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New feature time! We have How To's (the long ones) and Quick Tips (the short ones) but we need another category. See, I have a list of reader-contributed tips that deserve sharing. To make sure no one thinks I came up with these great tips, we are giving them their own category. I'll be posting more of these over the coming weeks and months.

The tip today comes from Karel Gillissen. He figured out that you can add images over top of video clips. Mix in some transparency, and you get masks!

Karel has taken his tip to a whole new level and posted videos of how the process works. To keep his .Mac account from getting kicked too hard, I have posted his walkthrough below. He shows how he creates the mask using Photoshop Elements, then how he adds it over top of a video clip. (Just drag and drop! I love it!) Check it out, because this is a very cool trick.

Karel then shows us that with video masks you can do all kinds of cool things. Duck hunt, anyone?

7 comments: to “ Reader Tip: Create Video Masks

  • Emily
    September 23, 2007 at 8:59 PM  

    AWESOME! 'cept the video is too small for me to see all the details of his settings in elements, maybe post a larger copy, or screen shots of them, or just tell us what he did more precisely? Way cool!

  • Aaron
    September 26, 2007 at 1:53 PM  

    @ emilygrae,

    Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't let me do bigger videos. The crux of the video is to create any image with transparency, like a PNG file. Just drop it onto the video clip and you are done!

  • Anonymous
    June 9, 2008 at 6:41 AM  

    Great tip, but I got issues when using more than 3 different masks on separate parts of my video (but the same project). The mask simply does not appear. If I use each file in a new project it works just fine, so I know the PNG's are ok.

    Anyone else had similar problems and found a solution?

  • Anonymous
    July 25, 2008 at 11:58 AM  

    I'm having problems too. I put two different png files over a clip and they worked fine. Now when I change them or delete them to put in others, the png masking doesnt work at all. Maybe it's a bug?

  • Anonymous
    October 6, 2008 at 2:43 AM  

    Can anyone pls tell me how to create video masks for architectural walkthroughs??? if anyone interested pls reply on my ID ansh_maitry@yahoo.co.in. I am getting problem to create masks for walkthroughs.

  • anshuman_maitry
    October 6, 2008 at 2:49 AM  

    can anyone pls tell me how to create video masks in architectural walkthroughs??? If any on interested pls reply me on my email ID ansh_maitry@yahoo.co.in. Or u can contact me on my no. 09970032948. I am getting problem for creating video masks. reply soon.........

  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2010 at 7:35 PM  

    Wow this kicks A*S, thanks for hooking me up, I will be looking like a pro thanks to this great tip!