98 Editing in Timeline mode
MoviePlus generally refers to opacity rather than transparency, but you should
keep both concepts in mind during your editing to help understand various
features such as Chroma Key (matting/blue screening) and masks.
Let’s firstly take a look at different ways in which opacity can be used on whole
clips, tracks, groups and effects in MoviePlus. A general level of opacity can be
applied to:
• a clip, to allow you to "fade" video or images in and out of vision over
other video clips.
• a whole video track, to make a collection of clips more or less visible.
• a video group, so that the composite result of a collection of grouped
tracks can be made less or more visible as part of the overall
composition.
• a video effect group (i.e., allowing mix back to blend original with
affected video).
For all of the above, an opacity adjustment is used to set a constant level of
opacity.
A specific region of transparency or opacity can be created for:
• Removing a solid-coloured background (also called blue- or green-
screening). This is achieved using a video effect called Chroma Key.
• Creating a cut-out region, using a mask.
• Creating a limited region for an effect to be applied over, e.g. only
applying a mosaic effect to a subject's face rather than the whole video,
also using a mask.
• Cropping using a mask.
