Trying to do a SW-style blurred-edge wipe in Premiere

Hey gang,

Is there any way to blur the edges of a wipe in Premiere? I've tried playing around with the different wipe effects, but they've all got such hard edges. You guys have a lot of experience duplicating the Star Wars style - have any of you come up with a fix for this particular issue? A way to make wipes that look more like the ones in the movies?

 

I'm not aware of a way to do it in Premiere, it's quite easy in After Effects, if you happen to have that stowed away somewhere.

I'm gonna play around with it. Lemme see if I can come up with a work around.

EDIT:

Alright, here's what I've found.

One way to soften the edges of a wipe is to add a thick green border to it and key that away with heavy edge feathering. The border settings are part of the transition's effect controls, and in the case of my HD-sized project, a border width of 35 worked, set to pure chroma green. You can't add an effect to a transition, so I had to put the two shots in question, and the transition, into another sequence, so that the transition would be part of the "rendered" footage and Premiere could then do it's greenscreen thing.

In that second sequence, I added three instances of Color Key. All three set to the chroma green color. Here are their settings.

1. Tolerance 45, Edge Thin 5, Edge Feather 50.
2. Tolerance 45, Edge Thin 5, Edge Feather 100.
3. Tolerance 45, Edge Thin 5, Edge Feather 100.

This results in a wipe with a feathered edge - however, the feather does not blend the two pieces of footage at the seam, it fades to a soft black bar that separates the two clips.

With me so far? There's one complete method. Let's go a little farther and see if we can't do a real fuzzy wipe with the limited tools at hand.

Using the same concept, we're going to do something slightly different. Instead of trying to create a seamless blend between the two clips, we're going to make a fuzzy clock wipe that is one-half footage and one-half chroma green, and then lose the green and underlay the clip we're transitioning out of.

You'll want to make a new color matte (file -> new) that is chroma green, and put that in a new sequence - separate from your main edit - at the beginning of the timeline. Then, cut the clip you're transitioning to (IE, the clip being revealed) from your edit sequence, and paste it after the chroma green solid layer in the new sequence. Your main edit will now have a hole in it where the first clip of the new scene used to be, because you're going to do some effects work on it and need it to be worked on separately, because Premiere can't run effects on a transition.

In the new sequence, set up your transition the way you want it in terms of timing. You'll have a clock wipe (or whatever) from solid green to the footage you brought in. Once you have that, the work is done. Go back into your edit sequence, and bring in the new sequence on a layer on top of everything else. Run the same Color Key settings shown above on the green wipe footage, and the green will disappear, leaving a perfect alpha with a feathered edge.

Sync it up in the edit, and you're done.

In checklist form:

1. New color matte, green.
2. New sequence.
3. Add color matte at 00:00:00.
4. Add footage you're wiping into at the end of the color matte.
5. Set up transition the way you want it.
6. Put this whole sequence into the edit sequence, filling the void left behind where to transition-to clip used to be.
7. Color key.
8. Sync and drink coffee.

Yes, it's a huge pain in the ass. This only took me about thirty seconds to set up, though.

The short answer is, get After Effects.

 

You can do soft edge wipes in Premiere by going to Video EFFECTS (oddly enough - wracked my brain trolling through Video Transitions) > Transitions > Linear Wipe. Then muck about with settings. Soft edge irising though - I've not been able to work out in Premiere.

Stuff that tripped me up
- You need to click the Stop Watch thing next to Transition Completion in order to animate the start and end of the wipe.
- The wipe needs to on the higher track (eg if you have video on track 1 and the next scene is on track 2, put the wipe on track 2)
- Unlike normal Transitions, you need to render the work area to see the result.

 

Oh, cool.

For the record, any transition will work with my second method above, iris included.

 

Thanks for the help, guys. But my version of Premiere is kind of old (v. 7) and doesn't have the features you describe.

I'll just do the back-and-forth from Premiere to After Effects to Premiere.

But seriously, I appreciate the quick and thorough responses. Sorry I wasn't better suited to put them to use.

 

Version 7 should have color key.

 

The short answer is, get After Effects.

Actually, the true short answer is, get Final Cut Pro, a fine editing program wherein this would have all been possible just by toggling a simple option in the Wipe settings.


In conclusion, "wipe settings" is a funny phrase.


Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Or get a Mac and then get Final Cut Pro.

Not everyone has access to a Mac so it's not always as simple as suggesting FCP.

 

Ah, but he said "short" answer, not "simple" answer. Macs ain't never simple.

 

No, they are, I believe that's the point.

 

This is pretty easy to do with the Gradient Wipe transition. Pretty sure that's been in Premiere going back several versions.

Step 1- Create an image in Photoshop using the Gradient tool. Make the gradient go from Black to White. You can make the gradient go any direction- left to right, up down, side to side. Save the image.

Step 2- Add the Gradient Wipe transition to the Premiere Timeline.

Step 3- When you add the transition, a Gradient Wipe Settings window pops up. Click on "Select Image" and locate your gradient image you saved in Photoshop. You also have a slider for softness. Tweak the slider to your softness preference.

Step 4- Go eat a doughnut.

 

HOLY CRAP Jeremy'S ALIVE



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Ain't found a way to kill me yet...