MacroSystem Columbus 2 - Manual (Page 24)

24 Columbus 2
key point (you can tell the key points apart from
the waypoints by the symbols that are display-
ed within the colored points – see Chapter 2.1),
then open the Global settings menu and set the
selection button to Key object. Next, activate the
Show key object function and click on the Select
key object button. Now choose a suitable object,
e.g. a flag (3D object) and select a suitable color.
Then, if necessary, adjust the Key object size.
Since the Global settings menu only makes glo-
bal changes, you will see that the settings that
you have just configured are applied to all the
key points (including the starting and finishing
points).
When the route is subsequently calculated,
please make sure that the Split video function in
the Special window is set to Yes!
After the calculations are complete, you will see
several scenes appear in the scene bin, each
showing a part of your route.
If you now place the individual scenes one after
another into the storyboard they will constitute
the entire route of the cruise.
However, you also have video footage for each
stopover that you want to insert at the cor-
responding key point as soon as the ship arrives
there.
That is why the route must be available alrea-
dy split up into several scenes so that you can
insert the video footage after the scene in which
the ship reaches the key point. To ensure that
the transition from the route scene to the video
footage is smooth, you should fade the scenes
into one another using a transition effect.
To do so, open the Transition effects menu and
select the two scenes between which you want
the crossfade to occur.
You can of course use any transition effect that
you want here but Columbus 2 also provides its
own special transition effects (Columbus 2 Ro-
tate, Columbus 2 Circle, Columbus 2 Rectangle
and Columbus 2 Zoom) that are also included in
other effects packages in a similar form. The dif-
ference is that these effects have been specially
adapted to Columbus 2 so that the beginning
and end of each effect can be positioned preci-
sely at any point in the scene.
So if you want to crossfade from your route to
the video, open the transitions menu and select
an effect like Columbus 2 Circle and then insert
it. Since you want to fade from Columbus 2 into
a video, set the Direction to Col. -> Video.
Next click on the Select key point button so that
you see your video image and then, using the
Position button, you can set the position for the
point at which the video scene should start fa-
ding in. In this case, select the point on the map
that your head object (i.e. the ship) is currently
heading towards and at which the pause time
will begin.
Afterwards, if necessary, set the Threshold for
the fade-in of the video footage.
Set the effect length to 1 second. This ensures
that the effect is not too short and that the video
scene is not faded in too early but that it only
starts appearing when the object (i.e. ship) has
come to a halt at the key point.