How to make transitions and add titles from filenames of stills in movie made from still images

Report · Apr 30, 2021

I wanted to make a video from daily screenshots of one of my security cameras to show our fertilization tech how some weeds have suddenly appeared in the lawn over just the last two to three weeks. I brought the stills into Photoshop Premiere Elements 2021. I tried making the time for each fram less than the default of 1 second but it kept going back to one second. That is not so bad as it provides enough time for each frame to register in the brain before moving on to the next one. Here are a couple of things I'd like to improve on.

1. The screen captures from my phone had some extraneous material, maily on top and on the right so I cropped the image but this resulted in a sort of letter box effect and I would prefer the movie to be more full-frame.

2. I would like to add titles in the lower left corner using the file name of each file so one can see what date one is looking at. The filenames are in this format
Screenshot_20210222-080101_Alibi Witness 20.jpg
I would like the titles to just have the date, which in the filename above would be

20210222

If I can only do date and time like this

20210222-080101

that would be acceptable.

I am thinking #1 would be easier than #2 to accomplish but I know there are a lot of folks on here who are pretty sharp so figured I'd ask for everything and if I can't get it that's fine.

I posted what I have so far here:

https://donander.smugmug.com/Public/Front-Lawn-Weeds-Feb-Apr-2021

I tried attaching my project file "Front Lawn Movie Feb 22 2021 to Apr 30 2021.prel" but I got an error which said the content did not match the file type so it was removed. Not sure how to overcome that. If I double-click that file it opens in Premiere Elements.

Thanks,

Don

Report · Apr 30, 2021

Well, I guess my screen capture of the error didn't even work. Sigh...

Report · Apr 30, 2021

This all seems pretty straightforward.

1. What is the measurement of the height and width of your stills, as measured in pixels? Your video frame is based on your project settings -- usually 1920x1080. But unless you're stills are also of the 16:9 dimensions, you're going to get letterboxing.

2. I'm not clear what the issue is with the title you're trying to add. Are you saying that sometimes the text is not all of the same color?

As for the length of time each still is onscreen, that should also be pretty simple to set. Just go to the Edit menu and select Preferences. On the General page you can set your Still Image Default Duration by either seconds or frames. I've never had trouble setting this number even as low as one frame. (Though this setting will only affect photos or stills that are added to your project AFTER you make the setting.)

Report · Apr 30, 2021

1. According to my phone the resolution is 2220 x 1080. This is the resoulution of the screenshot. I don't know what the resolution is after cropping in Premiere Elements. If you need to know that, pleaase let me know how to find it.
2. I think we have a misunderstanding. The title "Front Lawn" is from my security system. That is not the title I am talking about. That will be the same on every screenshot (although I see it is larger on some but I don't care about that). I want the date from the filename to be shown in the lower left corner and I want that to be taken from each filename. It will be different for each still (or frame) in the movie.

Thanks,

Don

Report · May 01, 2021

1. Your photos are not the same dimensions as your video. An HD video is, for instance, 1920x1080, while your photos are 2220x1080 -- so you're going to get letterboxing. Your photos don't fill your video frame. (To find your project settings, go to the program's Edit menu and look at the General page under Project Settings.)

2. What is the problem you're having adding your title? It won't be added automatically, but you should be able to add a title manually with no problems.

Report · May 01, 2021

Since this video is just for my fertilization guy, I am ok with the letterboxing. I don't want to spend the time for the small difference.

Regarding the titles, the first two screen shots from my phone have these filenames

Screenshot_20210222-080101_Alibi Witness 20.jpg

Screenshot_20210223-130954_Alibi Witness 20.jpg

and the last one has this filename

Screenshot_20210430-081221_Alibi Witness 20

I have attached these files to hopefully make things more clear.

Note that after the text "Screenshot_" there is the year, month and day in this format

YYYYMMDD.

I would like those characters to appear in the lower left corner of each frame respectively, so I would like

20210222 to appear in the first frame and

20210223 to appear in the next frame and so on with

20210430 appearing in the last frame.

I picked the lower left corner as there are rhododendrons there and the subject of the video is the lawn so I'm ok for the titles to be over the rhododendrons.

As I think I said before, if parsing just the date is too complicated, I am ok to have the whole fileneme in the title but the filename of the first still needs to appear in the first frame and the filename of the second still needs to appear in the second frame and so on. This allows one to see on what dates the weeds that appear start to appear.

The problem I have is that I have not the slightest idea how to accomplish this. I am an absolute beginner with this application. I am fine to do the work if someone can give me a step-by-step procedure. The request for these titles is not of any earth-shaking importance. It is just a "nice to have" thing. I would hope there is some batch process to achieve this as it would be pretty tedious to place the title on each still and probably not time-efficient.

Thanks,

Don