Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Overlay Effect using animated template

Ivan B

Ivan B

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 12, 2006
12
0
California
I'm hoping somone will be able to help me with an overlay effect I'm doing. Here's the deal, I purchased some animations for wedding movies and I have this one template where a book opens and the idea is that the blank space in the opening book should be the beginning of the movie. I'm using FC and I thought that i have to overlay my template above my first wedding clip (v1 and v2) then my video clip would just show through the blank space on the template - but thats not the case! Then I tried adjusting opacity setting of the overlay animation that doesn't do it either. Now I'm thinking I have to manually adjust the video clip to overlay the template, but the size of the blank space changes each second so I'm not sure how i dynamically control my video clip to only cover the blank space as the animated book opens :confused: ??

I'm wondering if anybody here has used these templates in movies and if so how did you do the editing?

Ivan
 
faustfire

faustfire

macrumors 6502a
Jul 17, 2002
560
0
California
Does the book animation have an actual alpha channel on the blank pages?

If not than you probably need to go into motion, after effects, etc. and use a mask to create a hole in the animation where you want to be able to see your video. You will have to animate the mask frame by frame to compensate for the movement of the pages. :)
 
Ivan B

Ivan B

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 12, 2006
12
0
California
Do you know how I'm able to check to see if the blank space has an alpha channel available? I'm not realy sure what an alpha channel is to be honest :eek:

Thanks
 
faustfire

faustfire

macrumors 6502a
Jul 17, 2002
560
0
California
An alpha channel is extra information attached to each pixel which gives it a transparency value. Place your animation on a layer above a video clip, if you can see any of the clip through the animation layer than your animation has an alpha channel. You can also open it in quicktime and look under window/show movie properties to check if it has an alpha channel.
 
ppc_michael

ppc_michael

Guest
Apr 26, 2005
1,498
2
Los Angeles, CA
What format are these videos in? Were they specifically made for Final Cut?

In with the template files you have, do you have any video files that are just black and white squares where the video should show up? Like luma mattes?

Is there a website where I can look at what the package is that you purchased? I think it might help to see what they say specifically.
 
Ivan B

Ivan B

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 12, 2006
12
0
California
Checking Alpha Channels For Overlay Video Animation

I opened the QuickTime file for the wedding animation and when I looked under Window/Show Movie Properties I found under Visual Settings a drop down called Transparency and it currently has None (no dithering) selected, but the other options are include:
Blend
Sraight Alpha
Straight Alpha Blend
Premultiplied White Alpha
Premultiplied Black Alpha
Composition

Directly above it is a Field called Mask that allows me to choose any file and below is a field called Layer. Does some combination of these settings allow me to ovelay this animation on a video clip without having to do frame by frame manipulation? The animation was purchased was from, ActionBacks.com I believe. Any furthe guidance will be appreciated, I'll play around with it in the meantime :)

By the way the format when downloaded was NTSC -Quicktime (meant for Apple vs Windows).
Thanks
Ivan
 
ppc_michael

ppc_michael

Guest
Apr 26, 2005
1,498
2
Los Angeles, CA
According to the ActionBacks website, the alpha channel (for transparency) is embedded in the Quicktime file itself. In fact, they provide a small test movie to test transparency support, so I downloaded that and dropped it into a FCP timeline, and the transparency was there without me changing any settings at all.

Are you sure you're using the MOV files and not AVI? Or something?
 
Ivan B

Ivan B

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 12, 2006
12
0
California
Hi Michael - Yes I am using .Mov Q.T file with its default settings. I had my video clip on the first layer in FCP (v1) and overlayed the animation file over it and the blank space in the animation showing an opening book stayed black. Do you think I need to adjust the Transparancy settings that I stated in the previous response.

Thanks
ivan
 
ppc_michael

ppc_michael

Guest
Apr 26, 2005
1,498
2
Los Angeles, CA
You shouldn't have to be adjusting anything. For a quick fix, perhaps you could key out the black with a chroma keyer? Otherwise, I have no idea, hopefully somebody else can come up with a solution.

Sorry. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom