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creating Letterbox Mattes in Photoshop for FCP HD Layoff – HELP!
Hey friends,
I tried doing a search on this on the forum but no luck and i need to layoff by EOD!!…so here goes:
I have been asked to layoff an HDCAM tape with multiple types of Letterbox Mattes so i need to create these in Photoshop and obviously have alpha info where picture would be and black bars elsewhere for the ltrbx.
I have never had to do this and am not very strong with PS – can anyways quickly explain to me how to do this in photoshop for one of the ones i have to make and then obviously i will understand how to make the rest.
i did the math already so i know what frame sizes they need to be i just dont know how to properly make this in PS and export for use in FCP.
Here are the HD sizes i need for creating Letterbox Mattes:
1920×817
1793×1080
1920×1038
1436×1080Thank you for any help you guys can provide
Best
Lisa
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1 Reply
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Yeah, that’s annoying.
You know FCP has a whole host of widescreen mattes in the video filters category, right?
Effects>Video Filters>Matte>Widescreen. You can select different dimensions once you apply the filters.
But if you need an odd size or something, here are steps:
-Create a new photoshop document that’s the SIZE OF YOUR FCP SEQUENCE
——photoshop has presets for most frame sizes under Preset>Film and Video
——choose background contents “transparent”
-Edit>Fill the background with black
-View>clear guides to clear the title safe guides that are there
-View>New Guide to make two horizontal guidelines for the boundaries of your letterbox
-Make sure View>Snap is checked
-Use the marquee tool (top tool, or press M) to select the area between the guidelines and go to edit>clear.The picture area should now be gray checkerboard, indicating transparency. If the picture area is white, it just means you chose a white background when you created your document. You have to go to Layer>New>Layer from Background and try the operation again.
Then save as PNG and throw it into FCP. You could make a black and white image and use it as a matte but… why bother. This way’s fine.
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