Cutting shapes on video

[ridon127]

I have searched but haven't come up with a solution. I want to cut out an oval section of some video footage and put it on a motion bkgrd. Is this possible? I don't if you can do things like that to video.. but thought i would ask the experts.

[Chuck Engels]

You can use the Titler to create a oval shape, then use the track matte key to show video through that.
You can also create a transparent oval in Photoshop Elements to use, what is your goal Donna?

There are two tutorials on using the track matte coming up later this month

[ridon127]

Chuck,
I have some video i took at our preschool graduation. I have 2 kids walking out that i want to do an oval shape on, then i wanted to put it on the fog bkgrd to use to close the video. does that help or make sense?

[Steve Grisetti]

Chuck's method should work, Donna.

Put the video of the kids on Video 2 and the fog on Video 1. Add the white over to Video 3, then apply the Track Matte effect to the Video 2 clip and set it to use the dot on Video 3 as the track for the matte.

[Bill Hunt]

Here is a tutorial that Curt Wrigley did for PrPro. It works exactly (or as well as I can recall) the same way in PrE.
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/tutdes_ppro2_smoothface.htm

Now, in his tutorial, he's using the Track Matte Keying Effect to limit areas of a face, that are softened. In your imagination, just replace those Track Mattes with your Oval shape. Instead of a dupe of the face, with Blur added, think of the kids.

Hope that this helps,

Hunt