Importing and manipulating still images

[Ruby Gold]

Hi there. I'm still quite a newbie to Cakewalk, but have managed to figure out how to create and do basic manipulations for the audio and instrument of my song. Now, I'd love to import some still images and manipulate their length/duration to go with the beat of the music. I know that importing video is possible, but not sure about still images, and don't know how to manipulate them in the track, once imported. Can anyone point me to a simple but good tutorial or forum discussion link? Thanks much!

 

[rsinger]

I think you have it backwards. CbB is audio editing SW. You can import video, but you would compose to the video, not edit the video to the music, you need video editing SW if you want to do that. Video editing SW will let you import still images and manipulate their duration as well as import audio. There may be SW that let's you do both...

[Ruby Gold]

Hi thanks. Yup - I know that CW is audio editing SW, but I thought that maybe since it allows you to import visual media that you might be able manipulate said media within CW, but... maybe not. ?

Video editing software like Premiere or others will let you edit both, but I don't have access to it, hence, my hope that perhaps CW would suffice. Thanks for the input though!

[Glenn Stanton]

GIMP (free) - a photoshop like app

IrfanView (also free) - primarily a viewer but basic image editing possible

Inkscape (free) - a vector editor but also useful for tracing images...

[John Vere]

Watch for sales on Movie Maker formerly called Vegas. I bought it for -$35 few years ago. Not only is it good at movies and everything else it integrates with Sound Forge. You can have a lot of audio tracks too. 

[Ruby Gold]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

Watch for sales on Movie Maker formerly called Vegas. I bought it for -$35 few years ago. Not only is it good at movies and everything else it integrates with Sound Forge. You can have a lot of audio tracks too. 

Cool - thanks!

1 hour ago, Glenn Stanton said:

GIMP (free) - a photoshop like app

IrfanView (also free) - primarily a viewer but basic image editing possible

Inkscape (free) - a vector editor but also useful for tracing images...

Thanks! So I take it from these responses that basic image editing in Cakewalk is not possible - you can only import still images/video after it's processed? Is that it?

 

[Glenn Stanton]

maybe you could provide an understanding your need for still images in CbB would be helpful. there is the "video" capability which is designed to let you monitor the video while you compose, perform, or mix, but no editing of the video. so go get the image editing software (still and/or video) and use that. then if you need to sync with Cakewalk for creating or editing audio as part of the sound track, then you'll be all set.

[John Vere]

3 hours ago, Ruby Gold said:

Cool - thanks!

Thanks! So I take it from these responses that basic image editing in Cakewalk is not possible - you can only import still images/video after it's processed? Is that it?

 

Yes, You make a video using other software then import that to Cakewalk to compose music that follows the video. That's called scoring

For making a video of finished songs it's the other way around. You drop your mastered wave file into the Movie editor and then you can add stills, GIF's and videos to match the recorded song. This is how I make all my videos. 

Here's an example. This was a song I recorded years ago on an 8 track. I dropped it into Movie Studio Platinum 17 and then just grabbed stuff off the internet to create a video.  

 

Edited July 4, 2021 by John Vere

[Byron Dickens]

A DAW and a video NLE are two different things with two different purposes entirely.

[Kalle Rantaaho]

The answerss above left me wondering, does CbB really handle still photos, as the OP suggests, and how? As you can't edit the duration of the stills anyway, right?

[musekamp]

As others have pointed out, the video import in CW is really to provide a reference for scoring to picture. 

You need to use a video editor for what you want to do. There are some good free ones available that you may want to check out.

I like DaVinci Resolve - very full-featured with quite a big learning curve. Needs at least 16GM RAM.

Some alternatives that are a bit easier to learn and run fine on 8GB:
ShotCut
OpenShot
KdenLive

 

[Jimbo 88]

On 7/4/2021 at 10:20 AM, Lord Tim said:

You *can* force CbB to import a still picture (File > Import Video; set the file type to All Files) but I found I couldn't get it to export any workable video from it at all. So I guess if you want a still image for the duration of the song while you mix, and you only intend to play back audio, it works? Kind of useless though.

 

Not really useless...I do what you described above all the time.  I make a Gif or Jpeg lead sheet from paint and import it as a video into Cake.  When I record a singer the words are up on screen all the time or if I'm playing jazz in a bar with backing tracks from Cake I have the lead sheet up for me to look at...so a lot of good uses for the trick.  It helps me 'cause the lead sheet gets saved with the Cake file and is one less thing for me to manage.