Creating split screen using masks

[Rick Lang]

Simply use the new Crop tool on multiple clips such as the main stirrings and other clips above that. Why stop with only a split screen as this should allow you to gave more than two clips displaying simultaneously in their respective area of the screen.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Apologies for the iPhone induced typos. I meant to say “storyline” not “stirrings”. Auto correction isn’t always helpful.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

See the tutorial on cropping in this series from Dan Allen:
https://m.youtube.com/profile?desktop_uri=%2Fuser%2Fdanonabouncycastle&sort=p&channel_id=0&livestreaming_tutorial=False&ytsession=%7B%7D&start=0&user=danonabouncycastle&autoplay=True&gl=CA&v=p

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Ethan Young]

https://www.crumplepop.com has a nice split screen plugin that automates many of these steps.

[Eli Hollander]

–crumplepop split screen plugin is for FCP7, not X.

[Eli Hollander]

Thanks for your suggestions, Rick.

Of course cropping is a quick and dirty solution, but you can’t reframe the image (or substitute) within the crop without messing up the alignment of your split (unless I’m missing something).

Also, eyeballing and cropping won’t line up if you’re doing a lot of cutting and re-framing (or resizing the image withou changing the border of the split).

Also, what I outline above is of course extensible and flexible, limited by the the number and shape of the masks and the associated videos.

I’ve been experimenting successfully with generating templates in motion that are pre-set for various borders and shapes.

[Brendan Gibbons]

Something to simplify this process can be built in motion.

You could build a motion project that contains 2 groups (left group and right group etc), then add a Object> New Dropzone into each group, and then each group has it’s own mask, one for the left hand split and one for the right hand split.

The crucial bit is to add the mask to the group and not the dropzone. By doing this you will have the ability to reposition the video without affecting the mask.

You then publish this motion project, making sure you tick the box that mentions about publish as fcp generator.

Now back in FCP X you can drop your generator onto the timeline, access the generator inspector where you will have to dropzones. It’s always a good process to rename the dropzones to something that’s useful to remind you which is which.

The only problem with going the dropzone route is that if you clips have sync audio you’ll need to manually edit that back in yourself.

Hope this has been of some help.

If you don’t have motion 5, I can put together a sample that you can download tomorrow when I’m back in front of box.

Cheers,

Brendan

[Brendan Gibbons]

[Eli Hollander] “I’ve been experimenting successfully with generating templates in motion that are pre-set for various borders and shapes.”

I just posted a reply without seeing this post….seems like you have it under control by using motion. It’s the definite way to go I think for things like this.

Cheers,

Brendan

[Mark Spencer]

You should also publish the Position parameters of each drop zone so you can adjust the position of the video inside the mask.

—
Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net

[Eli Hollander]

Brendan and Mark, thank you. I am just getting into Motion, and that generator solution sounds great, especially if it will let you reposition the video.

Brendan, thanks for your offer–it will be great if you could mock soothing up if you have the time, as I am don’t know how to make a drop zones yet, but I can see how that would be a big (and flexible) time saver.

I can then see that it’s possible to make several permutations of this that could be very useful (if you need split screens, that is).

Thanks for your input and suggestions.

Eli