suitable for the
different applications.

For video editing some formats got successful, among them we can find the AVI format.
Adorage Magic supports this format thoroughly, as well as single pictures or even series
of single pictures.
The latter are able to be summed up into a directory and therefore they do not need to be
numbered. That is to say that in order to load this animation you just need to drag and
drop the directory symbol into the actual preview.

In Adorage Magic you have the possibility to use animations in five different spots at the
same time:
1) Video A
2) Video B
3) Animations of alpha masks
4) Animations of textures
5) Animations of the overlay graphics

1) u. 2) If you are using Adorage Magic as a plug-in for an editing software then you are
not restricted to the video-sources that are offered by the editing software. You can
choose your own file (even a single picture) to work as video-source A or B. Moreover,
video-source A and B are able to be used as animations for alpha masks, textures and
even the stencil mask of the overlay animation.

3) You can have for both the processing manners of alpha masks (threshold and alpha)
animations, whereby it is easier to control the animations made of alpha-files, since all
pictures of the animation would be treated the same way also when taken as single
pictures.
In opposition to that, the threshold file is subject to a certain change when several
pictures are displayed one after the other. This is because Adorage distributes the picture
onto the effect duration, therefore the own dynamic of the single picture cannot be run all
the way through. The extreme case is that of every single picture only one brightness
nuance has its effect.

If you have only two pictures building an animation, the nuances from 0 to 127 of the
first picture are displayed within the first half of the effect duration, and the nuances 128-
255 of the second picture have effect in the second half of the effect time.

4) If in the features field of the color the item "file" is set, you can choose single pictures
or even animations.

5) The overlay graphic can consist of one single picture (e.g. a logo) as well as of an
animation (e.g. our earth globe). In addition to that you have the possibility to use the
stencil features of this animation for further effects.

16
All in all you can enjoy absolute freedom for your own creative ideas, because you can
use no matter what kind of video/graphic-file in any of the spots mentioned above.

By the way you can also use the same file at the same time in different positions, this is
done for instance to create special picture transforming effects.

You obtain the following picture in video A, video B, mixer (alpha mask) and in
the overlay animation. (the latter two using the button "position")

This surface enables you to change the

actual picture-file respectively video-source
in position, vertical and horizontal scaling,
rotation and to bring it into motion.

The first eye catcher is the blue square in

the bigger area. This area is made of three
times three fields, each representing the
size of one screen. If you move the square
completely out of its own field then you just
moved the picture completely out of the
visible range of the screen.

The blue square is responsible for the adjustment for the beginning of the effect. That is
to say that the difference between the setting of the start and the one of the end is
distributed onto the effect duration. In order to adjust the end position, please click onto
the card flag of with the green square. If you do not want do create a motion, then just
let both squares share the same position. This is done much easier (without changing to
and fro) if you click onto the card flag with both squares, in this preview you can see both
squares at the same time.

The sharing of the position is done even easier using the right mouse-button, because
you can transmit the settings from one square to the other.
Positioning can also be done with the sliders at the border of the card, vertically and
horizontally split, and there you can also make more precise adjustments and even with
values that surpass the graphical margins.
As you can see on this card there are some more sliders, their adjustments also relate
either to start and end of the effect, depending from the square that has been selected.
That gives you the possibility to transform the picture along the duration of the effect also
in rotational angle or in size.

17
Video-source A and video A

If Adorage is used as a plug-in for editing software, then at first video A is the same as
the video-source (A) in the storyboard. Of course you can change this setting by loading
your own file instead of this video-source, so that you can better take profit of the
possibilities offered by Adorage. Some effects even need this.

We have to make a difference between video A and video-source A.

Video A is a place where a video (or a picture) is displayed which later on is mingled with
what is seen on video B.

Video-source A marks the animation offered by the editing software in the first track.
Very clear is the difference when you drag another file, which is not present in the editing
software, into video A while using the video-source as alpha mask in the mixer.

If Adorage is used as a plug-in for editing software, then at first video A is the same as
the video-source (A) in the storyboard. Of course you can change this setting by loading
your own file instead of this video-source, so that you can better take profit of the
possibilities offered by Adorage. Some effects even need this.

We have to make a difference between video B and video-source B.

Video B is a place where a video (or a picture) is displayed which later on is mingled with
what is seen on video A.

Video-source A marks the animation offered by the editing software in the first track.
Very clear is the difference when you drag another file, which is not present in the editing
software, into video B while using the video-source as alpha mask in the mixer.

18
 Manual Addendum
For Adorage Manuals of Volume 2 and higher

Dear users,

Thank you very much for the purchase of Adorage Magic Volume 7!

This version will fill you with enthusiasm because Adorage was never so fast and as
versatile as this version.
The printed manual for the product have not been changed with this version since the
general mode of handling and the programs interface is nearly the same.
Nevertheless we keep interesting information ready for you:
We refer to the internet page www.prodad.de where you find workshops to different
topics and FAQ’s.

The advantages are faster information and the possibility to provide user requested
information nearly interactive.

If you have requests which are currently not answered at www.adorage.deplease contact
us at service@prodad.de - maybe your request results into a FAQ topic which of course
will help other users also.

Following you will find the description for the new plug-in which is new included in this
volume.
Now we wish you many success and effective results with Adorage!

Please notice also following links

for latest info’s about Adorage products and proDAD:

Workshops and FAQ’s and Titling solutions at www.prodad.de

ProDAD Adorage News at www.2thegoodnews.de

ProDAD GmbH
Gauertstr. 2
78194 Immendingen
Germany

Phone: +49 (0) 7462 / 9459 0

Fax: +49 (0) 7462 / 9459 79
Email: service@prodad.de

Your registration number (please store for Updates, Online-Services etc.):

………………………………………………………………………………………

19
1. Create a timeline constellation with a transition
(the same procedure as with VEGAS built in effects).
2. Drag the „proDAD Adorage“ effect Icon from the transition list and drop it onto the time range of the
transition.
Adorage starts automatically and the standard transition will be shown.
Just choose the wished effect out of the list, modify it as described in the main manual and return to
the Vegas GUI by clicking the X in the right top corner.

In Vegas it’s impossible to show the video sources in external plug-ins. If you need this preview, just
have a look at the VEGAS preview. During a continuously playback of the work area it will show the
Adorage effects also incl. The original source videos – depending on the effect and the CPU power in
real-time.
Changing’s made in Adorage will also being shown interactive in this preview.

Plug-in Access

20
Plug-in Start / End

If two plug-ins appearing in the effect list, please use only the „proDAD Adorage“ effect!

21
First of all please create a transition in the Premiere timeline. Than assign the Adorage effect as shown
in following illustration:

22