| Review the questions and answers in this section to try to sharpen your Premiere editing tricks. Also, take a few moments to tackle my short quiz and the exercises. Q&A | Q1: | I used an image matte to highlight a portion of a clip. I wanted the highlighted portion to be in a soft focus, but it's in sharp focus and the rest of the clip is blurred. Why? | | A1: | You need to use the Reverse Key option in the Transparency Settings dialog box. The black portion of your matte is transparent and is letting the clip on Video 1 show through. Selecting Reverse Key makes the black area opaque and the white regions transparent, thus creating the desired effect. | | Q2: | I made a virtual clip, changed its settings, and then moved the original clip to a new location. Now the virtual clip looks different. What's up? | | A2: | Virtual clips reflect the current status of their original clip. If you change that original clip in any way, it will show up in all instances of that clip's virtual clips. That's why it's a good idea to create and keep the original clip in some unused portion of your timeline to keep it out of mischief. | Quiz | 1: | You know you're going to set the same general motion to a series of clips. What's the most efficient way to do that? | | A1: | Create your motion settings and then save them. Load them for each additional clip. | | 2: | You plan to use the same effect(s) on a series of clips. Same issue. What's an efficient way to go about doing this? | | A2: | Here are two ways: Copy the clip (right/Option-click and select Copy) with the desired effect(s) and then paste the attributes to another clip (right/Option-click, Paste Attributes). Select Settings and then choose from among the four options. Once you've set which attributes to paste, you can use Paste Attributes Again without checking the various boxes. | | 3: | Why don't you want to use the Mirror video effect to create a split screen with mirrored animated action? | | A3: | Mirror is a wonderful video effect. It's easy to use and creates a perfect reflection, but it slices your clip into two equal halves . Unless your graphic is entirely on one side of the screen, Mirror will chop it down the middle. By creating a split screen and using motion settings to slide your clips off center, you can put an entire object on both sides of the screen. If it's a graphic, so much the better. You can use the Motion Settings dialog box to rotate it or use video effects to spin it in 3D space, all the while mirroring (or matching) the action of the same graphic on the other half of the screen. In addition, you can impart separate video effects on the individual graphics, adding more visual excitement. | Exercises | 1: | Highlight an area of a clip using an image or track matte. Then try out a number of different video effects ”Blur, Tint, and inverted colors ”on the clip on Video 2 as a means to alter it and make it stand out. Conversely, try to make it less prominent to allow something else ”a graphic, logo, or text ”to stand out on it. | | 2: | Use nested virtual clips to create a "quad transition." Apply one transition to a clip. Make two virtual clips and then add another transition to it. Turn that into two more virtual clips, and so on, until you have four transitions playing at once. With each additional transition, increase the duration by two seconds. As a means to get a clearer picture of what's going on, choose Transitions with Borders and make the borders thick to further emphasize each transition. When you're done, go back and change the attributes of a couple transitions and see how that affects the final quad transition. | | 3: | Create a split-screen mirrored animation on a diagonal. Use a graphic with an alpha channel (good-old Veloman.eps will do fine) and select Motion Settings to move the graphic following the diagonal line from the upper-left corner to the lower-right corner. You'll need to think through the start- and endpoints a bit more than when the graphic moved horizontally, but otherwise this should be fairly routine. | |
