Making transparent Keynote slide for FCPX

[loby]

I have looked everywhere on the internet and cannot find an answer, please someone help:

I have a Keynote and/or PPT slide with text and I want to overlay it in my FCPX video, but desire it to be transparent so the video is seen behind the text file.

How do I do this so the slide is transparent in the video? Thanks! 🙂

 

[boch82]

I have looked everywhere on the internet and cannot find an answer, please someone help:

I have a Keynote and/or PPT slide with text and I want to overlay it in my FCPX video, but desire it to be transparent so the video is seen behind the text file.

How do I do this so the slide is transparent in the video? Thanks! 🙂

Best option is to recreate the text in FCP. That will be the cleanest.

If must use it from a slide, make the background of the slide a solid color that is far different than the text color (green, blue, pink) and then drop a chroma key on it and key out that solid color.

 

[loby]

Thanks! I used a blue background and it seemed to do the job.

"Keyer" was the option I used under effects. Just had to make sure that the size of the slide was the same as the movies specs: (1920Wx1080H) for the sharpest text.

I noticed that if you have to resize the slide after overlaying, the quality of the text reduces when adding the effect. I was using text that had to be over-layed a specific way and there are 80 slides!

Thanks again or the help!

 

[pinholestars]

Looks like you've got it figured out, but an even easier way would be to make a black slide with white text, export, then in FCPX set it to a 'screen' blending mode. That'd get rid of the black but keep the white. Should be a little easier than using the chroma key. Alternatively, if you wanted black text, you could make black text on a white background and set the blending mode to multiply.

 

[loby]

Thanks! Tried that out too and looks like that has some advantage as well. The "screen" blended both sides, and looks good, but I think the "Keyer" option makes the letters sharper? I went ahead and made the slide with a black background with white letters.

Again, works and looks good, but maybe the "Keyer" function is sharper? I have not rendered the final yet, so I don't know which is better. I am doing a HD project, and using a Apple Thunderbolt monitor for view. It looks great on the monitor, but not sure how it looks in HD until I render and use something else to view.

Thanks again for the suggestion! 🙂

 

[boch82]

Thanks! Tried that out too and looks like that has some advantage as well. The "screen" blended both sides, and looks good, but I think the "Keyer" option makes the letters sharper? I went ahead and made the slide with a black background with white letters.

Again, works and looks good, but maybe the "Keyer" function is sharper? I have not rendered the final yet, so I don't know which is better. I am doing a HD project, and using a Apple Thunderbolt monitor for view. It looks great on the monitor, but not sure how it looks in HD until I render and use something else to view.

Thanks again for the suggestion! 🙂

Blending modes work well in certain circumstances, but if you have a shadow or outline it can cause a fuzzy edge. By using a keyer you get a lot more parameters to tweak the final output.

But going back to my first post, neither of these ways is the best workflow. You should be creating text in your editor or a graphics program.