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Creating a mask from a locked off shot.
I’m making a short little sequence for a programme where you see seven ladies with dogs sat on a bench, who throw a ball and all run off at once. Thing is, it’s the same lady and dog filmed seven times in different places, and I need to comp it together so it looks like they were there at the same time. I COULD do it by keyframing masks, but wondered if there was a more intelligent way of doing this? My hope is that I can use the locked off shot of the bench to allow afx to see the where the lady is and cut out the background for me, like the photobooth software on macs does with the isight camera. Any ideas? Images included for in case I make no sense!
I’ve posted this in the FCP forum too, which is probably a major bad but I don’t want to miss the answer, I’m sure it must be possible, I just haven’t worked it out!
Michael Lansdell
Online Editor,
Available Light Productions LtdMy system:
2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
5GB DDR2 RAM
512MB ATI Radeon X1900 XT
OS X 10.4.11
Final Cut Pro 6.0.4
Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Extreme (6.6.2) -
5 Replies
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Well, I would just keyframe the masks. You don’t even need to keyframe every frame. Use feather on the mask and adjust the color of he clips using curves since there are differences in brightness.
The masks can be rough, I don’t see a problem there.There is no better option, you could try the difference matte (under Effects -> Keying -> Difference Matte) and use your self-made clean plate but it won’t work because it’s video footage and so there’s grain.
Mac’s Photobooth software uses a very aggressive difference matte keying, which would end up with holes and harsh outlines in After Effects.
Dino Muhic – Media Producer
VFX – Motion Graphics – Web-Design – Or just ART
http://www.dinomuhic.com -
Ah, found it. It’s pretty limited, isn’t it? Feathery, key-framed masks it is, then. Cheers though!
Michael Lansdell
Online Editor,
Available Light Productions LtdMy system:
2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
5GB DDR2 RAM
512MB ATI Radeon X1900 XT
OS X 10.4.11
Final Cut Pro 6.0.4
Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Extreme (6.6.2) -
I suppose your looking for the ‘difference matte’ effect under keying. However I have never had any real acceptable results using this. I’ll cross my fingers for you.
Animating masks is the better way to go, I agree.
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Son of a gun Dave beat me to the post!!!!!! You guys are fast 🙂
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I also was inspired by Mac’s Photo Booth ability to key people onto other backgrounds. There are certain situations in which the ability to do this in after effects would be tremendously useful – situations in which keyframing a mask would be prohibitively time consuming.
It’s pretty crazy that a little consumer program can produce an effect in real time, without rendering, that After Effects can’t do even with time to render.
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