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Masking a selection throughout timelapse stills
I have a timelapse of a few hundred stills, and I want to maintain one detail of a particular frame throughout the rest of the timelapse images. Is there a way to select that portion the still and mask it somehow so it stays the same in every other still? The lit up tree shown is what I want to keep throughout the other timelapse images, and in the other images the tree is either dark, or lit up red by a nearby campfire. (I didn’t use any other motion or tracking during the timelapse, the framed composition is the same throughout.)
Hope I’m explaining this so I can get some technique advice, I’m still pretty green in FCPX. Thanks!
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6 Replies
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David,
The only way you could do what you want to do is to mask out the background in Photoshop or Motion.
Trust
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Maybe I’m not understanding but it seems to me to take the still where it has the element you want to stay still and duplicate it to be above the time-lapse. Stretch the still to fill. Crop the still to the element you want to keep the same.
NewsVideo.com
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That sounds like what I what to do, although I’m not sure how to “crop the still to the element I want to keep”. I’d need to make a very specific selection around the tree, as opposed to using the circle/rectangle masking selection tool in FCPX. Anyone know how I’d do that? Photoshop first?
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Then, yes, Photoshop. Take the first still into PS and select the object. Inverse the selection and delete. You may have to first ‘unlock’ the file if its JPEG. You want to save it as a PNG with the same size as the full picture so don’t crop. Just delete everything except the object. By maintaining the size, it’ll place the object in the correct position with you lay that one picture over the top all across the edit. I’m assuming, of course, that the object does not move.
NewsVideo.com
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Brilliant, that sound like it should do the trick. So when I import the selected/cropped PNG file into FCPX, should I make the single clip the entire time length of my whole timelapse? Or should I duplicate it and overlay it on each individual still?
Thanks so much!
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If that object does not move then that single PNG picture can be stretched over the whole project. If it moves, well, that’s an entirely different story!
NewsVideo.com
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