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eZediaMX:
Masking a
Movie Masking a Movie with a Shape
Think: Cookie Cutter Download the 1-frame zoi and the movie - Zipped - 341 KB Masking a movie is just like using a cookie cutter on a piece of dough. You have a flat chunk of dough rolled out into a square. You grab a cookie cutter - perhaps a circle - and press down on the dough. When you lift up, the only thing that has changed about the dough is the shape. You didn’t change the flavor or the look of it - just the shape. Masking a movie is the same. Movie clips are usually rectangular in shape. We can dress them up by putting another shape on top of them, selecting the two objects together, and then going up to Objects > Mask Object. We then remove the shape that we used as a cookie cutter to reveal the new shape for the movie underneath. You’ll see a faint line around the movie that shows you the original shape. The full-color area of the movie shows what it will look like when it plays. So, what happens if you don’t like your new shape or you didn’t quite mask the area you wanted to emphasize? Nothing. Just click on the masked movie and go up to Objects > Remove Mask. The mask will be gone and you’ll have your original movie to work with once more. Our introductory project is called “Butterfly telescope.” Let’s begin. 1. Have eZediaMX open. Go to File > Open and navigate to where the Butterfly telescope folder is located. Open the folder and locate the project file called Butterfly telescope. Click on it and then click open. Figure 1 shows the opening frame. Figure 1   A dialog box will
open up and you’ll navigate
to where the movie clip is located. In this case, it’s in the Butterfly telescope folder. Select the movie clip entitled “Butterfly07-04.mov”. It will take it a moment for the first frame to show up in the preview area of the dialog box. When it does, click on Open. (On older machines or ones with less video memory, clicking too fast can result in a black square showing up because we didn’t give the computer enough time to grab the entire movie. Patience is its own reward.) 3. Grab the movie with your mouse cursor and move it to where you want it to appear on the frame (Figure 2). Supposedly, this movie clip is what we’re seeing when we look through our telescope that we’re using to watch the butterflies from across an immense distance. (Sorry - I couldn’t find a graphic of binoculars in a hurry!) Figure 2: Our butterfly movie has been placed on the frame.  4. Our next task is to make a shape to mask our movie. Because we’re looking through a telescope, we’re going to pretend we’re looking at a circular outline. Click on the Shape Tool object in the tool bar (Figure 3) and from the drop-down menu, select the circle by clicking on it. You’ll be returned to the frame and your mouse cursor will now look like a cross-hair (+). Click, hold, and drag with your mouse. As you do, a circle, or ellipse, will appear. The handles around the shape mean you can reshape it a bit if you’re not happy with your initial design. Figure 3: Shape Tool with drop-down menu showing  5. Place your circle shape over your movie, as in Figure 4. Figure 4: Shape over top of movie prior to masking  6. Look carefully at Figure 5. You’ll notice that I’ve created an “elastic” around the 2 objects. I did this by moving into the top, left-hand corner and clicking, holding, and dragging with my mouse until I have both objects caught in my elastic. As soon as I have them both trapped, I let go of my mouse and you’ll see that both objects have handles around them. That means they’re both selected, shown in Figure 6. (If the elastic trick didn’t work for you, simply hold down the Shift key and click on the corner icon for the circle and then click on the movie. Just don’t let go of the Shift key as you do that. We use that technique as another way to select multiple objects in just about any program - not just eZedia.) Figure 5: Click, hold, and drag with your mouse cursor to create an "elastic" around both the movie and the graphic on top - this selects both items at the same time  Figure 6: Both items are selected  7. Okay - the movie and the shape have been selected. Notice that the shape is on TOP of the movie. If your shape isn’t on top, you’ll need to select one of the two objects and go to Objects > Layers and choose the option that will make the shape be the top object. With the shape on top and both objects - the movie and the circle - selected, go to Objects > Mask Object (Figure 7). Figure 7: Click on Objects > Mask Object  8. Compare Figure 8 to Figure 7. Notice that the area of the movie outside of that covered by the circle has now become invisible. Grab the white circle with your mouse and drag it off (Figure 8). In fact, you can delete the circle now that you’ve used it as a cookie cutter. Figure 8: Look carefully and you'll see my mouse cursor on the circular shape as I click, hold, and drag it off our movie to reveal its new shape! I can now hit delete to get rid of the graphic or I can put it in an Object Well to save it for later.  9. Go ahead and save your 1-frame project. Just remember not to try and save it on the cd at this stage. You need to go to My Documents and create a new folder for this project and save it in there. When you’ve saved the project, go to Frames > Preview Frame to see the project. Figure 9: Here's our new shape for the movie now that it has been masked with the circle. When it plays, it will look as if it has been cut out in a circular shape!  Let’s add another cool feature - a Play/Pause button! 10. The movie clip is great but it might be quite useful if we could start it and stop it as we want. To do that, we’re going to add a Control Object to the frame. Click on the Control Object in the toolbar.  11. Move the object to the bottom of your frame - see Figure 10. Figure 10: Control Object in place  12. Double-click on your Control Object at the bottom of your frame. The Control Object dialog box will open up (Figure 13). Give your button a title - Play/Pause - so that people will know what it does. Next to the word “Action,” click on the drop-down menu and choose Play/Pause Movie. Figure 11: Control Object Dialog Box  Note: While you’re in the dialog box for the Control Object, just look at the entire range of things you can do with this little object by clicking on the more choice arrow next to Action and Activate! 13. Your button is now labeled and in position below the movie. (Figure 12) Figure 12: Button labeled and positioned below movie  14. We need to tell the button what it is going to be controlling. Click on the Link Object .  15. Move to the Control Object. Click on the Control Object, and keeping your mouse button down, draw a line from the button to the movie. When you have properly connected, a red line will appear around the movie object. Let go of your mouse. You have now linked the Control Object to the Movie Object. (Figure 13) Figure 13: Linking the Control Object to the Movie  What this does: When your project starts up, you’ll click on the Control Object to start the movie. You can click on it again to pause the movie. Click on it again to start the movie once more. One final variation - adding a bit of magic: Double-click on the movie object. UNCHECK “Show poster frame.” Preview your project. What this does: There will be no sign of the movie on the frame when the project begins. You can make the movie magically appear by clicking on the Play/Pause button! |