Nesting Spectramatte with BCC Drop Shadow

[Jon Zanone]

Can’t you add a shadow in spectramatte? I thought it was toward the bottom of the effect pallette, in one of the twirly triangles….

Jon

“Jamming our heads full of figures and angles
And telling us stuff that we already know”

Willie The Wandering Gypsy & Me
Billy Joe Shaver

[Terence Curren]

You can always promote the Spectramaate to 3D to get Avid’s built in shadow. It’s not very good though.

Or, use the BCC chroma key.

Terence Curren
http://www.alphadogs.tv
http://www.digitalservicestation.com
Burbank,Ca

[John Lafauce jr.]

Thanks for the feedback. You would think that once an alpha is generated (resulting from the key), that matte can be nested with BCC Drop Shadow to create a shadow. The limitation appears to be that Avid is not passing off the alpha to other effects.

[Andy Crow]

This can be done, but it must be done manually. Get your Spectramatte key the way you want it and then select “Show Alpha”. Alt-apply your BCC Drop Shadow effect as normal and select “Apply to Title-Matte and Invert Matte”. Then, step into the BCC Drop Shadow effect and on the layer underneath the Spectramatte key edit in your original source footage. There will be three layers underneath the effect. The top is the Alpha, the middle the source, and the bottom the background. Then step back out of the nested effect as normal.

It also important to remember for this effect to work you’ll need to have an empty layer between your nested effect and your background layer.

ac