51 Creating Mattes in Premiere Pro

#51 Creating Mattes in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro's Design Primitives

One key strength of Premiere Pro's titling utility is the ability to create rectangles, ovals, squares and other shapes , which are called generically "design primitives." These are explored in detail in #59.

The easiest way to create a matte in Premiere Pro is to use the design primitives in its Titler. Here's how:

In the timeline, move the current-time indicator to the start of the clips. This will allow you to see the clips in the Titler while you're creating your matte, which is critical for precise positioning.

Choose File > New > Title to open the Title editor. Name the title something memorable like "oval matte."

In the Titler, be sure that the Show Video checkbox is selected so the video shows through ( Figure 51a ).

Figure 51a. Creating a Closed Bezier to define the regions of your video-within-a-video.

Click the Ellipse tool and drag an ellipse around the subject of the video.

Select the Graphic Type pull-down menu and choose Closed Bezier.

Note

At this point, you have an ellipse with a hard edge, which is fine if you're applying a mosaic or blur filter to hide someone, but doesn't look great in a vignette-like application like this one. The next step will soften the edge, creating the blurry line seen around the ellipse in Figure 50a .

Using Other Design Primitives

You can use other design primitives, including the Pen tool, to create completely custom shapes, as long as you end up with a Closed Bezier graphic.

Select the Shadow checkbox and twirl the triangle to reveal the properties. The critical properties here are color (which must be white so it doesn't degrade the quality of the matte effect) and angle (which must be zero so it doesn't look lopsided). You can experiment with Opacity, Size, and Spread, but start with the values in Figure 51b .

Figure 51b. You can customize your drop shadow by experimenting with the Opacity, Size, and Spread values.

Make 'em in Photoshop

You can also make your mattes in Photoshop. Create your shapes over a transparent background and save the file as a grayscale PSD file. After applying the Track Matte Key, the transparent area will block the background and the video will flow through the shape in the Photoshop file.

Close the Titler.

#52 Applying the Track Matte Key

Once you have the timeline set up (#50) and the matte created (#51), it's time to apply the Track Matte Key and complete the highlight effect. Here's how.

Troubleshooting

This technique is binary; if you've got everything set up correctly, it should work; if not, it won't. If you're using a Premiere Pro title as the matte, the most common mistake is forgetting to save the file as a Closed Bezier (see #51). If you're working with a matte you imported from Photoshop, check to make sure that you saved the file as a grayscale image and left the background transparent.

Drag the new title to Video 3 directly above the two other clips.

Apply the Track Matte Key (Video Effects > Keying folder) to the top video clip (Video 2 in the example), not the new matte.

Select the clip on Video 2, and open the Effect Controls panel.

In the Track Matte Key controls, click the Matte: drop-down menu and choose the track containing the matte. In this example, it's Video 3 ( Figure 52 ).

Figure 52. Once you choose the track containing your matte, Premiere Pro should apply the effect, showing the result in the Program Monitor.

Applying a Blur or Mosaic Filter

Let's say you want to blur out the face of someone on the video. How would you do it? Use the same procedures described in the last three techniques, and apply a blur or mosaic video to the video on Video 2. The matte will limit its application to the defined region, blurring the face and showing the rest of the video in full detail.

Leave all other controls at their default settings. You should see the video from Video 2 (in the example, full- color video) showing through the matte, with video from Video 1 (in the example, the darkened video) elsewhere in the frame.