Scene Concept

If you’ve produced videos before, you may have done so with programs that use a storyboard concept. In the storyboard model, scenes (video or image sequences) are assembled on the storyboard and can be joined by transition sequences (e.g. fades, zooms, flashes).

However, the logic of the storyboard requires that both scenes contribute something to the transition and thus part of the end and beginning sequences becomes lost as the transition eats away at either end.

In Volpe the transitions themselves become independent scenes. It then becomes possible to determine whether two videos melt into one another, or whether they stop with the last frame of the first sequence and continue with the first frame of the new sequence, with the two contiguous frames forming the transition. When a transition is a scene of and in itself, it also has the possibility of containing effects, such as subtitles.

It is also possible to break up an effect over several scenes, although there are some restrictions, and they have to be carefully planned. A text effect can begin, for example, in a transition, as long as:

• A complete section of the effect (intro, main or outro) is contained within the scene;
• The following sequence does not start with a "still i/o" sequence;
• The effect in the second sequence has no intro, but starts directly with the main or outro sequence.

Volpe concentrates on optimizing individual scenes, and the final rendering is comparatively fast, as the finished scenes are simply assembled together. However, even this final assembly can be considered a scene, and effects placed arbitrarily within it. However the production of such a lengthy scene would be very time-consuming.

Volpe's scene concept brings with it a precision that is tricky to obtain with the stroyboard concept. The start and length of any effect can be absolutely determined within a scene. Thus it is possible to allow an effect to intro from the exact point of mid-transition, or to start outroing at the begining of a scene and ending at mid-transition. And, of course, any number or type of effects can run at any one time, allowing for further effects such as text effects that flash or change color.