More on The Viewer panel in hitfilm pro

Viewer panel in hitfilm

          The viewer panel in htfilm, is very helpful because Viewer panel give you access preview video select video. you can do almost anything with viewer panel in hitfilm pro.

Viewer tools

At the top-left of the Viewer are several tools.

Select

The Select tool is used for interacting with layers and effects on the Viewer. With the Select tool

active you can select and transform layers and move position points.

Hand

This pans the view around the Viewer. This is useful if your content does not fit into the Viewer

panel, such as when you are zoomed in or are working in HD on lower resolution monitors.

When the Hand tool is active you will not be able to interact with layers or effects. As an alternative

to selecting the hand tool, you can click and hold the right mouse button while the cursor is over the

viewer, then drag to reposition the view within the viewer panel.

The following Viewer tools are only available if you are working in a Composite Shot timeline.

Text

Used to create or edit text layers. Double-clicking the Text tool will create a new text layer and

display the text properties window, where you can specify the size of the layer. If you select the

Text tool by clicking it once, you can then click and drag to draw a text box directly in the Viewer.

Text can only be created in a composite shot timeline. To edit the contents of any text layer, first

select the Text tool.

See Text layers for more information.

Mask shapes

Masks are used to specify areas of a layer to remove or retain. Layers can include multiple masks.

There are three mask tools: ellipse, rectangle and freehand. These are used to draw masks for your

layers.

See Masks for details.

Orbit

When you're working in 3D the orbit tool can be used to orbit the camera or view around wherever

you click or a specific selected layer. You can switch between the two orbit modes by holding down

on the Orbit button to display the menu.

Viewer display options

The Viewer can be customized to display specific information.

The Viewer can be scaled using the Scale menu to the bottom-right. When the content of the Viewer

is too large to fit into the interface you can pan around the view by right clicking and dragging on the

view or using the Hand tool. The Scale To Fit option is most useful, as it will auto-scale the viewer

to fit into whatever space you have available, allowing you to see the entire frame. The 100% view

option is useful for seeing exactly what your frame will look like at actual size. You can also adjust

the scale using the scroll wheel on your mouse.

At the bottom-left of the Viewer are several icons for turning 3D rendering features on and off. See

Working in 3D for more details.

There are several menus along the top of the Viewer.

For information on the View and alignment menus see Working in 3D.

Channels

The channels menu switches the Viewer between different color and alpha channels.

RGB: The full rendered output. This is what is exported.

RGB Straight: All RGB color channels without alpha transparency. Note that fully transparent

areas may be displayed with unexpected coloring.

Alpha: Only the alpha (transparency) channel. White areas represent fully opaque and black

areas represent fully transparent. Very useful for checking mattes during compositing.

Red/Green/Blue: Shows only the selected color channel.

Quality

Antialiased: Renders at full resolution with anti-aliasing for smooth edges. The antialiasing

method can be adjusted on the project screen.

Full/Half/Quarter: Renders at specific resolutions. Lower resolutions increase performance. Note

that this only affects the rendering in the Viewer, and final exports will always be at maximum

quality.

These quality settings also affect 3D model textures, which are automatically down sampled by the

specific amount. For example, 4K textures will be down scaled to 2K when the Viewer is set to Half

quality. This can be used in combination with the Options (see below) to manage performance even

when working on complex shots.

Options

The Options menu turns various rendering features on and off. Note that these options do not affect

the export render; they only have an impact in the Viewer. These settings can also be changed

using the Render Options button at the bottom-left of the Viewer. See Working in 3D for details.

Some of these options will not be present unless you have a 3D camera present on your timeline.

Lights: Turns rendering of lights on and off.

Shadows: Turns rendering of shadows and ambient occlusion on and off.

Reflections: Turns dynamic reflections on and off.

Motion Blur: Turns motion blur on and off.

Depth Of Field: Turns depth of field on and off.

Toggle All Render Options: Toggles all of the above options at once.

Floor Plane: Turns the 3D reference grid on and off.

Show Motion Path: Animated layers display a line representing the movement over time. This

can be turned on and off.

Background Color: The Viewer usually renders a black background. This can be changed to a

different color, which can be useful during compositing to ensure you do not have any 'holes' in

your scenery.

Checkerboard Background: in 2D views this is on by default. A checkerboard pattern is

displayed in transparent areas of the frame. This pattern is not visible when you Export, but can

be used in the Viewer to identify transparent areas of the frame which would otherwise be hard to

spot.

Export Frame: saves a high quality PNG of the current frame.