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Shrink video into small circle
I need to take the full video frame, and shrink it back into a circle that fits into the client’s circular logo.
It would be best if the circle had a white border.
How would you do this in FCPX?
Thanks.
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com -
9 Replies
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I’d export the project into Apple Motion.
But in FCPX, there is the shape mask tool which can be set to a circular mask. Your desired effect is based on a compound clip of the image layer and a white layer, masked the same way, just scaled up a wee bit to create the white rim. Then you can scale the compound clip and play with blend modes and opacity as needed.
FX Factory might have something more direct to use, but it’s not free.
I’d have to peruse Motion but I *think* there’s already an effect there for this… too busy right now to check.
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Thanks Mark! I don’t care if I need pay for it. I rather do that than have to round trip to Motion for something so simple to do normally.
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com -
Apple Motion has an effect called ‘sphere’ which is keyframeable and adjustable; it will take your full-frame video or graphic and warp a circle around it and shrink it, but I think you can scale how much “bulge” that effect has on the image. Once you build the effect in Motion, you can “publish” it and store it as a new effect preset in Final Cut Pro, in case this is a thing you expect to do more than once.
If you have the money to buy the complete Noise Industries. FX Factory set of plug ins, I highly recommend it. Big time-savers with a lot of looks that are useful in a hurry. Sometimes an effect of theirs will inspire an entire project in me.
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Hi Mark, The sphere won’t work. It needs to be a flat circle wit a white border around it.
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com -
Well tell you what; I think you still have my private email. Mail me a 2k still grab or mpeg 4 of 3 seconds of the full-frame shot, and a frame of the targe imaget where it has to end up, andI’ll see if I can whip up the effect and mail it back to you as a “published” effect plug-in. Just for kicks, no money. I wanna see if I can do it.
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Wow Thanks!! That’s so nice of you.
I’ll email you tomorrow.
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com -
Hi Mark,
Did you get me email? Do you think yo can create a plugin?
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com -
XML sent to you/ hope it does what you need.
Let me walk you thru how I do this, anyway. Excuse the style: I’m writing it in a way that any beginner should be able to follow me, so this helps more people over time.
On video track one is your full program, ending in a full-screen graphic with text. You didn’t send a still of that, so I just grabbed a screen grab and made that a still.
On video track two, above the first track, you will put the track of the talking guy that is going to be turned into a circle, and set the timing of it. At the point of the desired transition, use the blade tool on that track to define where the effect begins. Highlight the half of the clip on the right side of that blade mark.
Next, search the effects bin for “shape mask” (you can type that in the bottom search bar of the effects bin) and drag that onto the highlighted second half of the clip.
Shape Mask defaults to a rounded-corner square, but dragging the little dots on the edge, or using the effect sliders for “radius” and “scale” will make your circular cutout. You can also add feathering here if you like a soft edge. Using the transform tool, drag the now-round window around onto the guy and scale it to taste. Do not set any keyframes yet.
Next, import a white screen. I get these in the “solids” section of the Titler. Drag the white full- screen video into the magnetic timeline and sandwich it *between* the top layer and the bottom layer. Now you’ve got three layers; make the speaking guy clip layer and the white background layer the same length.
Highlight the upper talking guy track again with the “shape mask” circle cutout, hit “copy” in the top drop-down menu, highlight the white track, and go to edit > paste attributes. Click on all the video attributes that need to be copy-pasted into the white clip, and okay it.
It will not look like anything happened yet, because it’s identical in proportion at the beginning and hidden by the guy clip above …until you highlight the white track, go to the “scale” slider of the now-copied shape mask, and expand the scale of the white layer’s mask to taste for a thin or thick edge, and feathering, if desired.
Now you have the effect stuck probably smack dab in the center or close to it. But we want to make it move and scale. We’re going to compound the two tracks, welding them together into one, so we can animate its position and scale.
Highlight the two top tracks, (the guy and the white,) right-click, choose” Make Compound clip”, name it something understandable and the two clips collapse into just one. Now you can move the single compound clip around the frame and scale it. Here’s how we do that:
Set a keyframe on the compound clip for x and y position and scale, go 7-15 frames along and set another one, without changing anything, then go another second down the line and NOW scale and place the compound circle clip with white rim where you need it, in the final desired position, and scale it to taste. FCPX will remember all the changes since keyframing was turned on. I use the transform tool for this alignment process, which is a tiny box-shaped icon to the left of the small timecode display.
Last step: drag and drop to add a dissolve at the point the blade was made. Drop the dissolve on the – non-effected side – of where you bladed everything. Preview the effect; if you did everything right, the centered circle dissolves in, takes a beat, then smoothly moves to final position and size. Because you didn’t move the underlying source, only added a mask, the dissolve transition should be smooth, without any jump-cut effect. it’s dissolving between the un-modified original track and the same track with masks applied over it. Once the transition’s done, the masked part is free to go anywhere.
It appears at large scale and then will fly to the spot you need, reducing in size as it goes. Adjust timing and position keyframes to taste. You could try a wipe or other canned DVE move instead of a dissolve as well, or a straight cut or just keyframe the opacity of the compound clip. You can also spice it up by adding a drop-shadow effect to the compound clip and keyframing its parameters.
What if, instead of a dissolve-into the built circle, you want the circle to close in from a full-frame, like an iris? You do everything the same, but where on the compounded track you want the circle to start contracting-in, keyframe the initial radius value of the shape mask to a much higher number to get it outside the full video frame. The radius slider stops a little short of full-frame, but dragging on the numbers next to the slider will get you there. Just match the starting and ending values and keyframes to the white circle layer’s mask at the same time, to get the border to come along with identical values (except for the scale offset that makes your white rim), and it works – I tested that.
To get under the hood of a compound clip for adjustments, double click it. A very, very tiny little caret symbol next to/ to the left of/ the time code display, will re-collapse it when the adjustments are done.
Highlight the compound clip. Go to file> “save effect video effects preset”. Put it in the effects bin wherever you want. You should now be able to drag and drop that onto any raw video. But I didn’t test that.
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Hi All,
First I want to thank Mark Suszko who has been so kind and supportive helping me with this effect! Thanks Mark! You’re the best.
Mark created the exact effect I was looking for and sent me an FCPX XML file with the effect. It works as advertised.
My problem is when trying to save it as a video effects preset. It just doesn’t work.
Please note that there’s a shape mask and a white background as a compound clip that allows me to shrink back a person speaking over a graphic.
It seems like the preset is not saving the mask and border.
When I try to drag the effect onto a new videoclip in my project, the circle and white border go away and I end up with a rectangular image that shrinks near the end position.
I’ve attached an image of I’m looking for.
Any help would be appreciated.Thanks so much
Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com
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