Feathering a cropped clip

[Jayell]

Is there a way to feather CROPPED video? The 'edge feathering' seems to respond to the original dimensions .. not the cropped dimensions. I've got 6 or 7 videos that will be rotating onto the screen .. each of which are various sizes and all have different cropping dimensions applied. I've fiddled with a gaussian blur & drop shadow that sort of gets me close (sample shown below), but wondering if there's a better way to soften the edges.
I've also tried the 'trick 31' from your book, Steve, using the Dream Sequence.jpg .. but again, using it on cropped clips seems to make everything go funky (meaning I lose control of where the matte edges are). Any ideas?

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Jayell,
You can crop the clips and then export them to a new file.
Then import that clip and replace the original with the new cropped clip.
Then applying the edge feather or any other effect will be a breeze

[Jayell]

Ah .. hadn't thought of that (obviously ). Thanks, Chuck.

[Chuck Engels]

Let me know how it turns out. If these are HV40 clips you should be able to export as HD MPEG2 1080i 30 and get the same m2t files. If downconverted to standard definition then a simple AVI export will be all you need. You should not lose any noticeable quality with one export either way.

[Jayell]

Will play tomorrow with the saving out and reimporting. The clips I'm playing with for this intro are older avi's. I'm really going to have to learn more about downconverting, as I am almost constantly mixing SD and HD clips .. generally into SD projects.

I'm also hoping I can remember until next July that there is a 'fireworks' setting on my HV40 .. which I forgot about this year until I was standing out in the dark in the middle of recording 4th of July

[Jayell]

Chuck, unless I've misunderstood something here ..
when I saved out a cropped avi clip .. it still imports as a full size/screen clip. The feathering works from the outside of that full screen .. not from the edges of the cropped portion.

Fireworks.jpg

[Paul LS]

Not at my editing computer so not sure of the order they should be in. But did you change the order of the effects in the properties window, you can click on the feathering effect and drag it so it is before (or after) the crop effect.

[Dave McElderry]

Jayell and all, I thought this was interesting and decided to play around with it. Chuck's suggestion seemed to be the logical one, but when I tried to apply it I also couldn't make it work. I've tried crop (and even clip) and feather in different combinations of export and ordering in the Properties list. No matter what I do I end up with the same results as Jayell. The problem indeed seems to be that the feathering effect gets applied to the outside edge of the entire video dimensions, not the outside of the cropped area. Exporting the cropped clip and then applying feathering to it after import still results in the outside edge of the full frame being feathered.

[Paul LS]

If you import your clip (with Scale to frame on as default), apply feathering and then under Motion use scale and position it works. However this is not ideal.

[Chuck Engels]

Does it matter if Scale to Framesize is on or off?

[Dave McElderry]

Tried it with Scale to Framesize both on and off. No affect. The problem, as I see it and as I believe Jayell is saying, is that cropping changes the amount of the visible video, but the frame itself is still the original dimensions (albeit black). So applying the feathering just feathers the outer edges of the original frame (not the cropped, visible video). Exporting the cropped video doesn't just export the cropped area - it exports the entire frame, including the black area. That results in the exact same problem when you import the clip.

Paul, if I don't crop, and just use the original frame, the feathering will work fine. I can then adjust the scale to create a PIP, but this still doesn't allow cropping with feathering.

[Jayell]

Thanks Dave and Paul for helping experiment with this. I'm also trying to work with a feathered track matte, but the results were similar. I'm going to keep playing. There's got to be a way
I also thought, Paul, that changing the order of the effects would make a difference, but it doesn't seem to.

[Chuck Engels]

I've also tried playing with a 4 point matte, that doesn't work either.
I'm thinking that you will need to create a mask and then use the effect on the mask over the clip.
You can control the opacity along with the feather on the mask to get the effect I think you are looking for.

[Dave McElderry]

It does seem like it would be a fairly straightforward thing to do. It would be easy to add feathering to a still in PE, and then insert it in PrEl, but doing it to video strictly out of PrEl is a different kind of puzzle. And of course maybe we're just not understanding Chuck's instructions. I'm working out of my home office, multitasking between this and "real" work, so I don't have the time to devote that I would like. I hate that.

[Paul LS]

When I said import with Scale to Frame "on" I meant when importing your cropped clip (which had previously been exported). This then works as I mentioned.

Otherwise, if you want to do it without exporting... do your crop. Then check the "Zoom" box at the bottom of the Crop window. Then use Scale to scale the clip back down to the size you want. It works but again not ideal.