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Garbage Matte to Cut “hole” in Video
The effect I am going for is very simple – sort of like creating a museum gallery effect.
I shot a video of a man standing off to the right of frame staring at a blank white wall. I wanted it to appear that there was actually a video playing on that wall. So I simply scaled the video that was to play on the wall down, put it on a higher track, positioned it in the correct location and the effect worked… UNTIL the man waved his hand over the area where the video was playing but instead his hand actually went BEHIND the video!
That makes sense since the video-playing-on-the-wall was on a higher track. Of course I want to make it so that his hand waves over the TOP of the video playing on the wall just as it would in real life.
So I moved the video-playing-on-the-wall to a lower track and applied a 4 point garbage matte to the top layer of the man staring at the wall. The man’s hand STILL went BEHIND the video…I tried inverting my matte but no luck.
How can I get the man’s hand to wave over the TOP of the smaller video?
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13 Replies
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Just a point of clarification – for this particular scene the “video” on the lower track that is supposed to be playing on the wall is actually a still image – it’s a .png
I just tried it again with a true video clip on the lower track and it’s the same issue, the man’s hand still goes behind the video
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Can you just key out whatever is inside the frame and place the movie behind it? If not Mocha for Final Cut is a great program to Roto out an arm or any object moving across your image. It simplifies the process and in turn costs money. If you are on a serious budget like most of us you can also copy the background layer and place it over the Video insert that will go in your frame and use the garbage matte to cut out everything else except the arm moving across. And yes… that does sound like a lot of work.
V-3 Copy of V-1 clip to cut out everything except the arm
V-2 Clip to go inside frame
V-1 Main ClipCheck out this Mocha for Final Cut tutorial. Even if you don’t purchase their product, it will give you an idea of how to create the look you are working on.
https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mocha/mocha_foreground_tutorial_1.mov
good luck,
Victor
http://www.editvictor.com -
Thanks Victor for your suggestions and I will indeed check out Mocha.
Can you explain why the hand is still going BEHIND the video if the video playing on the wall is on the lowest track? That part doesn’t make any sense to me…
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If I understand correctly. You have placed a garbage matte on the Video clip of a man standing by a picture frame in order to place a still image behind the hole created by the garbage matte. If the matte is placed on the clip with the arm moving, anything in that clip that crosses over the parameters of the garbage matte will be cut.
If the Still image that goes inside the frame is on a video layer above the video clip of the man standing by the picture frame, his arm goes behind the still on layer V-2.
Victor
http://www.editvictor.com -
Ahhh – so the arm is not so much going behind the video – rather it is being cut off because it has strayed into the area defined by the matte?
So then you are probably right, I would have to rotoscope at least the arm moving and place that on a higher track! I see now, thank you very much!
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If you are able to re-shoot the man and frame video, placing a green card or blue card (green screen or blue screen like) only over the hole in the picture frame would let you key out the green or blue color that is inside of the frame and let you place your still image behind the track. This would let the arm move over the frame and not be cut off. Unless he is wearing a blue or green shirt of course.
good luck,
Victor
http://www.editvictor.com -
If it’s a white wall, you can probably key out the wall with a simple key, but “key out brighter” instead of darker. The layers would still have to be as Victor described, except the top layer would be a key instead of a roto.
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Forget Mocha, that could take you a few months to figure out. All you need to do is rotoscope the arm. Almost impossible in FCP but you already have Motion and there are many freebie multi-point masking tools for both apps.
bogiesan
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David – can you recommend any relatively easy to use and free rotoscoping tools for either FCP or Motion?
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Motion already has a decent set of masking tools. Maybe not as good as Shake or Silhouette, but certainly as good as After Effects.
Rotoscoping is very detail oriented and using and keyframing the masks in Motion (or any other app, for that matter) is somewhat complicated. I’d recommend you look up how the masks work in the Motion manual, and maybe do a google search for a light saber tutorial- light sabers are the classic roto tutorial.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/
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