Advanced Picture-in-Picture FX

Marco. wrote on 9/17/2018, 2:56 PM

Peter_P pointed me to some shortcomings of the "Picture-in-Picture" FX. It misses useful features like edge blurring and shadow.

While we can't pimp this FX itself, adding two other FX before and after "Picture-in-Picture" can be helpful.
So add the "Border" FX before "Picture-in-Picture", set its type to "Blurred" and use the "Size" setting to adjust the blur of the frame's edges.
Add the "Layer Dimensionality" FX after "Picture-in-Picture", set the type of the Shadow to "Drop Frame", use the "Height" slider to adjust the offset and "Blur" and "Opacity" for further fine tuning. See what the other settings of "Layer Dimensionality" can do for Picture-in-Picture FX …

Then (if you use these kind of FX more often) save Border – Picture-in-Picture – Layer Dimensionality as FX Package.

Of course you could have same features by just using Track Motion instead but thus being bound to use it as kind of track fx only whereas such an FX Package mentioned above could be used as Media FX, Event FX, Track FX, Master Track FX and Output FX.

Comments

j-v wrote on 9/17/2018, 3:51 PM

👍👌 Thanks for this tip Marco!

Peter_P wrote on 9/18/2018, 1:13 AM

Thanks again Marco. 👍

Probably it would be possible to add this hint to the PiP FX help text by the developer.

EricLNZ wrote on 9/18/2018, 3:14 AM

How do you folk find the quality of the PIP image when rendered using the PIP fx compared to using Track Motion or Pan/Crop to achieve the same.

Grazie wrote on 9/18/2018, 3:36 AM

@EricLNZ Do you notice a difference?

Marco. wrote on 9/18/2018, 3:52 AM

I did not compare yet. If you do I think it'd be important to be sure there are no codec relevant influences (e.g. the way the codec handles macro blocks especially if the PiPs are not in same size or place). At least I did not yet notice oddities.

Pan/Crop might be different (dependend from the source) from Track Motion or any OFX like the Picture-in-Picture FX because Pan/Crop uses source sizes as the base while the other tool uses the project size.

3POINT wrote on 9/18/2018, 3:53 AM

I don't see a difference.

Peter_P wrote on 9/18/2018, 4:12 AM

Nor do I.

EricLNZ wrote on 9/18/2018, 4:16 AM

@EricLNZ Do you notice a difference?

In VMS15 yes but I don't know about Pro as I don't use it. I found Pan/Crop and Track motion gave a sharper result than using the PIP fx. Marco's comments may be the reason. I'll experiment further but what happens in VMS may be different to Pro. The difference was marginal but noticeable.

3POINT wrote on 9/19/2018, 5:20 AM

It would also be nice when the Border FX could be used with Crop FX.

Marco. wrote on 9/19/2018, 5:31 AM

Yes, it lacks same tools as PiP does while for Crop there is no usuable workaround.

Marco. wrote on 9/19/2018, 5:35 AM

That said, using "Layer Dimensionality" FX (the "Glow" tool) at least would offer a blurred Border around the Crop.

karma17 wrote on 9/19/2018, 6:19 AM

I think Layer Dimensionality is one of the most underused and under-appreciated FX. It's a great FX to all kinds of things including when you green screen in a subject.

Marco. wrote on 9/19/2018, 6:22 AM

Yes, I tend to use Layer Dimensionality to add 3D structure to titles.

3POINT wrote on 9/19/2018, 8:45 AM

I think Layer Dimensionality is one of the most underused and under-appreciated FX. It's a great FX to all kinds of things including when you green screen in a subject.

That's true, I used it once to make a logo look more realistic (3D). Maybe they could also add a Border tool to the Layer Dimensionality FX.

zdogg wrote on 9/19/2018, 11:55 PM

For PIP:

The use of curves especially in the curves window (after you enable animations) makes it more fine tunable, although, again, those points can be a bit rambunctious, (don't want to say "squirrely" again today)....but when they are behaving themselves (if not -- try turning of quantize to frames in 'options' menu, thanks Marco!) these are a plus, but you must open that curves window fairly wide (can that be a button?) to make good use of that.

I believe it is very good, just not really rock solid on the interactive tip, but really the original pan/crop window always has its place. I used the PIP to animate some bouncing stuffed kangaroos to emulate a real jumping critter, thus a need for slow down and acceleration, at the top and bottom of the jump, and for that, PIP is much easier, with the appropriate curves, which you must manipulate in the CURVES window -- MUCH easier, but if I am trying to overlap something with a mask or other special effect, I'm going with pan/crop window. It is very nice to have both, they fill in each other's gaps, IMHO..DON'T just learn one, learn them both!!

(of course, now with the new masking, tracking tools (thanks Gary and Co.) all of my sage advice might really be old, and fast!! but maybe not, YMMV, of course)

Keyframes in orig PAN/CROP are nice, in that you can more easily lasso, move, copy, shift a group in time, things like that.

@gary-rebholz : it would be cool if once selected, a group of Keyframes could be all manipulated together, e.g.: adjust up or down opacity, or feathering, to an absolute or all move together relative to each one's original/previous value. Thanks!

merlin-beedell wrote on 10/18/2018, 4:02 PM

These new crop & PIP fx controls do not seem so very intuitive to me. Here I wanted two video clips stacked on top of each other - each one taking half the screen, cropped to the required view - with a white border between them. I have succeeded in Movie Studio, but it was very painful.
This is sooo easy in other editors, but only if the video clip files contain just the footage for the duration of the effect. But if I want to have just one section in a 20 minute clip like this is not so easy. MSP to the rescue?..

I have tried this:
EventPanCrop (zoom right in to the interesting part, cropping out the rest) > Border > Clip PIP fx
But the PIP fx applied to the clip seems to loose the output frame size - and when moved the clip gets cropped near the screen edges. It only allows positioning near the centre. Very weird indeed.
EventPanCrop (zoom out to place the clip in the right position) > Crop fx (trim out the parts not needed) > Border
But now the border is around the Whole Screen! Why?
Back to the first effort:
EventPanCrop (zoom right in to the interesting part, cropping out the rest) > Border > Track PIP fx
Now with the PIP applied to the track rather than the clip, I can position the bordered zoomed clip wherever I need.

I just cannot fathom how the MSP dev team could have created such new features without simple things like border control, or improving the standard Pan/Crop so it also has the ease of use features of the new FX controls. Strange.