[John Cuevas]

What you need is the mini-golf video to be isolated from the rest of the screens. So want you want in your final composition is your “Big TV Screen” layer to be at the bottom of the stack and a directly above it “Minigolf_Solo” that you will control in the final comp.

So in your project window, duplicate the composition “TV Screen”, and call it “Minigolf_base”. Now remove everything from “Minigolf_base” except the mini-golf movie.

Duplicate in the project window “Big TV Screen” and rename it “Minigolf_Solo”. Replace the 4 “TV Screen” layers with “Minigolf_base”. Turn on continous rasterization(looks like a little sun icon”

Open your final comp and duplicate “Big TV Screen”, now replace the “Big TV Screen” that is on top, with “Minigolf_solo”. Turn on continuous rasterization. Now you can scale up and rotate your “Minigolf_solo” layer, while the rest of the layers remain static.

Alternatively, you could just take your minigolf.mov, drop it into your final composition, turn it into a 3d layer and place it over the minigolf movie in “Big TV Screen” layer. Then just scale, rotate, zPosition change it to fill the entire screen when necessary. This method is a bit less precise but maybe a little quicker.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

Without knowing exactly how your compositions are set up, I think the quickest way to accomplish this is to duplicate your 4×4 composition, and in the new comp delete everything but Minigolf.

In your final comp, duplicate the 4×4 image layer and using ‘alt replace’ method drop your mini-golf solo comp on to the top version of the 4×4 layer. Now both images should be synced.

Now you should be able to scale up mini golf while the rest of the image maintains it’s size.

You could also add some lights to cast some shadows that might sell the effect more. You would probably want to change the layer properties to not accept the lights, but just cast shadows though…but play around to suit your and more importantly, the clients tastes.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

If the camera is locked down you could try using a differnce matte. It’s really a long shot, but I’ve managed to make it work on a few occassions.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

cntl + K opens the composition settings window. I don’t know how you are performing a cut doing that.

Shift + cntl + d performs a cut on the selected layer at the CTI

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

If you have auto-saves turned on, that should be the first thing you try.

Another thing that often will work, create a new project, then import the bad project into the new one. It will import without opening any comps. This trick has saved me a few times.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

– Is it possible to have the background rendered as invisible?

Yes. If you are rendering to quicktime.mov – animation codec for instance, in your lossless settings you would change your video output for channels to “RGB + Alpha” When it plays back in your quicktime player, it will still have a black background but if you import into a NLE(or back into AE) it will have an alpha channel that maintains your transparency, now you can now place it over video.

If not, is possible to add a solid color background the the .mov clip?

“Shift + Y” will will open up the solid settings, pick a color and put it on the bottom of you comp stack.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

The fireworks being over a night sky, should make it pretty doable.

If these displays were shot at different locations and buildings are present, trees…the first step would be to mask that out. Next you might want to add a levels or curves effect to crush the blacks and brighten everything else.

Then you have a few differnt ways you can approach this. You could lay the tracks on top of each other and use the “add” transfer mode. This would give a quick an easy way to do it, but the fireworks will add together.

Another approach would be to add a “Luma Key” effect, use the “Key Out Darker” key type. And just adjust the threshold up to say 20…That should get rid of your blacks and give you a key on the fireworks. Adjust edge feather to taste. You could also try the key type “key out similiar” and adjust the tolerance, that also may work.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

Check out the VideoCopilot tutorials on SureTarget. It’s a free plugin they developed that moves between different targets/locations. Really handy and they have some good tuts on it’s usage.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

Create your a new comp in AE select the text tool and type in your text. With the character window open, select one letter of text and change the color. Save your project

In Premiere(don’t use premiere often) I think you can now just import the AE composition and place it into your project…and if you want to change your colors, you can change them in AE and it will update in Premiere

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[John Cuevas]

Another option Media Batch. Our clients love it, allows them to place a marker on a flv, add comments. They can also draw pictures on it if they want, like circle offending logos and such.

https://www.mediabatch.com/

Johnny Cuevas, Editor