Widescreen Matte on V2

Hi,
Is there a way to put a widescreen matte by itself on a separate video track?

Thanks,
Em

Nope. This isn't an Avid in that you can add filters to tracks.

What you need to do is nest your sequence when you are done then add the matte to that nest.

Create a black Color Matte using Generator. Apply a Mask Shape filter (Effects - Video Filters - Matte - Mask Shape) to it, then use the following settings:

Rectangular
Horizontal 100
Vertical [Variable] (If I remember right, 80 will give you a 1.66:1 matte, 75.2 will give you 1.78:1, 72 will give you 1.85:1)
Invert CHECKED

Put the Color Matte into your Browser and rename it "Widescreen Matte". Now put it over any video track to use as a letterbox mask.

Thank you it worked. It should be easier then that don't you think? Anyways thanks.

It's easy if you nest first, or you could just select all the clips in the timeline and apply the widescreen filter. The reason it seems fiddly is that you wanted to do it on a seperate track, which is a workaround.

I disagree with Jude about that. While a mask takes longer to set up (if you know Photoshop, you may prefer to do it there), once it's made, you can sleep easy. Need to reposition a shot, so you need the black bars there just for one edit? Turn the top track on and you're ready. Need a rough cut letterboxed, but don't want the matte in your hair for general editing? One button and you can turn it off. Nesting takes two more steps and you have to do it every time you do an output; apply a Widescreen Matte filter to every shot is the worst way to do it, because you won't be able to do any Motion tab operations with the filter on, and if you need to remove the filter, you might actually have to go shot by shot to remove it by hand if you have any other filters active on any of your clips.

In my case, I set up four such widescreen masks (1.66, 1.78, 1.85, 2.35) and save them in a project file I use specifically to store effects. So any time I start a new project, I just open that project file, copy all my effects presets, paste into the new project, and I have all the widescreen masks available to me should I want them.

Well personally I use colour mattes, but if you're an Avid editor this whole thing seems backwards and weird. I was just pointing out that the matte method is not the standard FCP way of doing it, but a workaround developed to make it more flexible.

personally i use Masks created in photoshop.

they render SO much faster.
and give you more RT before you need to render, too.


nick

If you want to crop a 4:3 image differently for different scenes, how do you change these instructions, Derek?

Let's say you want to crop the lower part of the 4:3 frame and retain the full top part of the frame. Then on most of the film you want to apply the widescreen matte in the middle. And finally if you want to do widescreen on the lower part of the frame. Thanks for your help.

> Let's say you want to crop the lower part of the 4:3 frame and retain the full
> top part of the frame.

A change in aspect ratio tends to look amateurish -- I've seen a substantial number of amateur/student films where they apply a widescreen matte to a shot, but then forget to take it off during a cross-zoom transition. So if you have a film where you want a 1.85:1 widescreen letterbox, I wouldn't suggest doing any shots that would invade the letterbox area.

But if you have to, there's no "right way" to do it -- sometimes you'd want to use a crop, sometimes you'd want to use a mask.

In the technique I'm describing above, you would change the "Center" attribute of the Mask Shape filter. For example, if you need to have a black area on the bottom part of the frame for lower 3rds, but no letterbox bar above, you'd move the Mask Shape up (x, -y) so that the black bars up top will disappear off the edge of the frame. But in this kind of case, I'm probably more likely to use the Digital Heaven DH_Box filter or, if there's no other motion involved, just use Crop.

I printed your two responses so I can follow this procedure. Thanks, Derek.

This was a great thread. It answered some questions I had about nesting too.