Using a matte to reveal smoothly??

G5 power mac, FCP 4.5
I am using a 4 point garbage matte and keyframes so the matte peels back to reveal the full screen, however it doesn't do this smoothly but jumps along in little increments. Is there a way to do this smoothly?

I'm not quite following what you're doing, but try using less keyframes. If you only have one start keyframe and one end keyframe, the computer will tween smoothly between the two. If you have lots of keyframes it tends to make the movement jerky, unless you are very precise.

2 tricks, from some one who does alot of roto

less keyframes is more

and you can 'smooth' the keyframes in fcp. I believe the way to do this is to rightclick the keyframes and there should be an option to smooth them (havent done it in a bit).

I have a keyframe on 4 point garbage matte for
Point 1 -360 and -170
point 2 360 and -170
point 3 360 and 150
point 4 -360 and 150
then 10 seconds later -360 and -288 etc so the full screen is revealed. So there are only 2 keyframes. I have rendered everything but the matte still moves in a jerky fashion.

It could be the type or quality of your footage - some codecs respond a lot better than others to thin lines, so if you have any thin horizontal lines you could get a jerky feel to the reveal.

It could also be better to just animate a crop using the crop tool in the motion tab instead of a filter. Less render intensive and possibly it will give you a better result that adding the keyframed matte.

10-second Edge Wipe? With a feathered edge. I recall some of these can be rotated for slant reveal.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Set Video In & Out separate from Audio with Control I & O !

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