How to do this ?

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How to do this ?

Postby gypsy » Thu Oct 03, 2002 3:46 pm

Hi all.

I'm trying to do an effect that's almost the same that was used throughout Flowers by Nighowl productions. Where parts of multiple clips are playing in the background and only part of it is showed without distorting the clip. :?

I've read most of the manual and tried gradient wipes, image masks and all the relative things that I think would help. I know how the motion setting wrks (with most of the setting of it) and I fully understand how the transparicy and rubber band work

I've gotten the effect I want but then the clip has to get distorted.

Thanx for all the help

Gypsy
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Joined: 20 Feb 2002
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Postby klinky » Thu Oct 03, 2002 6:48 pm

Well Premiere sucks for doing such effects.

While trying to reproduce these effects I was basically pulling my hair out screaming at the stupid Premiere programmers.

The effect that is closest to this is the Clip effect. Clip does not support Alpha channels though. So you can't use a Alpha transperancy with it. You can specify a Fill Color, and then use a Chroma Key to get rid of the color to show the background. To move it though, I would have used Transform, but Transform only supports Alpha and not a Fill Color. So the two will not work together.

What will work is a combo of Motion + Clip.

Setup clip with a fill color of Red:0 Green:255 Blue:0 <---pure green.

Then adjust the sliders so that it chops away the edges of stuff you want to get rid of. The piece that you want to show through should be surrounded by bright green.

Then go up to transperancy and set the Key to 'Chroma'. Then select the bright green from the little thumbnail and set the 'Similarity' slider all the way to %100. Hit okay.

Now you should have whatever clips you want in the background showing through, or a black background if you don't have any other tracks below that one.

Next you can goto Motion Settings, then set the fill color to the same as Clip's(pure green) and add your motion.

You can keyframe(look it up in the manual), to adjust what portion of the video is showing at a certain time.


NOW!

The only problem with this is that if you look at the edges of the clips you're adding these effects to, you _MAY_ notice a little green flicker around the edges of it, which really sucks quite bad. I have not really figured out how to get rid of that, but if Premiere's programmers were worth a shit, they would have done a better job, OR ADDED FUCKING ALPHA TO 'CLIP'. There shouldn't be any clips in there that rely soley on FILL COLOR. While we're at it Premire's Transform effect sucks ass to since it has a crappy resize algorithm.

Pheeew...


Okay well, you could also do such a thing, were you pre-process all your clips with the Clip effect, export those, and then import them into your final project and you can use motion or transform using Alpha instead of Chroma key which MAY get rid of the green flicker around the edge. :\

Anyways...

Here is a demo on what all this stuff does. Oh and actually the flicker around the edge looks red since I used Pure Red for this tech-test instead of pure green to see if I could get rid of the flicker. Didn't help much ;)

<a href="http://home.attbi.com/~klinky/flowers-test.avi">Demo Video</a>.


~klinky
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Postby y2kwizard » Fri Oct 04, 2002 4:45 am

Two words: After Effects
"When I got fat, I decided to grow a beard" -- The Great Andy
"Is it a DARTH visor?" and "It's funny cuz it's pants" -- The Master of on-the-spot Funniness
"You're too young for your age" and "I'm sorry for apologizing so much" -- The Master of on-the-spot Randomness
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Postby klinky » Fri Oct 04, 2002 5:11 am

After Effects technically costs money unless you purchase it from the KaZaa store.

My solution is a no cost solution ;)


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Postby gypsy » Fri Oct 04, 2002 8:14 am

Hi all

Thanx for the help klinky. I dont know if it'll work and I cant view your file as I'm currently at work and the place dont have the codecs. Your theory sounds good and I think it might work. I can do it the long way,

"were you pre-process all your clips with the Clip effect, export those, and then import them into your final project and you can use motion or transform using Alpha instead of Chroma key which MAY get rid of the green flicker around the edge. :\"

or I could build the effect in my current project, make a virtual clip and then apply an effect to the virtual clip. This way I dont lose quality for every recompress that I do.

It sounds though from reading your help the clip is shown almost in 2 frames. frame 1 is black and frame to has the area revealed. I want the part from frame 1 - 2 to take about 20 or 30 frames. I dont want the clip do be shown. Like what a curtain get raised to reveal the actors on a stage slowly.

Part of the clip must be playing while the rest isn't shown. I gues you could call it a rolling mask that streches to become bigger.

If your explenation is correct though I humbly appoligise and you can ignore my new explenation.

Thanx for the help though.

Gypsy
Waste makes haste.
gypsy
 
Joined: 20 Feb 2002
Location: South Africa

Postby gypsy » Fri Oct 04, 2002 12:05 pm

Hi all.

Thanx for the help klinky.

It works great. I'm working on removing the lines around the edge of the clips and will post a reply as soon a I find out.

Gypsy
Waste makes haste
gypsy
 
Joined: 20 Feb 2002
Location: South Africa


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