Photos
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Your library can hold photos as well as videos. Add a folder of holiday pictures, a phone’s camera roll or a set of scans, and every edit can use them: a photo fills a shot like any clip, and moves across it with a slow push, pull or pan sized to the music, so it never sits still.
Use them on their own, for a slideshow cut to a song, or mixed with your video clips, for a trip, a wedding, a birthday or a year in review.
Adding photos
Section titled “Adding photos”Photos are added the same way as videos:
- + Add in the library panel, or Library > Add videos and photos… (Ctrl+I): + Add Folder takes every video and photo in the folder and its subfolders; + Add Files… picks them one by one.
- ⚡ NEW VIDEO: + Files… and + Folder… take photos too, and the list counts them, for example 12 videos and 140 photos in all.
Formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, and HEIC/HEIF from iPhones and iPads. Camera RAW files are not read: export them as JPEG first. A Live Photo exported with its movie (IMG_1234.HEIC and IMG_1234.MOV side by side) is added once, as the photo, so the same moment doesn’t play twice; the end of the scan says how many. Pick the movie on its own to add it as a video.
Each photo is analyzed once, like a video, and the end of the ingest counts what was added, for example 2 videos and 30 photos added to your library. A file that can’t be read is listed at the end and skipped; everything else is added.
When you pick only photos, the options under More options that apply to videos alone (Only part of each video and Only keep clips that show…) are greyed out, with a note: photos are always analyzed whole, from the original file. In ⚡ NEW VIDEO, Keep your clips’ own sound is greyed out the same way, and Photos shows only when your picks (or your library, when nothing is picked) hold both photos and videos. Hover over a greyed-out option to see why it doesn’t apply.
While it analyzes a photo, Onset Engine also makes a copy that every edit reads:
- upright, whichever way the camera was held;
- in standard color: iPhone photos are taken in a wider color space, which looks dull if shown as is;
- at most 3840 pixels on its long side (4K), so a 48-megapixel photo renders as fast as any other.
The copies are kept in your library folder (output_clips\Library\Photos in the Onset Engine data folder). Your original photos are never changed or moved. If a copy is deleted, add the folder again and it is made again.
In your library
Section titled “In your library”The Video tab lists the photos of each folder together, as one album: 📷 Trip · 140 photos. Albums come first, above your videos. Each card shows the photo with its file name and a 📷 mark. Rate, block and tag photos as you would clips.
The Type filter shows Videos, Photos or All; the count beside the search reads, for example, 24 clips and 40 photos. Motion ranks videos by how much they move, so a Motion level shows videos only, and it is off while Type is set to Photos. Fill Region on the timeline has the same Type choice, and its Source list names each album once (📷 Trip (album)) next to your videos.
AI search finds photos by what they show, alongside your video clips: a dog on a beach finds the photo of the dog as readily as a clip of one.
Use my photos and clips
Section titled “Use my photos and clips”⚡ NEW VIDEO starts with a choice: ✂ Cut a montage or 🖼 Use my photos and clips. The second one keeps your own photos and clips as they are: every one you pick is shown once, in order, and each cut lands on the beat. It works with photos only, clips only, or both.
- Order:
- Date taken: as the camera or phone stored it; a video without a date goes by its file’s date.
- Newest first: the same, backwards.
- File name: IMG_2 before IMG_10.
- Shuffled: a new order each time you make the timeline.
- Clips among photos: the photos by date, with the video clips spread evenly between them, whatever their dates or names.
- How long each one shows: a photo between two beats and its longest hold (two bars, at least 6 seconds); a clip whole up to 8 seconds, and the liveliest part of a longer one. Between those, everything is stretched or shortened together so the video fills the song.
- Long videos: a video longer than about 40 seconds has more than one moment to offer, one for every 20 seconds of it. Its liveliest moment is always shown; the others come in, spread through the video, when the song has room to spare after your photos (each photo keeps at least half of its usual time). With many photos and a short song, each video shows one moment, and the Fit line says that a longer song, or fewer photos, makes room for more.
- Bursts: photos taken a moment apart that look alike play as a quick flip, one photo per beat.
- Fit: in step 3, a bar and a line say how your photos and clips fill the song before you start, for example 140 photos: everything fits, photos about 1.6 s each.
- More than the song holds: some are left out, and the end of the job lists which. The extra shots of bursts go first, then photos and clips that look like the ones next to them (the same moment taken again a few minutes later), then evenly through the order, so no part of the day disappears. Add another song to fit them all.
- Locked shots: lock a shot on the timeline (L) and 🔄 RE-ROLL keeps it where it is, as long as it is. The rest fit around it, in order: those taken before it come before it. If you dragged a locked shot away from its date (to open the video, say), the others flow on in order around it instead.
- Less than the song holds: the video ends with your last photo or clip, on a bar line, and the music fades out over the last bar. Add more, or pick a shorter song.
Style, Transitions, Clip fit, Length and Keep your clips’ own sound work as in a montage; Transitions starts on Dissolve in quiet parts here (see below). There is no pace to choose, and the Photos setting, Chronological Order, the quiet-part and drop descriptions and the tags don’t apply: every photo and clip you picked is used.
In the Editor, Make (first in the EDIT section) shows which one the project uses, with its Order next to it; Generate follows it. Pacing, Photos and Chronological Order are greyed out while it is set to Use my photos and clips. Hover over one to see why.
In your edit
Section titled “In your edit”This section is about Cut a montage.
Photos and video clips are picked the same way: by what they show and how well they suit the music at that point. A photo has no motion of its own, so it is never kept out of the loud parts or the quiet ones for that reason; it moves to suit whatever part of the song it lands in.
How a photo moves
Section titled “How a photo moves”- Calm music: a slow drift in or out. Loud music: a bigger, faster push. The style’s own beat effects play on top, as on any clip.
- A push ends on the face found in the photo (or a little above its center when there is none), and a pull starts there.
- A photo much taller or wider than the video, such as a portrait photo in a 16:9 video, or a landscape photo in a vertical one, pans along its length to the face instead. With Clip fit set to Blurred background or Black bars, it is shown whole and zooms instead.
- The move is the same in the draft and the finished video, and every time you render.
- A photo holds for at most two bars, and never less than 6 seconds. Where the pace calls for a longer shot (Slow, Longest), the photo’s shot ends on the beat and another shot starts there.
Photos setting
Section titled “Photos setting”Photos, in the settings panel’s EDIT section (and under More options in New video), sets how many of the shots are photos. It shows when your library holds both photos and videos:
| Photos | What you get |
|---|---|
| As in your library | Photos in proportion to the library’s (or the Source Collection’s) clips: a photo is one clip, a video is several. 20,000 photos beside 100,000 video clips is about 1 shot in 6 |
| None | Video clips only |
| About a quarter / About half / About three quarters | That share of the shots, spread through the video |
| Only photos | A slideshow: photos only |
When a share asks for more photos (or video clips) than you have, some are shown again, the least recently shown first, rather than giving up the share.
Transitions setting
Section titled “Transitions setting”Transitions, under More options → FRAMING AND TRANSITIONS (and under More options in New video), decides how one shot gives way to the next, for photos and video clips alike:
| Transitions | What you get |
|---|---|
| The style’s choice | What the Visual Style does (Standard, for example, dissolves where the music is quiet) |
| Dissolve in quiet parts | A crossfade where the music is calm, the style’s choice elsewhere |
| Dissolve between every shot | A crossfade at every cut |
| Cuts only | No transitions |
Picking Use my photos and clips (in New video, or Make in the Editor) sets Transitions to Dissolve in quiet parts while it is on The style’s choice: for photos, a real crossfade where the music is calm suits them better than the style’s quick one. Picking Cut a montage again sets it back. A Transitions setting you picked yourself stays as it is, and a saved project keeps its own.
Crossfades chosen here last longer than the style’s own: a quarter of the shot, up to 1.2 seconds on a long one, and the shot going out keeps moving while the next one fades in. Where a shot ends at a scene change in its video, its fade is as long as the scene has left, so another scene never shows through it. They play in the finished video; drafts and the quick preview show cuts. A cut you choose for a clip on the timeline still comes first.
Both settings are saved with your project, and New video starts from the Editor’s.
Chronological Order
Section titled “Chronological Order”With Chronological Order, photos play in the order they were taken (the date the camera stored, or the file’s date when there is none). Videos that carry the date they were recorded, as phone and camera videos do, play among the photos by that date: a trip’s photos and clips follow each other as they happened. Videos without one, such as films and downloads, move forward through their own footage alongside. With Photos set to a share, the photos and clips are thinned evenly to that share, so the order holds.
Videos added before this version get their date when you add their folder again; nothing else about them is analyzed again.
On the timeline
Section titled “On the timeline”Photos are swapped, placed, locked and moved like clips, and a photo fills any slot, whatever its length. Photos move in every preview: Space on a clip, a click on the waveform, ▶ PLAY with a photo selected (its shot, or 5 seconds from the library), ▶ Preview edit, the draft and the finished video. The first time you play a stretch of the timeline, its photos take a moment to start moving; after that they play at once.
Formats and export
Section titled “Formats and export”- Standard, Vertical, Vertical Teaser and Triptych use photos like clips.
- Highlights keeps the liveliest moments, so it rarely picks a photo.
- DJ Mode plays photos alongside your videos, each with its move. See DJ Mode.
- Premiere / Resolve export brings photos in as stills, each as long as its shot. The motion is added by Onset Engine’s render and is not part of the export.
Photos work with every license, the free Demo included. The Demo’s usual limits apply to the video: the first minute, 720p, with the watermark.