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  • Posted by Ryan Rockwell on November 17, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    HI Peaople of Creative cow, ive been using final cut for quite some time now. an di decided to say hell with it, and create a small 30 second footage of a “lightsaber” effect, for some keyframing practice, and matte layering. But the issue im havign with patience, is that to use a garbage matte in final cut, after shaping the four points to where you want, to reshape it again you have to go from the canvas window ( after shaping ) to the view swindow, to click each point, one at a time, and go back and forth till all four points are shaped…..PLUS you have to keyframe every frame, to make movement of the garbage matte, so the shape will change with the flow of movement. so i was wondering if there was a shortcut key, to choose the point syou want to move, in a garbage matte ( four point) and shortcut key for making a keyframe in the current position? thanks for the help

    ~NEW~ to Final Cut Express
    Adobe Photoshop 7
    Macs….
    DREAMWEAVER CS3

    Tapio Haaja replied 17 years, 9 months ago 5 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Richard Sanchez

    November 17, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    You definitely want to use After Effects for this. There’s a tutorial on how to create this on videocopilot.net.

    Richard Sanchez
    North Hollywood, CA

    “We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

  • Chris Poisson

    November 17, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Ryan,

    This is very hard to do with a garbage matte, but you may not have to keyframe every frame. Start at the beginning and do your moves and keyframing, then go to the end and do the move and keyframing, then go to the middle and do it again, then keep splitting the difference. You may get away with only a few dozen keyframes, depends on the motion.

    This is much better to do in After Effects as Richard says.

    Have a wonderful day.

  • Ryan Rockwell

    November 17, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    thanks a bunch guys, needed to knwo after effects was a better idea, dont got the cash atm. GOnna post more questions pretty shortly 🙂

    ~NEW~ to Final Cut Express
    Adobe Photoshop 7
    Macs….
    DREAMWEAVER CS3

  • Walter Biscardi

    November 17, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    [Ryan Rockwell] “thanks a bunch guys, needed to knwo after effects was a better idea, dont got the cash atm. GOnna post more questions pretty shortly 🙂 “

    Then I would suggest trying Motion.

    Walter Biscardi, Jr.
    Biscardi Creative Media
    HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

    Read my Blog!

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  • Tapio Haaja

    November 17, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Definitely go to Motion or After Effects. I don’t recommend doing anything more advanced compositing in Final Cut Pro. Mainly because Final Cut Pro have tons of bugs and strange behavior with alphas (and it’s even worse if you have fields enabled in your sequence). Final Cut is great for editing but Motion or After Effects is much more suitable for effects and compositing.

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