Album

The Album section has two divisions, Edit mode and Make Mmovie mode. The editing and addition of sound effects, transitions, titles (etc) is done in Edit mode. The Make Movie mode is used to export your final product. VideoSpin can import and edit files with Pinnacle video transfer. The files need to be on the computer’s hard drive or connected to the computer with a USB hard drive or flash drive, to be edited by VideoSpin. The software can't grab footage directly from a camera.

 

To browse for media and/or import media, you click on the file folder icon next to the Album dialog box.

The edit segment has 6 subdivisions: video, transitions, titles, photos, sound effects and music.

Video

This contains the video footage which can be used and previewed. Video files can be loaded into the Album and viewed there also. The files in the Album are represented by thumbnails. To use the respective scene you just need to drag it to the Timeline. In the Album, scenes are displayed in the order they were created but you can choose the sequence of scenes in the Timeline for the movie.

Transitions

A transition is an effect which bridges the gap between sections of footage. Transitions should highlight the meaning of the video and should always fit into their particular spot without confusing viewers. Most professional movies use very simple transitions like a fade or something subtle but you can also choose more obvious transitions that spin or cross fade etc. VideoSpin has a lot of transitions to choose from. As you click on the icon of a particular transition it is automatically demonstrated in the video player. Drag and drop it to the Timeline to add it to a particular scene.  

Titles

VideoSpin comes with some standard titles to use at the beginning of a movie. You can choose one and use it as is, or you can edit a template. Alternatively, you can create your own title with the title editor, save it under the My Titles section and then use it. You can get more pre-made titles to choose from if you upgrade to Pinnacle Studio.

Photos

In this section, images and files are displayed as thumbnails. This is the section where you can preview not only images and photos from your hard drive but also text captions and graphics including scrolling credits and “crawled” messages. There are two ways to add them depending on where on the track you drop them onto the Timeline. You can add them either to display the title in the beginning or to the end of the full movie clip or you can drag and drop a photo and put it in the middle of a movie also.

Sound effects

There is a nice selection of sound effects provided with VideoSpin. They range from animals, background noise, crowds, miscellaneous noises, squeaks and vehicles voices. These are all .wav files but you can also choose other files from your hard disk. This includes your own files which you have created or recorded yourself. VideoSpin supports wav, mp3, avi, mpa, wma formats.

Music

In this section you can grab music files from your hard disk or select from the files that come with VideoSpin.