Alpha Travel Mattes - Video Inside Text
By Estelle MacDonald
Travel mattes are a great way to place video inside your titles. In this QuickTip we'll look at using a composite mode called a Travel Matte which is uses a clip's alpha or transparency information to hide or reveal other clips in the timeline. Let's have a look.
1. On the bottom track (in this example, V1) place the clip you wish to see as the background of your composite.
2. On the middle track (V2) place the clip you would like to use as your matte. You can think of the matte as the clip that will "punch the hole" in the background for the video to play through.
Before adding the graphic to the V2 track make sure the graphic you are using has an alpha channel. The alpha channel is the "invisible" portion of the graphic that defines areas of transparency. Any text you generate inside Final Cut Pro will have an alpha channel. If you open a text object in the viewer, you will see this transparent area represented by a checkerboard pattern around the letters.
Note: If you are not seeing a checkerboard pattern click on the view drop down, and choose checkerboard from the list.
If you were to use Photoshop or another program to create an alpha channel, then check that you have your clip properly formatted. See “Using Video and Graphics Clips With Alpha Channels” contained within Volume III Effects, page 28 of the Final Cut Pro manuals.
3. Place the clip you want to "fill" above your matte. In this example I’m placing it on Video Track 3.
4. Control or right-click on the top clip (the one you want to mask) to reveal a contextual menu. In this example we are going to choose Modify>Composite Mode, then choose Travel Matte - Alpha.
How does this all work? If you use the travel matte alpha then the alpha channel becomes the mask.
Remember that video track 3 (the fill) is always the target for a travel matte.
