Chapter 24. Track Mattes and PiPs

This chapter shows you how to work with two types of effects: Track Matte Key, which has been updated for 2.0, and PiPs (picture-in-picture), which remain the same as in previous versions of Premiere Pro. After examining the new workflow for Track Matte Key, you'll review PIP techniques.

The uses for a picture-in-picture effect are fairly obvious from its name, but what about track mattes? Say you want a video clip to play in the letters of your title. You know it will look very coolbut you don't know how to do it. Look to Premiere Pro's built-in keying effects for the answer: Composite the title and video together with the Track Matte Key effect. Keying effects are a way to combine, or composite, elements of multiple images into one final image. Basically, you stack images on top of each other, then you identify specific elements of the top image to cut out using a matte or key so that images beneath can show through. The Track Matte Key effect uses an image's alpha channel or luma (white) information to delineate the matte elements.

For the example, you would place the title in one video track and the video file in another. Next, apply the Track Matte Key effect to the movie clip, choosing the title to be the matte that you would like to key through.

In Premiere Pro 2.0, revisions to the workflow for creating track mattes have made this process easier and better than ever before. After having played with the new effect for quite some time, I have also found a way to combine track mattes with color correction effects to make even more defined color correction adjustments.

The first track matte lesson teaches the basics by showing you how to create a static track matte. The second track matte lesson goes a big step further and shows you how to combine matte with color-corrected video clips to create better color correction adjustments.