Black bars...

I have made black bars in photoshop in order to cover the top and bottom of my footage in order to have a uniform movie size through out my project.

My problem is that when I add the photoshop file with the alpha channel on top of my footage I get a white line on the border between the footage and the black bar.
Its about 1-2 pixels wide and very noticable.
I have tried everything in photoshop.
(Anti aliasing, zoomed in at maximum to make sure there is no white)
I am sure that FCP creates the white line for some reason and not Photoshop.
ANyone had this problem?

Thanks
Johan Polhem

Why not create the black bars in FCP? Also, try de-interlacing the Photoshop file.

Why don't you use the Widescreen matte, will acomplish the same thing?

Video Filters >Matte> Widescreen

Thanks guys.
The widescreen matte works fine.
Did not know of this.

Just a reminder that while the FCP Widescreen Matte filter works fine, it also prevents you from moving the image around underneath. Another forum member pointed out to me that they've added a new "Offset" feature which allows vertical adjustment, but you still can't do zooms and other Motion settings because the widescreen bar would move along with the picture.

I suggest creating a customized colour matte based on the Widescreen preset. Slap it on top of any project and you got instant widescreen; you can even try out different aspect ratios at the drop of a hat. Use a black colour matte coupled with a Mask Shape with 100 Horizontal Scale, Invert. The Vertical Scale depends on what aspect ratio you want. The following numbers were all measured against the Widescreen filters:

1.66: 80
1.85: 72
16:9 (1.78): 75.2
2.35: 56.7

The only downside is that you can't keep a colour matte inside the "Effects" tab for very long; they stay awhile if you drag them in, but then they disappear. To keep them for posterity, you have to store them in an actual project file. I have an "Effects Presets" project file designed specifically for this purpose. This also allows you to do backups of your "Favorites" folder so that if you have to dump user preferences, you can get your favourite effects presets back.

<<< try de-interlacing the Photoshop file.>>>

That should make it worse. Then you would have a gray line at the transition point.

Anybody else able to recreate the original problem and does it happen with an irregular pattern, not just a straight "mask" bar?

If it's endemic, that would mean you can *never* import mask patterns or graphics of any kind from Photoshop.

Koz

Actually guys the matte in FCp was definately better but when I look closely on the big monitor a grey/white line is still there.
I cannot remove it nomatter what I try.

Hmm...I wonder if something in your footage is causing this, because I've never seen it on my widescreen mattes. Koz, your expert opinion?

<<<Koz, your expert opinion?>>>

...is on vacation.

I wanna find out if patterns at other angles or irregular shapes do this. Horizontal lines are magic since they can get stuck in color monitor comb filters.

Koz

Are the bars the 'top' filter? If you are applying a filter after setting down the widescreen bars, you are applying the filter to the bars as well. Try rearranging the order of application of the filters.

One thing I've done is made a slug and then croped it. It's not very technical but it worked for me.

Hey Nick,

Whatever works, works! I'm just wondering -- does this kind of artifacting differ when you use Mask Shape rather than Crop or vice versa, or the "Rectangle" option in Generator (which I never use), or a Photoshop matte, etc.? I've always used FCP colour mattes with a Mask Shape and they've always worked, so I've never been able to find out.