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The creation of neon light effects on a frame-by-frame basis can require extensive amounts of time.  There are several things you can try in order to speed this process up.  As a general rule, though, for best results these effects should be manually placed on every frame.  Any process for reducing the time required will also result in some loss of accuracy in the placement of the effects, or some other reduction of quality.  You must weigh the gain in speed with the loss of quality for any technique, and decide which will work best for you and your project.

We will look at three ways that you may be able to speed up the process of creating lightsabers.

1.  Keyframing

By using keyframes, and the Tweening system found in both EffectsLab and VisionLab Studio, you can quickly increase the speed of the process by allowing the software to calculate the position of the effects in some frames.  If you set the position of the effect in frame 1, and then set the position in frame 3, for example, the software will automatically place the effect in frame 2, at the exact halfway point between the two keyframes you created.


Here we have placed the effect on frame 1.  Now we will move forward to frame 4 of the effect, and position it again there.
 

Notice that there are no keyframes (the small blue rectangles) on the timeline on frames two or three.  However, when we reposition the playhead to frame two...

...we can see that the tweening system has repositioned the effect automatically.  Its placement is not perfect; you can see a little bit of the green prop blade along the right side of the effect, but once the glow is turned on, this will probably not be visible.  Depending on the quality needed for your project, these results might be entirely acceptable.  If they are not, you can shift the position on this frame to better align with the prop.

Looking at frame three, we see similar results.  The effect is quite close to the correct spot, without us doing anything manually to place it there.

• The more frames you skip between keyframes, the faster it will go, but the less accurate your effects will be.
• You can always add another keyframe at any point, if there is an area where things aren't lining up as well as you would like.

2.  Neon Objects

In VisionLab, you can use a Neon Object to automatically track your prop blade.  In order for this to work, though, you have to be able to isolate the blade using the keying tools.  If you have a brightly colored blade on your prop (green works best, and won't affect the final color of the effects), and you can select it using the Key tools, then you can replace it using the Neon Object tool.

1. Apply a key filter to the footage containing the lightsaber blade, and set the key so only the blade is removed.
• The key to getting the Neon Object to work is getting a clean selection of the blade, and nothing else, using the key tools.
  
2. Add a Neon Light effect to the timeline, and select the Neon Object from the Neon shapes panel. 
   
3. The Shape Attributes will open in the lower section of the Toolbox.
   
   
4. Open the blank menu at the top, and select the layer containing the keyed footage.
5. Make sure the second menu is set to Alpha, so that the alpha information created by the key is used as the shape of the Neon Object effect.

• You must be able to isolate the blade of your prop using the key filters for this technique to work.
• If your prop is moving quickly, the motion blur of the blade may render this technique impossible.
• Neon Objects work best when the prop is relatively stationary, so the edges are clearly defined.

3.  Progressive vs. Interlaced

If you are working with progressive footage rather than interlaced, then you automatically have only half as much work to do.  Interlaced footage at 25 frames per second requires that the effect be positioned 50 times per second (once for each field), while progressive footage at the same framerate only requires it be positioned on 25 frames per second. 

• By de-interlacing your interlaced footage, you can cut the work involved in half.

You should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this process first.  On the plus side, it will go much quicker.  On the downside, half of the video information contained in your footage will be irretrievably lost.  De-interlacing should usually be avoided until the final step of distributing your movie, due to the significant hit the video quality will take.  For experiments and tests, this may be acceptable though.  Also, if your project is intended for internet distribution, it will have to be de-interlaced at some point.  If the quality is not critical, de-interlacing before the effects rather than after will reduce the effects workload by half.

• De-interlacing effectively reduces the frame count by 50%.
• De-interlacing also reduces the video information by 50%, resulting in potentially significant quality loss.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, any method used to cut corners in the amount of time the effects take will likewise result in corners being cut in the quality of the resulting effects.  The quality loss may be insignificant enough that it doesn't matter for your project, in which case significalt amounts of time may be saved.  But for the highest quality effects, there is no substitution for taking the take to do it right, and manually placing the effects for each field of video.

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