Guide for masking

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 7:44 am

Is there such a guide on the site anywhere, maybe in the form of a forum thread or something? I don't use Premiere or After Effects, but if you think the information in a masking tutorial for those might still be helpful conceptually, go ahead and link me to one.

Thanks.

- Jen

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 7:47 am

Sorry for the double post.

Er... *kicks self* And even after the stickies were made red, I missed it. Well, in addition to the AE one in Software Help, are there any other things you know of?

godix · Post by **godix** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 9:48 pm

export as filmstrip or bmp series. Open in photoshop/gimp. Copy to new layer. erase everything you don't want. Import into program that accepts alpha transparency. It doesn't need a guide, it just needs hours of tedious work.

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 11:27 pm

godix wrote:export as filmstrip or bmp series.

As far as I can tell, Magix doesn't do that. It goes "video" or "single frame." That's why I'm asking, because I'm not seeing an easy way of even getting the initial image sequence exported for me to work with. I'm sure I can do everything past that, though.

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 11:45 pm

Masking is never easy. Your best bet is to mask each frame in Photoshop and save as a .gif. Sorry, I don't know any better way :/

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 8:05 am

dj_ultima_the_great wrote:
godix wrote:export as filmstrip or bmp series.
As far as I can tell, Magix doesn't do that. It goes "video" or "single frame." That's why I'm asking, because I'm not seeing an easy way of even getting the initial image sequence exported for me to work with. I'm sure I can do everything past that, though.

Magix makes it both easier and harder to do masking with. A work-around to Magix's limit of single frame BMP export is to export the sequence as an AVI then load that into VDub/Mod and have IT output the image sequence. Plus, VDub/Mod can output .BMP, Targa .TGA, and .PNG.

I'd have to check if version 11 does any better, but that means booting up my other computer (this one only has v10 installed). But I'm betting the answer is gonna be no.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 8:37 am

CrackTheSky wrote:Masking is never easy. Your best bet is to mask each frame in Photoshop and save as a .gif. Sorry, I don't know any better way :/

Image format in order of preference:

TIFF > PNG > TGA(?) > BMP > JPEG > GIF

GIF has a limited color palette and doesn't support alpha channels (although it does transparency).

JPEG is lossy. Although it does support many, many more colors than GIF, lossy means that the picture you get is never the same as the original frame and if re-saved as a JPEG is never the same as the original JPEG in the parts you don't want changed. Also, no alpha channel/transparency support.

As for the rest, they are almost equivalent in quality. PNG has the edge in filesizes and has a wide amount of features. BMP is best for compatibility but can get big in filesizes. TGA I'd put just above BMP but is not as widely used. TIFF is king for flexibility which can also be a curse in terms of compatibility, is best for printing. All have alpha channel support (newer versions of BMP do it better).

Additional reading:
GIF vs. PNG vs. TIFF vs. BMP
JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP... what's the difference?

Melanchthon · Post by **Melanchthon** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 6:00 pm

dj_ultima_the_great wrote:As far as I can tell, Magix doesn't do that. It goes "video" or "single frame." That's why I'm asking, because I'm not seeing an easy way of even getting the initial image sequence exported for me to work with.

What version are you using? MEP 10+ UK has an 'export as a series of single frames' (.bmp only) option.

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 7:20 pm

Willen wrote:Magix makes it both easier and harder to do masking with. A work-around to Magix's limit of single frame BMP export is to export the sequence as an AVI then load that into VDub/Mod and have IT output the image sequence. Plus, VDub/Mod can output .BMP, Targa .TGA, and .PNG.

Oooh... now that's something I hadn't thought of (probably because I hadn't noticed that VDubMod can do it). I just tested it out and it seems to work wonderfully. That should do the trick. The rest is tedious hours of cutting - which will just take practice and patience. I don't mind that, really. Thanks, Willen, and to the others who offered their advice. (Oh, and to answer your question, Melanchthon, I use Magix Movie Edit Pro 10 - which definitely does not have that option.)

- Jen