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Never masked before. Where to begin?
So I want to mask around a person in a video clip. Basically the clip would play and then freeze. At the same time as the freeze I want to remove everything in the video except the person. Then move him to one side, add a moving background, slide out his name, etc.
I’ve never created a mask before, whats the best and easiest way to create a mask around a person and delete everything else?
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6 Replies
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Draw around the person with the pen tool with rotobezier switched on. Beyond that …. check the manual. 🙂
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Ok, so I masked a frame using the pen tool how you said. Now how do I seperate the area I masked to a new layer? I want to take the guy I masked out to its own layer (1 frame, as a still image) so I can manipulate it separately. Any ideas?
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Composition>Save Frame As>File
will give you a Photoshop (psd) file with alpha all around the masked off guy.
In the render Queue, twirl down the “Output Module”, then from the drop down, “Post Render Action”, select “Import”, hit Render in the render Queue, and you’re good to go, the psd will be up in the project window begging to be used.
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I must be doing something wrong with my mask, because when I export it as a PSD like you mention, there is no alpha around the guy, just solid black. And in the timeline on the original AVI file I masked if I drop a video below it, it still shows solid black in the alpha area. Any idea why?
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Yeah, that weird. Is there only one layer in the comp, you video layer and the mask is on that? Twirl down to the mask, is it on “Add” ? If so you should be able to drop another video below it in the stack and you’ll see it all around the masked off guy.
In the render Queue, if you click on the “Output Module” – Photoshop 32bit, this open up the Module and under Channels should be “RGB + Alpha”, and Depth should be “Millions of Colors +”, the plus meaning you’ve got Alpha, but it sounds like your not getting your alpha around the mask in the original comp.
I dunno, it works fine for me here.
Your not applying the mask to a solid layer above the video, are you?
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I got it to work. Instead of going to Comp>Save Frame As>File. I do Comp>Same Frame As>Photoshop Layers. Then select the mask layer when importing. Works just fine.
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