newbie trying to lock a mask…

[Simon Bonner]

The page you’ve found is about something else: it shows a way to stop you modifying your mask accidentally.

Masks take their position from the layer they’re on. If you move the layer, the mask moves too. One way around this is to use a matte. Make a new, comp sized solid. Turn off the eye switch for it so you can see the layers beneath. Then draw a mask on the solid. Place your text beneath the solid and change the trkmat option of the text (if you can’t see it, right click on the timeline title bar and choose columns > modes) to alpha matte or alpha inverted, whichever works for you.

I have a quick video tutorial on this here.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Emma Assin]

thank you simon, i watched your tutorial and it was great, very helpful and i’m sure i’ll be using that technique in the future. what i actually did in the meantime was make my animation a comp. and then masked that comp on my main comp. timeline. works well for this project as i want a lot of different bits of text with individual masks.

i’m a flash user just trying to get my head around ae 🙂 masking is sliiiiightly different heh.

now if i can figure out how to export the whole thing as 16:9 i’ll be laughing 😀

[Simon Bonner]

re: 16:9, hit cntl+k to bring up the comp settings and change the preset to widescreen (for tv viewing) or widescreen square pixel (for computer viewing). The non-square pixel one won’t look correct in AE unless you hit the toggle pixel aspect ratio button in the comp panel (like a square with an arrow on top), but will render fine.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Emma Assin]

thanks for that simon, so i’ve done that, but when i rendered it out i again got the non-widescreen format, no letterbox. and in fcp it fills the comp top to bottom rather than having a letterbox like the rest of my footage. there’s gotta be a way to export this comp so that it matches my widescreen shot footage in fcp without being stretched… ?

[Simon Bonner]

No, you won’t get the letterbox with this preset. It’s set to be viewed on widescreen TVs without letterbox and on standard TVs the letterboxing will be applied automatically.

Perhaps the letterboxed footge you have in FCP is standard 4:3 footage with a letterbox applied to make it appear as though it’s 16:9. Is this the case?

If you’re not sure, is there any way you could you let me know what FCP is interpreting your footage as? I don’t use that programme so wouldn’t know how you would check this, you may have to consult it’s help files.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Emma Assin]

my footage was shot at 16:9 in camera and then brought into fcp using the widescreen capture option. it displays perfectly, though i guess the project setting are 4:3, because i see the letterbox during my edit. maybe the thing to do is to keep my ae settings as 4:3 but to insert a fake letterbox using black solids top and bottom? do you think that would work best? really interesting that something so simple should be so complicated to figure out!

[Simon Bonner]

To discover the aspect ratio of your footage, take one of your assets and import it into AE. Assuming AE interprets it correctly, you’ll be able to select it in the project panel and at the top of the panel will be given some info on pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio. E.g. 720×480 (1:42) would mean you had a standard definition NTSC 16:9 footage.

Then you can just produce motion graphics that match this.

You problem in FCP might match a similar one I had when first using Premiere. In prem you have to specify an aspect ratio for your project when you begin, which can be any number of settings including widescreen. If you get the setting wrong and then bring in widescreen footage, it will be cropped / have letterboxing etc, basically things you don’t want. So make sure your FCP project is widescreen, if that’s an option.

Though it would be better to know what type of footage you’re working with so you can tailer your AE work to it, if worst comes to worst you could do as you say and add letterboxing. Go to the “preset” page at Andrew Kramer’s videocopilot.net and download the letterboxing preset. The video will show you how to work it.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Emma Assin]

thank you simon, that’s all very useful advice. i’m going to make a new project in fcp and move all my footage into that, making sure the settings are widescreen and hopefully that will fix things. thanks again!
emma.

[Simon Bonner]

Last thing, just to remind you that there are different types of “widescreen” (square pixels, non square 1.42) so make sure you know which one to use (probably non square if this is for tv)

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Emma Assin]

well it’s a short film. it’s for tv mainly i guess! it’d be so much easier if everything was organised into proper pre-sets that work together – i can’t believe that what i’m trying to do is something unusual 🙂

thanks for all the help again!