Ok first off, I'd just like to make a couple of things clear to anyone who has certain expectations from this tutorial.
First, it's important that you appreciate that SpeedEDIT:
Secondly, compromises will have to be made to achieve this effect due to the limitations of the program. More on this at the end of the tutorial.
That said, let's start.
For this tutorial you will need to have a strong fundamental knowledge of SpeedEDIT's basic editing workflow and a good knowledge of the Control Tree.
Limitations:
SpeedEDIT's masks are pretty much non-existent and therefore workarounds with the Control Tree are necessary to setup some of the more basic masking procedures.
Matte creation in SpeedEDIT is a lot better with the help of SpeedEDIT's keying tools, however trying to get varying degrees of transparency from
the greyscales of imported third party mattes can be quite problematic as SpeedEDIT doesn't seem to have any way of recognising a clip as a matte.
Tools used:
Understanding how to use these tools will help you follow this tutorial.
Objective:
The idea behind this tutorial is to create an animated text based matte that will scroll or crawl revealing a video clip within the text while moving across video clip.
The techniques learned here can be applied to many other situations.
WORKFLOW
BRINGING IN THE PLATES
Matte Background Plate
First off we're going to create the fill for the text. This will be the clip that's shown through the 'hole' of the matte that will be soon defined. Start by dragging a clip into the Storyboard or top layer of the timeline. Give it the alias 'Matte Background Plate'.
Background Plate
Now we're going to create our background plate. This will be the video clip that the text travels over. It will give the impression that this clip is in the background, even though it's really on top of the background clip as viewed from the SpeedEDIT timeline.
Drag a clip under the 'Matte Background Plate' clip and then give it an alias named 'Background Plate'.
MATTE/MASK CREATION
Click on the Filebin tab and navigate to the "Titles" directory. Drag a "Title Page.cg" under the 'Background Plate' clip and check the 'Overlay' box.
With the "Title Page.cg" selected, change the alias to something like 'My First Title Matte', then click on it's Control Tree and click on the 'Draw' tabbed pane. Create a black rectangle that covers the entire video area.
Now click on the 'Title' tabbed pane (if you wanted, you could remain in the 'Draw' tabbed pane instead and draw shapes that will define a mask, since the principles are the same) and type some text of your choosing. I recommend typing 'Shabazzy is a GENIUS'.
Make sure of the following:
The similarly, if you're going to draw a shape make sure it's white or a colour that doesn't appear in the 'Background Plate' clip.
Making the motion
Now you could manually set keyframes to move the text around the screen as you wish or you can just go to the Control Tree and open up the 'Page Properties' menu and select one of scrolling or crawling options in the 'Page Styles' drop-down selections.
Setting up the keys
At this point make sure the black rectangle is under the text or shape.
When done, move over to the Control Tree and open the 'Layer Properties'.
Scroll down and open the 'Chroma/Luma Keying' options and select black as the colour to key.
Enable the 'Luma key' check box and make sure the 'Chroma/Luma Keying' check box is enabled also.
The black background should have disappeared showing the 'Background Plate' clip under the white text.
Select the title clip and the 'Background Plate' clip and create a 'Sub-project'. Give it an alias with '_sub-project' on the end of whatever you call it. That way you'll know it's a sub-project.
Open up the Control Tree for this sub-project and key out the white. Now provided the 'Background Plate' clip hasn't any colours that have a similar luma strength to white you should see the white text disappear and the 'Matte Background Plate' clip appear inside the text.
If the 'Background Plate' clip has 'holes' in it and it too is showing the 'Matte Background Plate' through it, you can try changing the keying colour for the text to one that doesn't appear in the 'Background Plate' clip, keying it out and then changing the keying from 'Luma' to 'Chroma' instead.
Be prepared to tweak the 'Key Tolerance' and maybe 'Key Smoothing' settings for the 'whatever-you-called-it_sub-project' clip to find the spot that eliminates any holes showing through the 'Background Plate' clip, as well as to remove the aliasing on the edges of the text or shape.
Stop re-inventing the wheel
Once done, create an instance of the 'whatever-you-called-it_sub-project' clip by dragging it into an appropriate folder in the 'Add Media' window. Probably a folder called 'Mattes' or something.
That way, whenever you need a matte or mask like this, you can just drag it onto the timeline under your new 'Matte Background Plate' clip and easily change the 'Background Plate' clip of the sub-project using SpeedEDIT's inherit feature if you want, as well as it's text/shape.
And we're done.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The masking workflow works pretty much the same way, except you probably don't need it to scroll/crawl.
The only problem with this technique is that it's virtually impossible to feather the edges of the matte/mask. SpeedEDIT doesn't seem to be able to create semi transparent luma keys. It seems to be very binary, i.e., your chosen colour is either fully transparent or it's not. Which is an unfortunate limitation on it's flexiblity.
That's one good reason it may be better to bring in a 32bit image/video clip with the masking/matting done in another program like Aura or TVPaint if feathering or various semi-transparent areas are required, since that seems to work wonderfully.
However, don't be afraid to experiment and tailor this workflow for your purposes. This is just a foundation on which you can build.
And don't forget to save regularly. If SpeedEDIT crashes on you, you'll be glad you did.
Let me know if you found this useful.
Enjoy
Shabazzy
First, it's important that you appreciate that SpeedEDIT:
- Doesn't do everything the same way as other more commonly used editors do. So you need to be a bit open minded.
- Is not a compositing program
Secondly, compromises will have to be made to achieve this effect due to the limitations of the program. More on this at the end of the tutorial.
That said, let's start.
For this tutorial you will need to have a strong fundamental knowledge of SpeedEDIT's basic editing workflow and a good knowledge of the Control Tree.
Limitations:
SpeedEDIT's masks are pretty much non-existent and therefore workarounds with the Control Tree are necessary to setup some of the more basic masking procedures.
Matte creation in SpeedEDIT is a lot better with the help of SpeedEDIT's keying tools, however trying to get varying degrees of transparency from
the greyscales of imported third party mattes can be quite problematic as SpeedEDIT doesn't seem to have any way of recognising a clip as a matte.
Tools used:
- Sub-Project
- Alias
- Control Tree
- Filebin
- Title Page.cg
- Draw Tab
- Text Tab
- Luma keying
Understanding how to use these tools will help you follow this tutorial.
Objective:
The idea behind this tutorial is to create an animated text based matte that will scroll or crawl revealing a video clip within the text while moving across video clip.
The techniques learned here can be applied to many other situations.
WORKFLOW
BRINGING IN THE PLATES
Matte Background Plate
First off we're going to create the fill for the text. This will be the clip that's shown through the 'hole' of the matte that will be soon defined. Start by dragging a clip into the Storyboard or top layer of the timeline. Give it the alias 'Matte Background Plate'.
Background Plate
Now we're going to create our background plate. This will be the video clip that the text travels over. It will give the impression that this clip is in the background, even though it's really on top of the background clip as viewed from the SpeedEDIT timeline.
Drag a clip under the 'Matte Background Plate' clip and then give it an alias named 'Background Plate'.
MATTE/MASK CREATION
Click on the Filebin tab and navigate to the "Titles" directory. Drag a "Title Page.cg" under the 'Background Plate' clip and check the 'Overlay' box.
With the "Title Page.cg" selected, change the alias to something like 'My First Title Matte', then click on it's Control Tree and click on the 'Draw' tabbed pane. Create a black rectangle that covers the entire video area.
Now click on the 'Title' tabbed pane (if you wanted, you could remain in the 'Draw' tabbed pane instead and draw shapes that will define a mask, since the principles are the same) and type some text of your choosing. I recommend typing 'Shabazzy is a GENIUS'.
Make sure of the following:
- The text is solid white (or a colour that doesn't appear in the 'Background Plate' clip).
- The font chosen is of a strong, bold, clearly legible type.
The similarly, if you're going to draw a shape make sure it's white or a colour that doesn't appear in the 'Background Plate' clip.
Making the motion
Now you could manually set keyframes to move the text around the screen as you wish or you can just go to the Control Tree and open up the 'Page Properties' menu and select one of scrolling or crawling options in the 'Page Styles' drop-down selections.
Setting up the keys
At this point make sure the black rectangle is under the text or shape.
When done, move over to the Control Tree and open the 'Layer Properties'.
Scroll down and open the 'Chroma/Luma Keying' options and select black as the colour to key.
Enable the 'Luma key' check box and make sure the 'Chroma/Luma Keying' check box is enabled also.
The black background should have disappeared showing the 'Background Plate' clip under the white text.
Select the title clip and the 'Background Plate' clip and create a 'Sub-project'. Give it an alias with '_sub-project' on the end of whatever you call it. That way you'll know it's a sub-project.
Open up the Control Tree for this sub-project and key out the white. Now provided the 'Background Plate' clip hasn't any colours that have a similar luma strength to white you should see the white text disappear and the 'Matte Background Plate' clip appear inside the text.
If the 'Background Plate' clip has 'holes' in it and it too is showing the 'Matte Background Plate' through it, you can try changing the keying colour for the text to one that doesn't appear in the 'Background Plate' clip, keying it out and then changing the keying from 'Luma' to 'Chroma' instead.
Be prepared to tweak the 'Key Tolerance' and maybe 'Key Smoothing' settings for the 'whatever-you-called-it_sub-project' clip to find the spot that eliminates any holes showing through the 'Background Plate' clip, as well as to remove the aliasing on the edges of the text or shape.
Stop re-inventing the wheel
Once done, create an instance of the 'whatever-you-called-it_sub-project' clip by dragging it into an appropriate folder in the 'Add Media' window. Probably a folder called 'Mattes' or something.
That way, whenever you need a matte or mask like this, you can just drag it onto the timeline under your new 'Matte Background Plate' clip and easily change the 'Background Plate' clip of the sub-project using SpeedEDIT's inherit feature if you want, as well as it's text/shape.
And we're done.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The masking workflow works pretty much the same way, except you probably don't need it to scroll/crawl.
The only problem with this technique is that it's virtually impossible to feather the edges of the matte/mask. SpeedEDIT doesn't seem to be able to create semi transparent luma keys. It seems to be very binary, i.e., your chosen colour is either fully transparent or it's not. Which is an unfortunate limitation on it's flexiblity.
That's one good reason it may be better to bring in a 32bit image/video clip with the masking/matting done in another program like Aura or TVPaint if feathering or various semi-transparent areas are required, since that seems to work wonderfully.
However, don't be afraid to experiment and tailor this workflow for your purposes. This is just a foundation on which you can build.
And don't forget to save regularly. If SpeedEDIT crashes on you, you'll be glad you did.
Let me know if you found this useful.
Enjoy
Shabazzy
