Main Asset Styling: Look and design

The Main Asset Styling settings allow you to put different styling options on your main asset. These styling settings are on a per-slide basis since they are viewed as inherent to the slide design. But you can also apply these settings for a group – which is a great way to apply styling to all slides in a group at the same time. The values that you set as group styling will be applied on the slide level – so it's quite possible to view the group settings as a kind of macro for making changes on multiple slides at the same time. 

A lot of slides have one or more styling settings turned on as default, so they will be in the On state when you open the Main Asset Styling menu in the side panel. Main Asset Styling for a group will always be in the Not Set state as default.

Before we get into what you can do with styling it's important to understand the states of the Group Main Asset Styling settings. So let's start with that.

States of settings

To be able to easily understand what goes on in the interface, when it comes to styling settings that can occur on both group and slide level, you need to understand the states the group styling settings can be in. These are the states that the Group Main Asset Styling can exist in. We are using the Tint setting in these examples.

Not set

This state means that no group settings are active. This is the default state when creating a group – and will also be the state it reverts to when you clear the group setting with "Reset value to slide defaults". When a setting is not set that means that the group has no effect on the slides.

On

When you first interact with a setting, by clicking the toggle, it will turn "On". This will activate the group settings and will turn on the default settings for groups. So this overwrites all settings on slides for that specific parameter. The default settings for groups are.

Group Tint

• Fade: Off/Off
• Color: Darken
• Opacity: 65%

Group Filter

• Fade: Off/Off
• Type: #nofilter
• Opacity: 100%

Group Monochrome

• Fade: Off/Off

Group Blur

• Fade: Off/Off

Group Duotone

• Fade Off/Off
• Higlights Color: Text on primary
• Shadows Color: Primary
• Opacity: 100%
• Intensity: High

Group Advanced Tint

• Start Tint Color: Darken
• Start Tint Opacity: 0
• Main Tint Color: Darken
• Main Tint Opacity: 65
• End Tint Color: Darken
• End Tint Opacity: 0
• Start-to-Main Duration: 670
• Main-to-End Duration: 670
• Start-to-Main Easing: On
• Main-to-End Easing: On

Off

When you turn a group setting off it will do just that – shut off the group settings and clear values from slides. This does not revert back to slide defaults, instead, this is a kind of "active off". So if you wanted to clear styling from all slides in a group you would first toggle group setting "on" and the "off", that would create a "clean slate".

Mixed

When the group setting is set to "On" and you make styling changes on an individual slide in the group. For instance, setting a Slide Tint to "Off" this will create a mixed state for the Group Tint, that is marked by the text for that setting turning italic. This applies to all settings under even on the sub-level of Fade, Opacity and Color and so on.

Clear styling from group

Whenever you see that little "purple light" next to a setting that means that there are settings made on the group level. If you want to revert everything in a group back to the slide defaults for that setting you can click that purple light. That clears any group specific settings.

Main asset styling

The styling options can be used to enhance and create more of the exact look you want – and to tie together images and videos from different sources with a coherent look. Or use these possibilities to enhance and draw attention to certain parts of your video.

It's also important to understand that these styling options affect each other, so the combination of choices has different outcomes – so there are a lot of cool combinations to try out.

Blur

Applies a fixed blur effect to the asset. The effect can fade in and out at the beginning and end of the slide.

Monochrome

Applies a monochrome effect to the asset. The effect can fade in and out at the beginning and end of the slide.

But this is where it starts to get interesting due to the stacking order of the effects since the Filter and Tint are above in the order, they will affect the image or video AFTER the Monochrome styling has been applied. And since both Filter and Tint affect the color values they will then affect the look of the Monochrome styling. And this can be used to create great looks – so make sure to experiment a bit with this.

Filter

Applies a filter to the asset. The effect can fade in and out at the beginning and end of the slide and the opacity of the effect can be set between 0 (not visible) to 100 (full coverage).

The Filter is applied after the Blur and Monochrome, which means that when applying a filter to an asset that is set to Monochrome, the filter will affect the image differently and you can create attractive combinations of Filter and Monochrome. 

Duotone

Applies a duotone effect to the asset. This effect is created by replacing the "shadows" and "highlights" content of an image or video asset with two colors of your choice. The effect turns the asset monochrome and the maps your chosen colors to it, creating a very distinct effect.

Duotone is applied after Monochrome, Blur, and Filter. This means that you can affect the look by changing Filter – since that manipulates the contrast value of the asset. It's worth trying out.

The effect works best – subjectively – when using a darker color for the Shadows Color and a lighter for the Highlights Color. This allows the asset's natural luminance look shine through. However, experiment away, there are cool results to be found in many combinations.

There is an Opacity control that lets you control how much of the effect that is applied. Moreover, there is an Intensity control that more or less control the contrast of the effect.

When using the opacity control – a tip is to put the Monochrome styling on, for a more controlled look.

Tint

Applies a solid color overlay over the image or video with all the other stylings applied.

This means that the final look will depend heavily on how the asset is styled apart from the tint. The tint has an opacity setting from 0 to 100 where 100 is a solid color with no bleed from the underlying asset. When applying a tint it's often good practice to make the asset monochrome for that "colored" look that you're usually after. But a tint can also be used as a "darkening" mechanism, which you will see as default on certain slide types such as Quote and Quicktext where the background asset is not monochrome. So there is a lot of variation you can coax out of this simple setting.

Advanced Tint

Applies a solid color overlay over the image or video. This styling option is a more advanced version of Tint and when activating it – the settings for Tint will be disabled.

With Advanced Tint, we let you control a lot of the behavior for the solid color overlay – allowing you to create a lot of useful effects and storytelling accents. 

In short – with Advanced Tint you can access all "control points" for the Tint styling: Fade time, animation behavior and color and individual color and opacity settings for "in," "hold" and "out" points – which makes Video Studio animate from one value to another – in color and opacity. So you can seamlessly cycle from one color to another and over multiple opacity values.

These settings allow for excellent control, but that also means you have to keep a watch on how you use them. We'll start by showing a few examples and then get into the settings.

Advanced Tint Examples

There are many ways you can use the Advanced Tint, most of them are very specific to your needs, of course. But here are a few examples to get you started with the methodology.

Fade from one color to another

A simple transition from Start Color to Main Color.

• Set the Start-to–Main Duration to be equal to the slide duration. In our example here the slide is 5,0 seconds, so we input 5000 for the Start-to-Main Duration. (Pro tip: Also set the Main-to-End Duration to 0 for better preview)
• Then set the Start Color and Main Color different.
• Also, set the Start Opacity and Main Opacity to your liking, this will be visible on the storyboard.
• In this example, the tint moves from yellow to blue via color cycling. The opacity is 65% over the whole of it. The asset is also monochrome.

Make a three-point color cycle

When using all three values you will get a more advanced color and opacity transition.

• Divide the Slide Duration equally between Start-to-Main Duration and Main-to–End Duration, so in this case 2500 in both fields.
• Choose color and opacity for Start, Main, and End. 
• Set the asset to monochrome. And set Monochrome Fade to On/On.
• Here we went from 0% pink color to 100% black and then to 0% blue. Very "busy" but shows you the flexibility in being able to move the animation points around as well.

Extending the tint over multiple slides

If you want to build even more advanced animations you can extend the Advanced Tint over multiple slides. Here is an exemple of that, where we do a slow fade to black over two adjacent slides.

• Set the Start Color and the Main Color on the first slide to black (#000000) and the Start Opacity to 0 – set the Main Opacity to 50.
• Set the Start-to-Main Duration to the length of the slide, in this case, 4000 because the slide is 4,0 seconds. (Set the Main-to-End Duration to 0.)
• On Slide 2 in the sequence, set the Main Color and End Color to black, the Main Opacity to 50 and the End Opacity to 100. 
• Set the Main-to-End Duration to 4000 and the Start-to-Main Duration to 0.
• Uncheck the Easing checkboxes on both slides to make the fade animation linear.

Preview for Advanced Tint

The preview above will in the video look like this, the slide starts "orange" and ends "blue".

Advanced Tint has a preview in the storyboard that allows you to see the color and opacity for all three settings: Start, Main, and End. They only represent the color and opacity – not the duration. 

• The left color bar previews the Start Tint Color and Start Tint Opacity.
• The middle color bar previews the Main Tint Color and Main Tint Opacity.
• The right color bar previews the End Tint Color and End Tint Opacity.

Start-to-Main Duration and Main-to-End Duration

These duration settings let you decide on how much time it takes the overlay to move from the Start settings to the Main settings and from the Main settings to the End settings respectively. 

The settings are expressed in milliseconds, the default setting of 670 ms is the exact animation time of a regular Tint with Fade In: On. When combining these duration values with color and opacity, you can create precise animations and effects. Look at the "Advanced Tint Examples" above for more on this matter – how to create slow fades over complete slides and so on.

So, in short, there are three "periods" for each slide – the Start, Main, and End duration. The Start and End are input values, and the Main takes what is "left." So it's: [Slide Duration - Start-to-Main Duration - Main-to-End Duration = Tint Hold Duration]

The Start-to-Main Duration is the time it takes for the Start Tint Color and Start Tint Opacity values to move to the Main Tint Color and Main Tint Opacity. Start Tint-values are positioned at the absolute start of the slide.

The Main-to-End Duration is the time it takes for the Main Tint Color and Main Tint Opacity values to move to the End Tint Color and End Tint Opacity. End Tint-values are positioned at the absolute end of the slide, and the time is calculated from the end of the slide.

Since we allow you to input any values in these duration fields there, you can create conflict between them if the total duration input exceeds the slide duration. When this happens, it's easiest to think about it as that the move from Start to Main values will run first. These illustrations show you what happens in different cases of durations to make the point a bit clearer.

1. Start-to-Main and Main-to-End combined is longer than Slide Duration

2. Start-to-Main Durations is longer than Slide Duration

3. Start-to-Main Duration is set to 0 and Main-to End Duration is longer than Slide Duration

Using duration for "whole slide" animation

So if the Start-to-Main Duration is set to the same length as the slide duration (5000 for a 5,0 second slide) this means that Tint Color and Tint Opacity will animate from their Start values to their Main values – and since there is no time left of the slide duration the move from the Main to the End values will never take place. This will then be a perfect animation from one color and opacity value to another throughout the slide. And vice versa – if you set the Start-to-Main Duration to 0 and the Main-to-End Duration to equal the slide duration you will get the same effect from the Main to the End values.

Start-to-Main Easing and Main-to-End Easing

Almost every animation in Video Studio has an easing curve on – which means it moves a bit slower in the beginning and end of the animation, almost always creating a more attractive and more "lively" look. Think of it as accelerating and braking. In Advanced Tint, you can turn that easing curve off and make the animation between the values linear – meaning it changes with precisely the same amount per time period in the duration. 

Turning these off can be useful when combining multiple slides with different settings that need to be chained together – not to make the animation "accelerate and brake" at every change.

Tint Color

The Color values for Start, Main, and End are pretty self-explanatory – they set the Tint color values at Start, Main, and End.

Tint Opacity

The Opacity sliders control the Tint opacity values at Start, Main, and End.