Black bar question

[Steve Roberts]

You could place a black solid under the footage and mask the footage, cutting off the top and bottom and revealing the black beneath, but that’s no better or worse than the method you mentioned.

Consider placing the letterboxed footage over the footage to be masked, and add a mask to the leterboxed footage, but cutting off one side of the letterboxed footage. This way you have the letterboxed footage on one side of the screen, the footage to masked on the other side. So when you mask the footage (cutting off top and bottom for letterboxing) you can compare directly with the letterboxed footage. If the black edge is softer on the letterboxed footage, consder feathering the mask so the letterboxing matches.

Then when you’re done, remove the mask that cut off one side of the footage, or set it to “none”.

I hope that makes sense …

[Darby Edelen]

[hiostt] “Is there better way to do it than using black solid layer and adding mask to it?”

I don’t think so, that sounds like about the easiest way to do it =)

[Hiostt]

Would that be good if I take Screenshot from letterbox video, then clear the video part in photoshop so it will be transparent. That way those black bars would look exactly same. Bad idea? 😛

[Steve Roberts]

Not sure what you mean, but if you’re not sure which method to use, you could try all three. Personally, I’d do everything in After Effects.

At any rate, you need to be concerned about matching three things:
1 – the edge of the black bar
2 – the colour of the black bar
3 – the amount of noise in the black bar

1 can be assured by feathering the mask.
2 can be assured by sampling the existing letterbox when creating the black solid.
3 can be assured by adding a tiny bit of noise, or by using the “match grain” effect and setting the sampling locations to the letterbox area instead of using the automatic (default) setting.

Tip: when you’re matching a layer to the layer below, set the transfer mode of the upper layer to “difference”. When the result is a pure black, with no RGB info seen (in the info panel) when you move the mouse over it, then the upper layer matches the lower layer.

That’s probably too much information. This is really a pretty simple thing. Just get it to look acceptable and move on. 🙂