Zengobi Forums

[popcornflix]

Just wanted to pass along my best practices for embedding video clips in Curio projects.

I make projects where I will reference several clips from a longer video. To make the project portable and avoid a host of other problems, I import the complete videos into the library.

It's very important that you use Quicktime Player 7 from the old Quicktime Pro. The new Quicktime Player 10 lacks the features you will need.

To embed a frame grab from a video, I open the video file in QT7, find the frame and tap "i" and "o" which sets the In and Out point to that frame. Then I copy to the clipboard, click on Curio's workspace and Paste.

To embed a short video excerpt in a Curio Project, open the video in QT7, find the start frame, then press "i" to set the In point, and find the end and press "o" to set the Out point. Now, DRAG the image from the player and drop it onto the Curio workspace. QT7 will create a video clipping that will reference the main video in your library.

I like to set the poster frame of the clipping to the most meaningful frame. Make sure you're looking at the QT7 window of the clipping, not the original video. Find the frame you want, and then in QT7, select "Set Poster Frame" from the View Menu. The Save in QT7. When you go back to Curio, the clipping will have a new Poster Frame.

It works great on a clipping, because it's just a text file referencing the main video file. If you try changing the poster frame on a real video file, QT7 will recompress the whole video when you Save.

I hope this helps.