Adding the Superboy Clip to the Timeline

Adding the Superboy Clip to the Timeline

The first thing we'll do with this project is bring in the hero of our clip, who resides in the superboy.avi clip, and add him to the Timeline. Once he's safely there, we'll strip away the greenscreen background as the next step in making you believe a manwell, a boycan fly.

Add the Superboy Clip

Start Premiere Elements and create a new project called superhero .

Click the Get Media from button on the Media panel to access the Get Media from view, if it's not already active.

Select DVD, Digital Camera, Mobile Phone, Hard Drive Camcorder, Card Reader .

When the Media Downloader displays, click the Advanced Dialog button to switch to Advanced mode.

Select the superboy.avi clip.

Click the Get Media button. Premiere Elements copies the superboy.avi clip from the DVD onto your hard drive and adds it to the Available Media list for this project.

For this project, we'll need to be in Timeline view because we are working with multiple clips on multiple video tracks. So, If the My Project panel is not already in Timeline view, click the Timeline button to switch.

Drag and drop the superboy.avi clip on the Media panel onto the Timeline of the My Project panel onto the Video 2 track. Line up the head of the superboy.avi clip with the start of the Video 2 track.

Tip

We're placing the superboy.avi clip on the second video track because later we'll be adding the background clip to the timeline, and the superboy.avi clip needs to be above the background clip.

Removing the Green Background from Behind Superboy

Here we'll "clean the green" background from the superboy.avi clip. Because of the way that this particular greenscreen clip was filmed, it's a bit problematic . There are what are known as "hot spots"(places in the background on which light shown brightly) and shadows. The more uniform the green color is in your greenscreen clips, the more successful the Chroma Key effect will be when applied. Shadows and "hot spots" effectively create such variations on the green-screen color that they are practically completely different shades of green and are very difficult to remove. But we have a solution...

Apply the Chroma Key

On the Media panel, click the Effects and Transitions button to switch to the Effects and Transitions view.

Type chroma in the text box to bring up the Chroma Key .

Select the Chroma Key from the Keying category of Video Effects .

Drag and drop it onto the superboy.avi clip on the Video 2 track.

Did You Know? Premiere Elements has 9 "Key" effects. You have at your disposal with Premiere Elements nine effects in the Keying category, each of which can help solve any unique problem that a clip might present to you in your projects. There are three "garbage matte" keys. These are simply keys that let you crop out what is literally referred to as the garbage; that is, any part of the clip that you don't care about and are willing to throw away just like garbage. The garbage matte keys include the Four-Point, the Eight-Point, and the Sixteen-Point Garbage Matte. The points refers to how many control handles, or points, each has. There is an additional matte key here, the Track Matte Key , whose purpose is to create transparency in a superimposed clip. There are also four keys related to chromaor colorkeying. These are the Green Screen Key , the Blue Screen Key , the Non Red Key , and the Chroma Key . The final keying effect in this category is the Alpha Adjust.

Fine-tune the Chroma Key

In the Properties panel for the superboy.avi clip, click the triangle next to the Chroma Key to twirl it down and reveal the effect's controls.

Select the eyedropper tool and click in the upper right corner of the greenscreen background of the superboy.avi clip in the Monitor panel.

Back in the Properties panel, set the Similarity to 30.0% .

Set the Smoothing to High .

Did You Know? The Chroma Key can key any color. Chroma actually means color. Therefore, unlike the Blue Screen Key or the Green Screen Key , you can actually use the Chroma Key to key out any color in the color spectrum that you want to remove from the background. You can use the eye-dropper tool to select the color directly from the background. Alternatively, you can click on the color swatch to bring up the Color Picker dialog box. From here, you can pick the color from the color spectrum, or enter the numeric value for the color if you know it. You can enter the numeric color as RGB (red, green, blue), HSB (hue, saturation, brightness), HSL (hue, saturation, luminance), YUV (luminance, blue, red), or even as a hexadecimal number.