
As a result, most editors have been forced to use alpha channels, track (travel) mattes, or simple opacity blends to composite multiple images. Most other non-linear editing packages either added them only recently, or do not support them even to this day.
#Action movie fx final cut pro
Opacity Blendingįinal Cut Pro is rare in that it has offered Composite Modes from the start. These four “accent” clips are from various Artbeats stock footage collections: LAB128 from Liquid Abstracts, NAB107 from Nature Abstracts, LA230 from Liquid Ambience 2, and BW102 from Business World. These should give you a good idea of the range of possibilities. The accent clip can come from B-roll from when the cameraperson was just playing around with focus and filters it can also come from a personal library of a few well-chosen stock footage clips.īelow are four different clips which we will use as accent clips in the V2 track in our examples: a soft, light abstract background which is in a similar color as our main clip a soft, slightly darker abstract background which is in a contrasting color a relatively sharp and constrasty abstract black and white background, and a second “normal” footage clip. Note that it was already shot through a gold-tone filter with nice lighting, but we can make it even more interesting by using Composite Modes.

This clip to the left (FT133 from the Artbeats Fitness collection) will be our “normal” clip that is placed in V1. The good news is that Composite Modes render quickly.

The bad news is that applying a Composite Mode will most likely result in a red render bar appearing over your timeline, as most are based on RGB color channel treatments (as opposed to YUV). There is no need to set a Composite Mode for the normal clip. Choose one, and your accent clip will be “moded” on top of your normal clip underneath. Select it, and to the right a sub-menu of various modes will appear. Near the bottom of the list will be an entry called Composite Modes. Then either right-click on the accent clip (the one on top) or select it and choose the Modify menu. V2), and then place your accent clip in that.
#Action movie fx final cut how to
Let’s go through the basics of how to apply a Composite Mode, look at the footage we will be using for our examples, and then show what normal opacity blending looks like: Applying ModesĪpplying Composite Modes in Final Cut Pro is easy: Place your normal clip in its normal video track (i.e.
#Action movie fx final cut plus
In this article, we’ll give you several examples of each mode in action, plus explain what’s going on under the hood. The results can range from subtle to psychedelic.Įven those who are aware of Composite Modes seldom understand how they actually work, often employing the “happy accident” approach to see which one works on a particular set of clips. They take some properties of the clip on top (such as its color or contrast) and combine it with some properties of the underlying clip, creating a new composite that is often far more interesting than a simple opacity blend or fade. Fortunately, Final Cut Pro offers that method: the seldom-used Composite Modes.Ĭomposite Modes (also known as Blend Modes, Blending Modes, or Transfer Modes) provide alternate ways to blend together the pixels in two overlapping clips.

The biggest problem comes when you’re stuck with inherently boring footage: You need to come up with ways to add excitement or drama to grab and keep the viewer’s attention.Ī great (but relatively little-known) trick is to take an additional shot – usually one that is abstract, with interesting lights – and composite it on top of the normal footage to add color, movement, and mystery using a method other than normal opacity blending. The job of an editor is usually to spin straw into gold: Take hours of raw footage, edit it into a cohesive story, and – depending on the skill of the camera and lighting crews that were employed – color correct to enhance or unify the original footage.
