Hi John,

The only other possibility I can think of other than John's suggestion would be if the foreground was a still image for the required time. Such as a snapshot taken of your foreground video. You could then make the target area of that image transparent in your image editor, save it as a PNG, and insert it for the required duration so that the background video appears behind.

Hi

Just to add a possible third method if the cut out needs to move .

Depending on the contrast/brightness of the part you want to make transparent it may be possible to create a moving mask.

Can you post an image what the object and background is.

John EB

Thanks guys, some interesting 'solutions' here of which I shall give a try.

I thought a mask would be the way to go but didn't realise you could animate it though. I don't have an actual project on the go at the moment that needs it but was thinking for a possible future video.

John EB could you expand on your suggestion without a project to work on?

Thnaks again.

John

Hi John,

MEP can use Magix Xara graphics program to create an animated mask, but you have to have Xara Photo & Graphics Designer or Xara Designer Pro X. I have X9 which works and X10 which doesn't work anymore after I reinstalled the OS on a new disk drive.

Under Effects, select one, like sharpness, go to the dropdown menu at the upper right of the dialogue box and select Create effect mask. This loads the video clip into Xara and you then create a mask following the instructions and move and reshape it as necessary. Everytime you advance, the video clip also advances in the program so that you can adjust the mask appropriately. The animation that is returned to MEP is usable only with the clip that it was sent with. Thus you apply an effect to the video clip and then indicate the link in the keyframe area.

This is not flexible, so the workaround is to simply do everything needed in Xara and then export to a transparent animation avi file before returning to MEP. Then abandon what MEP returned and import the avi file to the timeline, make it chromakey alpha, and adjust the arrow accordingly. Place the mask on a track between the 2 objects that you want.

I can post a short video if you want to see how it works.

Here are some screen shots:

Below - Xara on frame 5

Below - Xara on frame 7 and mask size and shape changes. The program tweens between frames.

I have start a short video on this in V¨PX7 if anyone wants to see how it works with Xara. It works the same in MEP2015 Plus/Premium. Let me know.

Excellent Instructions John C.B.

Yes I would love to see a video demo please.

In the eantime I will check out whether to get Xara Photo & Graphics Designer or Xara Designer Pro X.

Thanks again

Regards

John

Xara is expensive. Watch for deals.

If you do any web static design, then the Designer pro is the one to get. No programming; it's WYSIWYG. Love it.

Here is the Xara community site. They have a lot of excellent information, tutorials and help.

Hi

Have a look at this tutorial - the principles are the same for what you are trying to do with no expense

HTH

John EB

Hi,

I should have mentioned John EB's great tutorial on those masks which is definitely an inexpensive solution. It resolves one of the great mysteries of getting multiple masks.

Note that you can make the shape of the mask anything that you need, so a cutout shaped to size could be your mask. Then you can resize and move the mask around by key framing it.

As I said, Xara is an expensive solution and I wouldn't buy it unless I was planning to do much more with it.

If you need a mask that changes shape over time, then the static mask method becomes rather difficult. You could make multiple masks and change the shape, but this is easily done in Xara (but can be painstaking for anything complicated).

Below is a quick and dirty video showing a movable mask made in Xara that hides the text where the dog's head passes in front of it. Not really a great example, but I had to modify the shape and location of the mask while the dog moved. The mask goes off of the dog's head and I could go back into Xara and fix it or make some adjustments to the exported mask by splitting it and doing some re-positioning.

And after a slight adjustment, here is the result with the dogs head passing in front of the text. Not perfect, but not too bad. This could probably have been done by using 1 static mask and moving it, but the idea was to show how a shape mask is done using Xara.

Hi

Here is a quick way of creating a moving mask where the video has a high degree of contrast difference between the required part and the remainder of the background.

Start a new project - with a suitable video clip, place it on the timeline and then use the Brightness, Contrast, Gamma and Saturation adjustments to get the video to a pure black and white image as shown below

Export the result as a MXV file.

Use the exported mask clip as shown below and play with the Chromakey settings Alpha, Threshold1 and 2 and Video level sliders

The result of the above is

In this example I could have applied Chromakey direct to the video - however gives a sparkling effect around the thin tree branches.

Using this method above there is no or very little sparkling.

@ John CB - the video of you walikng through the snow and woods should be an ideal candidate for having some fun with using this method.

HTH

John EB

@John EB,

Wow! There's a whote other world out there.

Thanks for the info and time put into these guys. I appreciate it.

You've given me a lot to think about and as you said if there was a lot of moving in the clip then this would be a long process.

I'll have a play over the weekend and see what I can do and how it takes to do maybe a 30 second moving clip. I know it depends on the amount of moving and the amount of keyframes so it will be interesting. 

If I get something done I'll post it.

Thanks again.