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What you’ll learn in this lesson:
- Applying video effects to clips on the Timeline
- Creating Masks on video footage
- Applying Track Mattes to video clips to create custom transitions
- Applying a color key to remove a green screen background
You can apply effects to video clips on your Timeline, enhancing or correcting the video as necessary.
Starting up
In this lesson, you will work with the project files from the pr06lessons folder. Make sure that you have loaded the prlessons folder onto your hard drive from www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/premierecs6. The Starting up section at the beginning of this book provides detailed information about loading lesson files, resetting your workspace, locating missing media, and opening the files in CS6. If you have not already done so, please review these instructions before starting this lesson.
When opening the Premiere Pro project files used in this lesson you may experience a missing media message. You must locate any missing media before trying to proceed through the lessons. Please refer to “Locating missing media” in the Starting up section of this book.
What are video effects?
Video effects are processes you can apply to video clips on the Timeline. In Premiere Pro, effects are grouped into categories based on their use. There are two types of effects in Premiere Pro: fixed and standard.
Fixed effects are the pre-built effects automatically added to every clip on the Timeline. The fixed effects include: Motion, Opacity, Time Remapping, and Volume.
Standard effects add special qualities to your video, such as adjusted colors, blurriness, and noise. Premiere Pro includes several standard effects, but there are several third-party effects you can purchase from vendors such as Boris FX (www.borisfx.com), Digieffects (www.digieffects.com), and Synthetic Apperture (www.synthetic-ap.com).
Applying video effects
Effects are applied to clips on the Timeline instead of in between them, as is the case with transitions. All the video effects you can access in Premiere Pro are stored in the Effects panel, which is the library that contains all effects and transitions in the application. Effects are easy to apply: you locate the effect you want in the Effects panel using the search field or nested folder display and drag it to the clip you want in the Timeline. Once applied, you can edit effect properties in the Effect Controls panel when you select the clip in the Timeline.
Creating a Black & White effect
The Black & White effect de-saturates a color video clip and makes it appear as though it were shot on black-and-white film. Since modern camcorders only record in color, this effect is useful when you want to simulate an old-fashioned look on modern footage, or just create an artistic or dramatic effect.
In this part of the lesson, you will work with a pre-built Premiere Pro project and add the Black & White effect to a clip on the Timeline. The media for this section of the lesson can be found at Media Library > Travelogue-New York > video.
1 From the Premiere Pro Welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, chose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr06lessons folder you copied to your hard drive and locate the pr0601.prproj file. Double-click the file to open it.
This project contains a sequence called Lake Scene. In this sequence, the video from the Central Park-NYC-Lake Scene.AVI has been placed on the Timeline and divided into two parts. You will apply the Black & White effect to the first clip on the Timeline.
The Central Park-NYC-Lake Scene.AVI clip on the Timeline was divided into two pieces using the Razor tool. After dividing the clip, the first part was dragged to the Video 2 track, and the Out Point of this clip was extended using the Selection tool to overlap the beginning of the second clip by 30 seconds.
2 If you are still in the default editing workspace, you will find the Effects panel to the left of the Timeline. Click the Effects panel’s tab to make the panel active and visible.
The Effects panel is the library for all the effects and transitions available in Premiere Pro.
3 Type the word black in the search field at the top of the panel. This limits the content of the panel so only folder names, effects, and transitions that have the letters black in their names appear.
The search field is helpful when finding specific effects or transitions.
4 Click on the Black & White effect in the Effects panel, drag it to the Timeline panel and drop it onto the video clip on the Video 2 track. The clip in your Program monitor is now black-and-white.
You can apply effects and transitions by dragging them from the Effects panel and dropping them onto clips in the Timeline.
5 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering.
When the rendering is done, Premiere Pro previews the Timeline automatically.
Notice that the black-and-white effect cuts out sharply when the clip ends; you will adjust this in the next part of the lesson by creating a transition from one clip to another.
6 Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the pr06lessons folder, rename your file to pr0601-working.prproj, and click the Save button. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Animating the opacity of clips
To create a natural, more aesthetically pleasing transition between the black-and-white clip and the color clip, you can have the black-and-white clip fade out to reveal the color clip on the video track below it. Opacity is one of the fixed effects available for all video clips that you can use to accomplish this.
In this section of the lesson, you will animate the Opacity effect of the clip that you added the Black & White effect to earlier in this lesson.
1 With the pr0601-working.prproj project still open, double-click the video clip on the Video 2 track to select it and open it in the Source monitor.
2 Click the Effect Controls panel tab next to the Source Monitor to make it active. The panel shows you all the Fixed and Standard effects currently applied to the selected clip. Notice that the panel is divided into two different areas. On the left you can see the effects and on the right you see a mini-Timeline view. This mini-Timeline view is used to animate effects.
The Effect controls panel shows the effects of any clip selected in the Timeline panel.
Remember you can adjust the width of the two columns in the Effects Controls panel by clicking and dragging on the dividing line between the two columns.
3 Click the reveal triangle to the left of the Opacity effect to reveal the Opacity effect’s numerical value. This is where you will animate the clip’s opacity.
The mini-Timeline display of the Effect Controls panel lets you animate effects.
4 In the Timeline panel, move the playhead to the 1-second (00;00;01;00) mark. Notice that the playhead in the mini-Timeline display of the Effects Controls panel also moves: both playheads are synchronized.
The clip on the Video 1 track begins at exactly the 1-second (00;00;01;00) mark on the Timeline. You can drag the playhead while holding the Shift key on your keyboard to force the playhead to snap to the beginning or end of the clips on your Timeline.
5 In the Effect Controls panel, notice that the Toggle Animation stopwatch to the left of the Opacity effect is already enabled. You can use this stopwatch to enable or disable animation.
Click the Add/Remove Keyframe button to the right of the Opacity effect to create a keyframe for the clip’s Opacity at the current position of the playhead.
This provides a beginning point for the animation you will create. The beginning point stores the clip’s Opacity at 100% (fully opaque).
You set a clip’s opacity to any value between 100% (fully opaque) and 0% (fully transparent).
Keyframes are the basis for most computer-generated animation, and they store the property values of each effect. When you have two keyframes with different values, Premiere Pro automatically animates the change in value.
6 Hold the Shift key on your keyboard, and in the Timeline, drag the playhead to the end of the clip on Track 2. Holding down the Shift key forces the playhead to snap to the beginning and end of clips, as well as markers on the Timeline.
Notice that when you move the playhead in the Timeline, it also moves in the mini-Timeline display in the Effects Controls panel.
7 In the Effects Controls panel, change the value of the clip’s Opacity to 0 (zero). This adds a keyframe at the end of the clip where Opacity is 0. You now have a starting and ending value for the property that Premiere Pro can animate.
Since the mini-Timeline view only shows the duration of the active clip, keyframes at the very beginning and end of clips can be hard to see
8 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering.
When the rendering is done, Premiere Pro previews the Timeline automatically. Notice that the Black & White clips fades out to reveal the full color one.
The contrast in the Black & White clip is weak; you will adjust this in the next part of the lesson.
9 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes. Do not close the file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Adjusting the tonality of clips
Sometimes you want to use the effects available to you in Premiere Pro for artistic purposes, while at other times you can use them to correct or adjust footage that isn’t perfect. You can use the Levels effect to enhance the tonality of your image, which is useful when correcting footage that has a lighting aberration or low contrast, or to create a dramatic or artistic effect. For this exercise, notice that after applying the Black & White effect to the first park video clip, it now appears washed out and dull. The problem occurred because the video has a very limited tonal range, so the darkest areas are not very dark and the lightest areas are not very bright. The variation between the lightest and darkest areas of an image is called the contrast, and you can adjust it using video effects.
In this section of the lesson, you will add an effect to the black-and-white clip to adjust its tonal variation and create a greater amount of contrast.
1 With the pr0601-working.prproj project still open, type the word levels in the search field of the Effects panel to reveal two video effects: Auto Levels and Levels. You can use these effects to adjust the tonal variation of a video clip. The Levels effect lets you control the amount of tonal adjustment; the Auto Levels effect adjusts the video clip to meet a set base standard.
The Effect panel’s search results become more refined when you add more letters to the search term.
2 Drag the Levels effect from the Effects panel and drop it on the clip on the Video 2 track. The red bar that indicates the video clip should be rendered appears.
When you apply an effect to a clip, it automatically becomes active so you can edit its properties in the Effect Control panel.
Every time you add an effect to a clip or change the properties of an existing effect, you need to rerender the clips to see the results of your effect at full quality.
3 Move the playhead to the 15-frame (00;00;00;15) mark on the Timeline panel so you can see the black-and-white clip in the Program monitor. Note that just applying the Levels effect produces no noticeable results. The default settings are quite neutral. In the next step, you will adjust the property values to enhance the video image.
4 In the Effect Controls panel, you may need to click the reveal triangle to the left of the Levels effect to see all the properties of the effect that you can edit and animate. Depending on your monitor resolution, you might not be able to read the property names because of a lack of space caused by the mini-Timeline displayed on the right of the panel.
Some effects, such as Black & White, don’t have any properties to edit, but most offer a wide range of editable attributes.
5 Click the Show/Hide Timeline View to collapse the Timeline display and expand the property display to the full size of the Effect Controls panel. Now the full property names are visible.
You can collapse the Timeline view to provide a larger area to edit effect properties.
6 Change the value for the (RGB) Black Input Level to 20, and then change the value of the (RGB) White Input Level to 240. Adjusting the Input Levels of Black & White changes the minimum value for which pixels are considered black and white respectively, in the video clip. These new values will effectively increase the range of pixels that are assigned to Black and White in this clip. With a wider range of pixel value assigned to black-and-white, the contrast, which is the variation between the dark and light areas of the image are enhanced.
Click the fx button to the left of the Level effect to disable the effect and then view the video clip’s appearance in the Program monitor with and without the effect. Do this a few times so you can compare the change effects on the clip’s Levels. This is helpful to give you an idea of just how much of a change adding a simple effect can have.
Make sure you turn the effect back on before you advance to the next step in this lesson.
You can toggle effects on and off to easily compare and contrast the effects of your enhancements.
7 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering.
When the rendering is done, the application previews the Timeline automatically. Notice that the contrast of the black-and-white clip is much stronger now.
8 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project.
You can now close this project; you have completed this section of the lesson.
Working with Track Mattes
Track Mattes, or Traveling mattes, is a technique used to hide or reveal specific areas of a video clip. This effect is achieved by using another video clip as the source of the track matte. You can use the source clip’s alpha or luminance to identify the parts of the target clip that are visible. Alpha is the technical name for transparency; luminance is a measure of brightness of a video image.
A video clip or still image of text, or text created using the Titler, is a common source for track mattes. This technique, called clipping masks in programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator, allows the video or still image text clip to mask the layer below it so you can see an image or video inside the text shape. You can animate track matte sources by adding keyframes for any of the layer’s fixed Motion effects.
Preparing the clip for a Track Matte
In this part of the lesson, you will use a 3-second (00;00;03;00) animation of the screen image transitioning from solid white to solid black. You will use this video clip to create a custom transition at the end of the clip on the Video 2 track using the Track Matte Key effect. Since the clip you will use as the source for the effect is only three seconds long, you can’t use it on a clip longer than the target video. To fix this problem, you will split the Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI so the final three seconds, the section that overlaps the Central Park-NYC-Lake Scene. AVI, form a separate clip. You will then apply the effect to this new split clip. You must prepare the clip this way so the rest of the clip does not become transparent.
The media used in this portion of the lesson can all be found in the Media Library folder. The video (Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI & Central Park-NYC-Lake Scene.AVI) used is located in the video sub-folder of the Travelogue-New York media folder. The QuickTime file (Animated Track Matte.mov) used as the track matte here is located in the Graphics folder.
Windows users must have the free QuickTime player installed to import some video types.
1 From the Premiere Pro Welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, chose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr06lessons folder that you copied to your hard drive and locate the pr0602.prproj file. Double-click the file to open it.
This file contains a single sequence called Applying a Track Matte.
2 In the Timeline panel, ensure the Video 1 and Video 2 tracks are active (highlighted light gray) and if necessary, move the playhead to the beginning of the Central Park-NYC-Lake Scene.AVI clip. This is located at the 15-second and 22-frames (00;00;15;22) mark on the Timeline.
You can click a track to toggle it to active or inactive; active tracks appear with a light gray highlight on the track header.
You can move the playhead to the beginning of the clip in several ways:- • Type the destination time code in the Current Time text field in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel.
- • By dragging the playhead toward the clip while holding the Shift key on your keyboard so it snaps to the beginning and end of each clip.
By pressing the Page Down key on your extended keyboard, you limit the playhead from one edit line to the next. The edit lines are the points where one clip ends and the next begins. The playhead must be on a track that’s currently active so it can stop at a clip’s edit line. Active tracks appear highlighted light gray; clicking a track toggles it from active to inactive.
3 Click the Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI on the Video 2 track to make it active and choose Sequence > Add Edit to cut the clip at the current position of the playhead.
The keyboard shortcut to split a clip is Ctrl+K (Windows) or Command+K (Mac OS).
You can use the Razor Tool ( 
) to cut the clip instead of the Add Edit command.
4 Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the pr06lesson folder, rename your file to pr0602-working.prproj, and click the Save button. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Now that you have separated the clip into two individual clips, the second clip is ready to receive the Track Matte Key effect, which you will add in the next part of this lesson.
Applying and editing the Track Matte Key effect
The Track Matte effect is added to the clip on your Timeline that you want as the target. You must place the source clip in a video track above it, and it should contain an alpha channel or be a high contrast image if you want to use its luminance value for the effect. In this portion of the lesson, you will work with a video file that is a high contrast black-and-white animation created in Photoshop and exported as a video file.
1 With the pr0602-working.prproj project still open, double-click the Animated Track Matte.mov in the Video bin of the Project panel to open it in the Source Monitor.
Preview the video by clicking the Play/Stop Toggle button in the Transport controls. Notice that this animation transitions from fully white to black when a series of black squares appear on screen in sequence over a 3-second (00;00;03;00) period. This will be the basis for the custom transition you will create using the Track Matte Key effect.
2 Click the Animated Track Matte.mov in the Project panel and drag it to the Video 3 track. Place it above the second clip on the Video 2 track. It will snap to the beginning of the playhead when you drag it into position.
The Program Monitor turns white when the animation is placed on top of the video clip.
3 Click on the Effects panel tab, located in the same group as the Project panel, to make it active. Then in the Effects panel, type the word track in the search field. The Track Matte Key effect appears with its container folder, Keying, visible.
Drag the effect to the second Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI clip on the Video 2 track.
If you don’t use the search field, you can find the Track Matte Key by going to Video Effects > Keying > Track Matte Key in the Effects panel.
4 Click the Effect Controls panel tab to make it active and visible. Since the second Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI is currently active this clip’s effects are listed in the panel.
Click the Show/Hide Timeline view button to hide the mini-Timeline, and if necessary, then click the reveal triangle to the left of the Track Matte Key effect to see its properties.
You have to double-click a clip to open it in the Source Monitor, but you only need to single-click on a clip to view its effects in the Effect Controls panel.
5 Change the Matte property to Video 3; this is where the animation you want to use as the source of the effect is located.
Change the Composite Using property to Matte Luma. Since this video file does not contain any transparent areas, the default Matte Alpha setting for this property would not produce a result.
6 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering.
When the rendering is done, the application previews the Timeline automatically.
The block animation has now become the transition between the two video clips.
7 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project.
Close this file by choosing File > Close Project; you have completed this section of the lesson.
Using the Ultra Keyer
Chroma keying lets you composite two images together by removing a specific color from one of the images. You can use chroma keying when you shoot video of your subject in front of a blue or green screen and then replace the screen color with a different background. Some examples of using this technique, also called color keying, blue screening, or green screening, is weather reporting on television and films that use virtual backgrounds and set extensions.
Adobe Premiere Pro includes several standard effects used for keying video footage; you used one of these when you created a track matte. The Ultra Key effect combines several different keying effects into one and provides a single point of control for many keying tasks.
The Ultra Key Effect properties
Creating a garbage matte
The first step in the chroma keying process is to create a garbage matte to isolate the subject and the area immediately around it. A garbage matte is created quickly and doesn’t need to be precise. It is usually just a rough shape that removes any extraneous areas of the video frame. When using a green screen, the important area is the one around your subject, especially if they are moving. You will often see parts of the set, such as a light stand, or the frame holding the screen at the edges of the video image; use the garbage matte to remove these areas.
There are three types of garbage mattes you can create in Premiere Pro, which are differentiated by the number of anchor points each has. Use the 4, 8, and 16 point Garbage Mattes to quickly mask the unimportant areas of a video image.
The media used in this portion of the lesson can be found in the Media Library folder. All the footage can be found in the Jeff Jacobs Music Video folder.
1 From the Premiere Pro Welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, chose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr06lessons folder you copied to your hard drive and locate the pr0603.prproj file. Double-click the file to open it.
This file contains a single sequence called Using the Ultra Keyer. There are two movie clips within this sequence: Central Park-Laura Walking.mpeg on the Video 1 track, and Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg is above it on the Video 2 track.
2 Click on Effects panel’s tab to make this panel active and then in the search field type the word matte to reveal the Four-Point Garbage Matte effect.
Drag the effect to the Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg clip on the Video 2 track.
3 Click the Effect Controls panel to reveal it and make it active. The properties of the effect applied to the Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg clip are visible in the panel.
Click the Show/Hide Timeline view button to hide the mini-Timeline.
Adding an effect to a clip automatically selects that clip so its properties are immediately accessible in the Effect Controls panel.
4 In the Effect Controls panel, click the effect called Four-Point Garbage Matte to reveal the matte’s control points in the Program Monitor.
If necessary, click on the reveal triangle to the left of the Four-Point Garbage Matte effect to view its properties. The matte has a property to set each of the individual corner’s control points. Each property has two values: the X (Horizontal) position and the Y (Vertical) position. In the Effect Controls panel display, the first value for each control points property is its X position while the second value is the point’s Y position. The idea behind using a garbage matte is to limit the area that the keyer will have to calculate without accidentally removing any part of your subject. A garbage matte is also used to remove any background content that may exist outside of the area you want to key out.
By default, the Four-Point Garbage Matte’s control points are positioned at the corners of your clip. Make the following changes to the Properties:
Top-Left: Change the value of the X position (the first value) to 655 and leave the second value as is.
Top-Right: Leave this property as is.
Bottom-Right: Leave this property as is.
Bottom-Left: Change the value of the X position (the first value) to 105 and leave the second value as is.
A small portion of the background clip is now visible because you moved the garbage matte’s corner points. Since the subject (the guy singing, Jeff Jacobs) is moving constantly; we have to be very loose with the matte.
Scrub (drag backward and forward on the timeline) the playhead to make sure the matte is not too close to him and avoid removing a part of his body.
The garbage matte need not be perfect since its purpose is to remove extraneous areas.
5 Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the Lesson 6 folder, rename your file to pr0603-working.prproj, and click the Save button. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Now that the garbage matte is in place, you can apply the Ultra Key effect to the clip.
Applying the Ultra Key
The Ultra Key effect contains a series of effects to generate color keys quickly and efficiently. All the tools that you need to generate the alpha (transparency) matte by removing the background green color, adjust the edges of the matte to eliminate color spill from the background and even color correct the foreground footage itself are all located in a single location.
1 With the pr0603-working.prproj project still open, type the word ultra in the search field at the top of the Effects panel to reveal the Ultra Key.
You do not need to capitalize words when using the panel search field.
2 Drag the Ultra Key effect to the Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg clip on the Video 2 track.
3 If necessary, click the Effect Controls panel to reveal it and make it active. The properties of the effect you applied to the Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg clip are visible in the panel.
Again, if necessary click the Show/Hide Timeline view button to hide the mini-Timeline, and then click the reveal triangle to the left of the Ultra Key effect to see its properties.
4 Click the Key Color eyedropper to activate it, and then click the slightly darker green area to the left of the subject’s shoulder. The green background is removed, making the background video visible.
The Ultra Key effect removes areas of an image that match the selected Key Color.
5 The area where the Ultra Key effect removes the green screen appears whiter than the area revealed by the garbage matte because the screen wasn’t a single continuous tone; it had some darker and lighter areas. The lighter areas are still opaque, causing the overlay effect.
Click the reveal triangle to the left of the Matte Generation group to view the properties contained there. If necessary you can hide any other revealed properties such as those of the Four-Point Garbage Matte to give yourself more room in the Effect Controls panel.
Change the value of the Pedestal property to 49 to remove the remaining white overlay.
The other properties in this group should be set as follows;
Transparency: 40 Highlight: 10
Shadow: 50 Tolerance: 50
The Ultra Key is sometimes a one-click solution; however in this case, you have to adjust it to produce optimal results
6 Click the reveal triangle to the left of the Matte Cleanup property group. Change the value of the Choke property to 9 and the value for Soften to 17.
This completes the adjustments to the effect.
You can animate almost every property in the Ultra Key effect.
7 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering. The process could be long because of the complexity of the Ultra Key effect.
When the rendering is done, the application previews the Timeline automatically.
The green screen has been completely removed by the effect.
8 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project. Do not close this project, you will use it in the next part of this lesson.
Spill Suppression and Color Correction
The power of the Ultra Keyer doesn’t stop at simply removing the green screen from your video footage. One of this effect’s greatest strengths is that it can also be used to adjust the color of your subject; a process that used to require you to add several additional effects. When you shoot video of a subject in front of a green or blue screen, it is very common for some of the screen’s color to spill onto your subject. This is especially the case if the subject is too close to the screen itself. Another problem that you may encounter is caused by the different types and strengths of lighting in the subject and background video. Luckily, the Ultra Keyer provides tools that allow you to correct both of these issues.
1 With the pr0603-working.prproj project still open and the Jeff Jacobs-Greenscreen CloseUp.mpeg selected in the Timeline panel, locate the Ultra Key effect in the Effect Controls panel. Click on the reveal triangle to the left of the Spill Suppression property group to see the Desaturate, Range, Spill, and Luma properties. You may need to hide other property groups to avoid having to scroll up/down in the panel.
2 Set the Desaturate value to 80. You should be able to see the color of the video in the Program monitor change: The green tint that his skin and edge of clothing had is now gone.
The Spill Suppression property group removes the tint of the set Key Color.
3 Notice that the foreground figure appears much darker than the background. This is due to the different lighting set-up used in each scene. Click the reveal triangle next to the Color Correction property group in the Effect Controls panel to view the Saturation, Hue, and Luminance properties.
4 Change the Luminance property to 125. This makes the foreground video brighter and closer to the brightness of the background footage.
5 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project.
You can now close this project; you have completed this part of the lesson.
Using the Warp Stabilizer
The Warp Stabilizer is used to remove jittery motion most often caused by camera movement. This effect allows the correction of handheld and shaky footage, turning it into a series of steady, smooth shots as if it had been captured using a tripod or dolly.
The media used in this portion of the lesson can all be found in the Media Library folder. All the footage can be found in the Jeff Jacobs Music Video folder.
1 From the Premiere Pro Welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, chose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr06lessons folder you copied to your hard drive and double-click the pr0604.prproj file to open it.
This project contains a single sequence named Using the Warp Stabilizer. This sequence contains a file named Park Scene-Shaky.mpeg on the Video 1 track.
Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the pr06lessons folder, rename your file to pr0604-working.prproj, and click Save.
2 With the Timeline active and the playhead at the beginning (00:00:00:00), press the spacebar to preview the clip. This is a shot of two people walking in New York’s Central Park. It is a hand-held shot with the camera operator walking behind the subjects. There are jerky movements of the camera which is quite distracting. Move the playhead back to the beginning of the timeline (00:00:00:00) when you have completed previewing the video file.
3 Click on the Effects panel’s tab to make it active and type the word warp into the search field. Drag the Warp Stabilizer effect onto the Park Scene-Shaky.mpeg footage in the Timeline.
The Warp Stabilizer is applied just like any other effect
4 Once applied, the Warp Stabilizer effect automatically runs. It acts as a background process so you are free to perform other actions while it is working on your footage.
The time it takes to complete the Warp Stabilizer analysis will depend on your computer system.
5 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering. Rendering time will vary based on your system configuration.
Notice that while there is still camera movement in the footage, it is much smoother after the effect has been applied. When working with the Warp Stabilizer you may come to find that the default settings will work in some situations without being adjusted. This is the case with this footage, however you may want to adjust properties such as Smoothness to remove a greater or lesser amount of camera shake based on your own taste.
6 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project.
You can now close this project.
Congratulations, you have completed this lesson.
Self study
Using your own footage or the footage provided with this book, experiment with the different effects in the application and see how they can be used to enhance or alter your footage.
Just a thought about working with green or blue screens: While commercial green screens can be a bit expensive, there are ways to mitigate the costs. To make budget video shoots work filmmakers have been known to use regular fabric stretched on a rack or paint a wall with green or blue house paint and even colored poster board can be used to create quick, portable and cheap green screens. Remember, that with today’s sophisticated software, your screens don’t have to be the exact chroma key green or blue colors to be effective.
Review
Questions
1 What are the two types of effects that you have access to in Premiere Pro, and how do they differ?
2 What is Track Matte used for and what two properties of a source video can be used to create one?
3 What is chroma keying and what is it used for?
Answers
1 The two types of effects available in Premiere Pro are Fixed Effects and Standard Effects. Fixed effects are the pre-built effects automatically added to every clip on the Timeline. The fixed effects include Motion, Opacity, Time Remapping, and Volume. Standard effects are used to add special qualities to your video, such as adjusted colors, blurriness, or noise. The Premiere Pro application includes several standard effects you can use.
2 Track Mattes, also called Traveling mattes, is a technique used to hide or reveal specific areas of a video clip. You can make a track matte based on the source clip’s alpha (transparency) or luma (brightness) channels.
3 Chroma keying is a technique used in film and television that lets you composite two images together by removing a specific color from one of them. Chroma keying is used most often when you shoot video of your subject in front of a blue or green screen and then replace the screen color with a different background image or video.