Enscape has a built-in video editor which allows video creation for project presentation.
All the Video Editor controls are directly accessible in the Enscape window.
With the Enscape window active press the K key on your Keyboard, or click the Toggle Video Editor button.
Toggle Video Editor button in Revit
In Sketchup, Rhino, and ArchiCAD, the button is displayed without the text, and essentially looks the same in all three CAD’s. Here it is in Sketchup.
Toggle Video Editor button in Sketchup
Enscape’s Video Editor control panel will now be visible in the Enscape window.
The Enscape Video Editor panel
Position yourself in the Enscape window at the point where you would like your video to begin, then press K again on your keyboard, or click the Add keyframe button in the control panel, to place your initial keyframe.
An arrow will appear at the start of the Timeline, indicating the keyframe has been created.
The Enscape Timeline showing a keyframe has been added
In the Enscape window move your position back and slightly to one side until you can see the camera that represents the keyframe you have just created.
A camera is added which represents a keyframe
Press K again to place the next keyframe at the current position, and then move and rotate to add a third keyframe.
The following screenshot illustrates a video containing the 3 keyframes (cameras) and the path between these keyframes.
Arrows marked on the camera’s path indicate the direction the camera will follow.
A video path as seen from above
Take a look at the following video to see a quick overview on creating a Video Path in Enscape.
You can set the total length of the video by adjusting the Total Duration in the Video Editor. This will adjust the position of the last keyframe, but Enscape will also automatically tween the other keyframes respectively.
Settings for Total Duration of video
You can automatically apply some variation to the whole path through the use of the two settings:
Enscape's Movement options
You can press the P key on your keyboard, or click the Preview button to then preview your video. Press Esc on your keyboard to exit the preview.
Clicking the Remove all button will delete all keyframes in the video Timeline.
To edit and adjust each keyframe, you can either mouse over one of the cameras whereby it will turn green, indicating that you can click on that camera.
Selecting a keyframe by selecting a camera
Or you can click on one of the white arrows in the Video Editor Timeline.
Selecting a keyframe by clicking an arrow in the timeline
You can also insert a keyframe by hovering the mouse over the camera path, which will then show a camera that will move with your mouse along the path. Once you’ve decided where you want to place that camera, simply left click the mouse button and the new keyframe will be inserted at that point.
Inserting a keyframe in the camera path
Once you left click on the path, the Keyframe Editor will be displayed for that inserted keyframe.
With the Keyframe Editor opened, a viewfinder and the Keyframe Editor controls are displayed.
Enscape's Keyframe Editor
The four buttons to the right of the Keyframe Editor have the following functions:
The Keyframe Editor panel contains a number of adjustable elements which can be assigned for each individual keyframe.
Enscape's Keyframe Editor options
Next to the Keyframe Editor title, the frame that is currently being edited, along with the total number of frames, is shown. In the example above, 2/3 indicates we are editing keyframe 2, and there are 3 keyframes in total.
The two arrows to the right of this allow keyframe selection.
We have four possible attributes that can be edited for a keyframe.
Enscape's Time of Day option
Enscape's Depth of Field options
The following video shows the Timestamp and Time of Day options being used on keyframes.
When adjusting Depth of Field, a horizontal white line will be seen to indicate where the focal plane will be for that keyframe.
Enscape's dynamic Depth of Field indicator
In the video below, you can see the Field of View being enabled and adjusted.
When enabling the above keyframe settings, icons will be displayed underneath the associated camera which indicate the settings that are active for that keyframe.
Enscape's Camera icons
From left to right:
Pressing P on your keyboard when in Keyframe Editor will start the video from the current keyframe.
Pressing ESC when the preview is running will return you to the Keyframes Editor.
Camera paths can be saved and re-used in other projects.
To save a path from Revit, click the Camera path button and choose the Save Path.
Enscape's Camera Path Buttons in Revit
In SketchUp, Rhino, and ArchiCAD there is no Camera Path button, just the Save Path and Load Path buttons.
The Save and Load Path buttons as they appear in Sketchup
On clicking Save Path, you will be prompted to choose a location and name for the path, which will be saved as an .xml document. This .xml can then be edited in text editing software such as Notepad.
That .xml file can then be loaded into other projects by clicking the Load Path button and locating the .xml file.
You can see the loading process in the following video.
Once a video has been created it can be exported as either MP4 or a series of PNG still image files, depending on the Compression Quality set in Enscape’s Visual Settings Capture tab. It is not possible to pause the export process once it has begun, but you can press ESC to stop the export.
All compression settings (from low to high compression – Email, Web, Blueray, Maximum), will export MP4 (MPEG-4 (mp4v)) endcoded files. Lossless will export a series of uncompressed .png files.
Frames per Second is also defined in the Capture window, under the FPS drop-down menu, where you can choose from 25fps, 30fps, 60fps and 120fps.
Enscape's Video Compression Settings
Remember, that you can always click on the ‘Show tooltip’ icon in the top right menu overlay to get information about the functions here.