Blurring Background

Pawan wrote on 3/26/2014, 10:08 PM

Hi

I am using Movie Studio Platinum 12.0 and wanted to blur a part of the image (for instance, if the scene has someone sitting in a living room, blurring everything except the face).

I believe this can be done using the masking tool, just wondering if there is a video tutorial on this somewhere. I found some on youtube, but they were using Vegas Pro version I believe and I cannot see all of the options.

I also wanted to use the track motion feature to gradually blur the surroundings in the above clip and then bring them back in focus. Is that possible with Movie Studio?

Thanks!
Pawan

Comments

Warper wrote on 3/27/2014, 3:13 AM

Movie studio doesn't provide tools for pan/crop mask so you cannot easily draw animated polygon.

Mask FX in MS creates black&white pattern that you can use as alpha channel. Effect is similar to chromakey. Since your source is not like greenscreen, face detection might be a problem. And if you want to fix few pixels of mask manually, you have to export and edit it as a picture in photoshop.

Pawan wrote on 3/27/2014, 8:22 PM

Thanks :)

I actually tried and was able by using 2 copies of the clips running at the same time, and using the Cookie Cutter and Gaussian Blur on one of the instances to blur the surroundings. But I could not find a way to use keyframes to vary the blur over the clip.

Maybe that feature is available in the Vegas Pro version?

MSmart wrote on 3/28/2014, 12:56 AM

I only have v11 but there should be an Animate checkbox when enabled shows the keyframes.

Warper wrote on 3/28/2014, 3:13 AM

Maybe that feature is available in the Vegas Pro version?
Keyframe animation is available in both Movie Studio and Vegas Pro. May be it's just not so obvious in 12 version style, but it's there.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/959330

Pawan wrote on 3/28/2014, 10:57 PM

Thanks, it worked :)