-
Matte feature
I thinking about switching from Symphony to FCP. I have a feature called Animatte where I can draw a matte in Avid & animate it over time. Can FCP do that & is it an easy process?
TIA,
-dMR -
3 Replies
-
Yes you can do that in FCP. There are also several plugins that will do this to. And if you get Motion you can use that as well.
Jared
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG -
No, you can’t do Animatte like masks within FCP, there are only rough garbage mattes (8point) and shape mattes. Plug-ins are OK, but not as nice as Animatte. Motion has nice matte making ability, and that plugs right into FCP.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
As Kevin pointed out, you cannot draw, let alone *animate* a mask in FCP using its native tools. Masking is in fact one of FCP’s most glaring deficiencies. It has a 4/8 point Garbage Matte filter that–even though it is keyframable–is useless for all but the most rudimentary tasks.
The best alternatives that I am aware of are:
1. Boris Red (https://www.borisfx.com): A really nice package with bezier masking tools that plugs in nicely to FCP, but probably overkill if all you need to do make good mattes.
2. SilhouetteFX Roto (https://www.silhouettefx.com): This will most likely become the defacto roto/masking plugin of choice for FCP, especially since FCP 5 disappointingly has NO new masking tools in its featureset. Perry & Co. have an impressive heritage in high-end compositing and VFX, so these guys really know what they are doing. A big drawback which I have noticed is that it currently does not do any type of pulldown removal or field-level roto (it only works on whole frames). I spoke to Perry at NAB, and he said that this is high on the TODO list.
3. CHV Bezier Garbage Matte Pro (https://www.chv-plugins.com/bezierpro.html): I’ve tried the demo, and it still seems a bit awkward to use, since it has to use FCP’s filter UI. I wouldn’t want to use it for any hardcore masking tasks, but at least it’s cheap.
Hope this helps!
Aloha,
mel
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up