Transparent Video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3

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Transparent Video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3

Postby tlourdeau » Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:51 am

I am having some trouble understanding the whole transparent video concept on this program. What I would like to do is have two clips running simultaneously. Say, an action fight scene on top and a character face or still shot above it. I sort of understand the mattes and layers, but I was hoping someone would be able to explain this to me in clear English.

Thanks in advance!
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Postby Brad » Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:08 am

Okay. In your first example, where you have a "character's face on top of an action scene in the background", do you mean like, JUST the face in full opacity (ie; you can't see THROUGH it. It's in it's full original color) or just like, another scene that has a face in it, played on top of the action scene, but the face scene is just see-through?

The first scenario would be accomplished through "masking", where you essentially define the fully visible area of an image (in this case, a character's face) by either using Photoshop or what have you to "mask out" the character. I mean, there's a ton of different ways to accomplish this, but for me, I like to take the individual frames into Photoshop and use the Pen tool to draw a detailed outline around the character, and then import the Photoshop file back into Premiere and place it in a layer above the background video. Unfortunately it's a relatively longer process than you may have been expecting, but once you get the hang of it, it's not hard.

If you meant the 2nd scenario, that's simply setting the opacity of the clip. If you select the character's face clip (that should be ABOVE the background clip in the timeline), and then go into the "Effect Controls" panel, you'll see an "Opacity" section. Click the arrow to the left of it and it'll reveal the Opacity control setting. You can then set this to any percentage of opacity that you want (obviously, 100& opacity is completely opaque, and NOT see-through, whereas 0% is completely invisible).

Hope this helped!
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Postby tlourdeau » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:41 am

Yeah, thanks a lot! I'll have to practice my photoshop skills for this one, but hopefully I can get the hang of it pretty quickly!
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Postby tlourdeau » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:51 am

Just for clarification (I wish there was an edit button) but I want to set opacity for the clip I want ON TOP of the other clip, right? Say, there are two fight scenes that I want to blend into one clip, I should simply tinker with the opacity level?

Also, I can also set the opacity level of captures and images, correct?

Sorry, I JUST started using APCS3 last week, and I can't yet get my hands on a decent tutorial. Thanks again!
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Postby LivingFlame » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:00 pm

Indeed. If you want to blend two clips together, just lower the opacity of the clip that's on top. And the opacity can be lowered on anything you can drop in a video track.
... yea ...
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Postby tlourdeau » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:29 pm

I got it! Perfect, thanks guys!
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