Import a movie from a DV camera
 

Hi

Can anybody tell me how I can import a movie from a DV camera into Lightwave so that I can use it as a guide for my animations.

Cheers

I could help you if all you need was DV to HDD (which you need a capture card). Once the Media is already into your system.

To import to Lightwave I don't know (even if it's possible). As matter of fact all my work combiding real futage with animation are done with Premiere. I use shots (1 frame) as backdrop to do so.

I'd suggest capturing the DV with whatever video capture mechanism you use (personally I use Premiere with Firewire), and then either:

a) Re-render down to a lower res AVI file or
b) Extract the stills you need to use

since the captured DV file will likely be rather large and probably cause LW to choke...

Where in Lightwave 7.5 do I import a low res AVI? It's not in the scene editor or the image editor as far as I can see.

Thankyou.

You load an AVI into Lightwave using the image editor (simply select 'All Files' as the file filter in the file browser.

To display it as a backdrop, simply open the compositing panel and select the AVI sequence as the background image.

Be warned though that the frame slider will seriously chug - I've just tried it with a short 1200x600 widescreen AVI in a blank scene and updates are taking around .5 to 1 second per frame on my Athlon XP1900+ w/512MB Ram)

acually you can export it to DivX an import it as a backround, when you browse you choose "all files" and then you simply choose your video file.. done, but if you want to se it as a backroound, then you have to go to "display properties" and then on "camera view backround" you choose "backround image"

all done

ooops diden to the post over mine, sorry