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Problem with a moving track matte in premiere pro 1.5
hi,
Pretty new to using Track Mattes but I thought I understood how it works..
Put a video in track 1, then another video on track 2 that contains something to superimpose over track 1, then an image file in track 3 that has a black shape (or white) in the shape of whatever you want to superimpose onto video 1 from video 2. Apply Track Matte key to the superimposed image (video 2), and then set the “Track” in its effect controls to Video 3 (the matte image). in my case i used a .psd file for the matte image.
I’m making a little “movie” using a PC game. The problem is, you can see all players’ character names above their heads, and there is no way to turn them off. This is obviously pretty ugly and distracting for a movie. So my plan was to use moving track mattes to hide the names… For example I’d record an empty hallway (video 2), then, without moving the camera, record the hallway again with a character running through it for the movie scene (video 1). Then simply make a black rectangle in a .psd file the shape of the character’s name (video 3), then key its position perfectly over the character’s name as he runs, then give video 2 Track Matte effect, and tell it to use the mask from Video 3.
When I do not have the Video 3 layer (the black box) hidden, the black box perfectly moves along the screen covering up the character’s name. So when I click hide layer, it should ‘reveal’ video 2, where the black box used to be, and display footage of the empty hallway where the name used to be, therefore covering up the name. But when I hide the video 3 (black box), the matte doesn’t work right – it’s sitting stationary in the middle of the screen. When the character runs by, the matte cuts through his center… And when I hide video 1, I can see that the matte is just sitting there in the middle of the screen not moving… But when I un-hide video 3 and look at the box again, once again, it’s moving perfectly where it’s supposed to go, directly over the character name.
What gives? Why won’t the track matte animate like it’s supposed to?
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4 Replies
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[release2] “Why won’t the track matte animate like it’s supposed to?”
The short answer is it works much like that in version 2.0.
In 1.5 there is a convoluted recipe of importing Sequence 1 into a new sequence, duplicating tracks, reducing opacity of V2 so you could see V1 and it gave me a headache to animate the dam thing.
But it has been a year and the memory of the pain and the recipe has diminished. I hope someone can remember the sordid details.
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As I recall from the dark ages of editing, you create the matte using 50% opacity or so to get it placed correctly, then you copy it and paste it into a new sequence. Set the opacity to 100% and then replace the original matte in the original sequence with the new sequence nested into the first.
Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com -
Thanks so much for the help guys
I must’ve done something wrong because it didn’t work, however I THINK it was because of resolution differences, but in case it was something else:
-In the new separate “matte” sequence, all that is needed is the matte track? so in my case, the track with the black box moving around, and nothing else? the sequence was solid black (no background) so I wasn’t sure if premiere would ‘think’ the whole sequence was just a black screen and not read it properly.?
-I’m using a Frame Hold on the super-imposed video (the empty hallway, its just the same video of the guy running through, but its holding on the first frame a half a second before he enters the screen). Is this problematic with mattes?
I’m fairly sure though, it was because it may have changed the resolution of the new sequence to a different resolution than the video clips, since I have been having problems with the “Automatically resize imported clips to correct size” option
I still want to figure out what went wrong so I know how to do it properly with a new sequence, but until then, I just rendered that separate sequence with a white background to an .avi, and used that as the matte for the time being. hadn’t thought about it before 😛
Thanks again for the help 🙂
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Put your black matte over a white color matte in the new sequence that gets nested as a track matte. That should help.
Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com
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