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Graphic Overlay Video Transition |
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Written by Ken Lowther
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Saturday, 11 March 2006 |
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Page 6 of 7
The Video Matte
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We are going to create the video matte using a modified version of our original animation. This clip will be used to mask or key out the portions of the clip in the Video2 track that we don't want shown according to the colors in the video matte itself. In our case, the color black will be used. Any part of the video matte that contains the color black will cause the corresponding portion of the clip in Video2 to not be shown.
Our copy of the original animation already has the center portion of the disc defined and it is animated in exactly the manner that we need to produce the video matte. We just need to get rid of the text and outer portion of the disc to get the effect that we are after.
In Cool3D Production Studio, go to the Object Manager and click on "+" icon next to the SubGroup0 to reveal the objects subordinate to it. This should be the disc and the text objects that we created earlier. Select the text object "THS" and click on the delete object icon (Figure 65). Now select the "Disc" object and click on the Edit Object icon in the Object toolbar (Figure 66).
This brings up the path editor window showing the circles that we created earlier. Follow the steps in Figure 67 to remove the outer portion of the disc from our object and click OK.
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 Figure 65
 Figure 66
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 Figure 67
Now we have just the center portion of the disc as our graphic. It should appear in the project window as shown in Figure 68. We are almost done. Remembering the original animation, at the end the graphic goes completely off-screen. That won't do for the video matte because if the matte goes completely black at the end, we will be masking out the entire video clip in the Video2 track. We need to shorten the video matte to the point where the graphic fills the entire screen.
 Figure 68
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In Cool3D's timeline, move to frame 86 (Figure 69). This is the first frame where the graphic fills the entire screen (Figure 70). We are going to remove the last 4 frames of our project, but if we just delete them, Cool3D will adjust all of the key frames in the animation accordingly since we don't have keyframes set at frame 86. So we must first add keyframes for orientation and position in frame 86 to hold everything in place as it currently is.
To do this, make sure you have the SubGroup0 object selected in the Object Manager (Figure 71). Select the Orientation attribute in the timeline and click on the Add keyframe icon at the bottom of the timeline (Figure 72). Now select the Position attribute and add another keyframe.
Finally, click on the checkmark icon in the timeline (Figure 73) and select Remove Frames. In the Remove Frames dialog, enter the number of frames that we want to delete, 4, and select From current frame and click OK (Figure 74).
We now have a Cool3D project that we can use to produce our video matte.
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 Figure 69 |
 Figure 70 |
 Figure 71 |
 Figure 72 |
 Figure 73 |
 Figure 74
Unfortunately, this means another lengthy render of our animation. From the File menu, select Create Video File (Figure 75). This will bring up the Save as Video File dialog. Enter a new filename for our new video matte (Figure 76), but before clicking on OK, select the Options button.
 Figure 75 |
 Figure 76 |
In the Video Save Options dialog, click on the General tab and review your settings to match those in Figure 77. Now click on the AVI tab. Since we are creating a video matte rather than an overlay, we want the background to be visible, i.e. not transparent. To do this, make sure that the data type option is set to 24-Bit RGB (Figure 78). Click OK in the Video Options dialog and then click Save. Cool3D will begin rendering our new file. Again, this will take a while.
 Figure 77 |
 Figure 78 |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 12 November 2006 )
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