Blur Filter on select clips

[JReble]

So let's say you've got a piece of video in the TED timeline, then under it you have a piece of video with alpha that you are keying over the first video clip, simple enough.

Now let's say you want to apply the blur filter to the key video track only. How would you do this? As far as I can tell the blur filter needs to go under the key clip to affect it, but that results in both video clips being blurred and I only want the key clip blured. Is there a recommended method to do this? I know that it can happen because the timeline actually did it once while I was moving the blur filter around, but that ultimately reverted to blurring both clips again and seemed like a quirk that I can't recreate.

 

[Scott Bates]

You have to blur the key clip by itself, render it to a new .rtv clip with Alpha (make sure you select the Video and Alpha buttons in the render requester, no Audio). Put the new blurred key clip on the track below your background clip and turn on overlay for the key clip.

 

[JReble]

Hmmm....that's what I figured I had to do. I just wasn't sure the blurred key video would render into a new clip that would key well. I'll try it.

Still, TED should have an option for which clip to apply the blur to. Maybe it should let you actually lay the blur filter on the clip you want blurred leaving the rest alone. It does let you lay the blur filter right over a clip. it just doesn't apply it that way. What's strange is it can limit the blur to a single clip without blurring others underneath. I'm not imagining things when I say it did it on at least two occassions after I moved the blur filter and base clip around. It worked fine but when the timeline had a chance to refresh, it went back to affecting both clips again. Weird.

 

[Scott Bates]

I tested blurring and rendering a key clip and then using it over a background before I posted and it worked here.

I guess only Andrew or one of the other wizards at NewTek can say if it's possible for the blur filter (or the others that work the same way) to affect only the layer immediately above it, but that's the way the TEd works at the moment. And, because of the way TEd is programmed, such effects or anything else will only work on the tracks above the effect because anything on tracks below the effect track are "on top" of the effect (hmmm, up is down except when down is up, however, in the case where........).

Bottom line is TEd works the way it does because that's the way it's programmed and until they reprogram it, it won't change; not saying it's good or bad, just the way it is. That's why they give us the Feature Requests discussion topic, so we can tell them what we'd like to see.