Clip in a thought bubble in PE8?

[wyzboing]

Hi
Is it possible to make a thought bubble shaped HOLE in a video clip, then lay it in a track above another clip to make it look as though the lower clip is playing inside the thought bubble? I have been trying to think through how I might do this with pips over the top instead, which would be easiest, but how would I make the pip thought-bubble-shaped. A shape matte wouldn't work because it is still essentially rectangular.

I already have two main layers in my vid: A background layer on track 1 which consists of still images with filters and layers applied in photoshop and an earthquake effect applied, and then action clips on track 2 which have been shot against a green screen, videomerged, posterised and airbrushed. I now wish to add my thought bubble which will be an avi made in a separate project.

PS the green green screen/video merge has not been wholly successful and in places looks like a wrinkly grey veil over my background stills. Despite various tweaks to the videomerge settings I cannot get rid of the wrinkly veil. We shot this in a hurry and the screen was not evenly lit and was (before extensive ironing), fairly wrinkly, so we knew it would be problematic but if anyone has any hints on how to make it more translucent please let me know.

Thanks

[Steve Grisetti]

You can probably do that using a Track Matte and then sizing and positioning the "thought" clip. It's a bit tough to explain on the forum though -- particularly if you're not familiar with the Track Matte.

I'll play with and see if I can find a way to do it as simply as possible. Meantime, maybe someone else knows how to simplify the explanation.

[Steve Grisetti]

Okay, here's the basics. Hopefully once you see what's going on, you'll be able to tweak it as needed.

1) Put your main video on Video 1.
2) Put the video you want to appear in your thought bubble on Video 2, directly above it.
3) Add a Thought Bubble graphic to Video 3, directly above the other clips. (There's a thought bubble in the Clip Art. Otherwise, it must be white inside.) Click on the graphic on your Monitor and drag the corner handles to size and position it where you want it in your video frame.
4) Apply the Track Matte effect to the video on Video 2.
5) Right-click on the video on Video 2 and select Show Properties to open the Properties panel.
6) Locate the Track Matte listing on the Properties panel. Ensure Composite is set to Matte Alpha and set the Matte to Video 3. Your Video 2 clip should appear inside the Though Bubble graphic, though it will be much larger.
7) Right-click on the clip on Video 2 and select Show Properties to open its Properties panel.
8) Open the Motion properties on this panel and set the Scale and Position so that the clip fits where you'd like it inside the Thought Bubble.

This may sound confusing, but the Track Matte is an effect you have to actually get in there and use in order to understand. I spend a whole chapter on it in my book "Cool Tricks & Hot Tips for Adobe Premiere Elements."
http://Muvipix.com/CoolTricks

[Paul LS]

You could possibly use the 16 point garbage matte... forming it into a thought bubble shape.

[wyzboing]

Thanks Steve. So that's what the Track Matte does! It sounds fairly straight forward. I'll look at the book.

Thanks

[wyzboing]

Hi

I just wanted to say thanks Steve for the info on creating a clip in a thought bubble. I followed your instructions but they didn't work quite as you said so this is what I did:

1) Put main video on V1
2) Put the second video on V2
3) Add thought bubble from clip art to V3
This is where it differs
4) Move and resize the thought bubble over V2 (as the thought bubble is opaque white this is bit of trial and error to get it where you want it)
5) Apply track matte and adjust settings
6) Move and resize the thought bubble (which is now transparent with the second video inside it) to where ever it needs to go and keyframe it

Though I followed your instructons exactly I was unable to move video 2 around inside the thought bubble - once the track matte had been applied the bubble and the video were well and truly stuck together.

I used only the main bubble (not the little leading up bubbles which I left empty).
Also I opened the bubble in photoshop and by adding a layer and drawing around the bubble shape with the pen tool set to a thickish red line I created a hand drawn effect border which I saved with only the layer visible, then opened in PE as a psd and put on the track above the bubble. As the proportions are the same as the original bubble I was able to resize and keyframe the border to follow the motion of the bubble so the bubble looks as though it is hand drawn. This is a nice effect as the background to my video is a series of photos with the find edges filter applied to make them look like drawings and the action in both video 1, the video in the bubble and the videos on various other tracks (I have about 9 tracks in total) are shot against a green screen and videomerged so you can see through all the layers to the background. I am quite chuffed with the result.

Is there a way of locking the border to the bubble so that I needn't have keyframed them separately? Would track matte work with this too? I did refer to the book but found the instructions in this thread the most straight forward, and as you said you need to do it to get to grips with it.

Regards

[Bob]

Is there a way of locking the border to the bubble so that I needn't have keyframed them separately?

What you would do is keyframe the bubble. Then, with the bubble clip selected on the timeline, do a copy operation (ctrl+c). Select the border clip on the timeline and do a paste attributes operation (ctrl+alt+v). This will paste the keyframes you copied from the bubble clip into the border clip.

[Chuck Engels]

When did the motion tracking feature get implemented, was that version 9?
That would save you some time as you can have one object track another.

[Bob]

The motion tracking feature would only link position, not scaling.

[Chuck Engels]

Ahhh, thanks Bob

[wyzboing]

I had wondered about pasting attributes but I have never had much luck with this function in the past. I may try it again as I am sure it is a very useful trick for repeating the same operation many times. Copying the keyframes wasn't too much of a problem as it was more or less scale up from a corner to the centre and then scale back down to the same corner. As the clips are one above the other it was easy just to switch between the clips in the edit effects panel and use the value sliders to adjust the position and scaling values at the same positions as marked by the scrubber.

Thanks for all the help!

Regards