- Hi folks. Harry here.
With so many nonlinear editing platforms
out there these days, it's really critical to
have a workflow that allows you to be independent
of the platform that you're working with.
We had the same challenge here
at Boris FX with our tutorials.
We needed to create a picture in picture effect
that we could share across multiple platforms.
Some of our content creators work in Resolve.
Some of our content creators work in Adobe Premier,
so we needed to create one effect that we could share
across all of our creators and keep ourselves aligned
and consistent in terms of our brand.
And we did this using the Sapphire Effect Builder.
So I'd like to show you our solution.
(bright music)
So today I'll be working in Adobe Premiere Pro, and
in my sequence I've got the video clip that you just watched
of me.
And then also on another track I've got a
Photoshop document that is the design I need to follow.
So we're gonna recreate this design
using the Sapphire Effect Builder.
So to do that, I need to apply S_Effect
and I'll do that by a search over here, S underscore effect.
And then drop this right on my video.
Now it can go to edit effect
and this will launch the Sapphire Effect Builder.
Now if you've not used this before, it's pretty simple.
The source node is the video that I just
applied the clip to,
and the result is what I end up seeing.
This is the output of all the effects
in some way need to feed into this result node.
So if I were to add a shape to this,
I could insert that in between the source and the result.
And the quick way to do that would be to go
over to my components and search
for a node that I want to add, such as a shape node.
Now you'll notice there are actually
two different shape effects within Sapphire.
And to cut to the chase, I'm gonna use animated shape.
I find the parameters are easier to set up a simple polygon.
Now I can drag this in between the source
and result and have it composite just like that.
Or I could disconnect this
and have it be its own node over here on the side.
And I can find a different way to use this
or composite this.
Now to see this, I could either feed this right
into the result and that will allow me to see it
or I could create a composite node to blend the source
and the shape together.
And that's what I'm going to do.
In the compositing section, there is an effect called layer.
In addition to it having two inputs to blend a foreground
or background, it has a matte input.
So with the animated shape node, I'll take its output,
feed it into the matte input of the layer node
and then I'll put the layer node into the result.
So we're feeding the source
into a compositing node and then into the compositing node
we're feeding a shape to the matte input.
So on my animated shape here
I need to change the shape of this.
I need to set this to a six-sided polygon
otherwise known as a hexagon.
By default, the relative width is 1.5,
which I'm not sure why it does that,
maybe to make a rectangle
but I really think that default could be 1.0.
If you agree with me,
leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
So I've got a basic hexagon shape here
and I'm going to size this down because I kinda like to work
at more of the final size that I'm going to be working with
rather than doing too many post transformations
that'll scale it down and affect the anti aliasing.
So I'll make this pretty small
but let's make it a nice round number, like 0.25.
Now you can see that the video, the source video,
is a little bit too big to fit inside there.
So I'm gonna insert another node to transform
the source video down.
Now it could go to the components to do that
I can also tap the tab key
and I need to have some sort of transforms.
I'll type transform.
And right here is my transform effect
and I can just double click
on that transform to insert it right after the source.
So there are independent X Y scale controls.
A nice easy one to use is this Z distance
that allows me to use one slider to scale this down
and I can shift this around to fit inside
this hexagon shape.
Now from here to match the original design
I would need to add a couple more shapes to add a border
around the edge
and then to add another color border around that
so I can make two different shapes composite those together
and blend all that stuff together.
And I could do that.
My friend and coworker John Dickinson showed me
a much simpler solution using one
of the transitions as more of a utility.
So I'll keep this warp transform
because I'll still need to size my video down,
but I'm gonna delete these, show you a different approach.
In the transitions, there's something called a wipe star,
which is exactly what you might think.
It's a StarWipe, what a great way to start your day
than put a StarWipe on your face.
And this is a transition
so I need to bring the wipe percentage down.
Now, just because by default this is a StarWipe transition
that doesn't mean that's how we have to use it.
So let's get creative.
I can still set this to a six pointed shape
and then I can turn the pointiness all the way down
and look at that, we've got a hexagon shape.
The wipe percentage now is going to drive the overall scale
of the hexagon.
So I'll size this
to something like point eight and that looks pretty good.
Another cool thing about this transition is
that it has a border section down here.
So I can set the border color
to white and turn up the border width.
And now we've got our border added to our clip.
Pretty cool.
So we've already combined the matte, the border
and compositing all within one node of the StarWipe.
So now to add the border around this
I will have to create a new shape
and composite these together.
So I'll hit tab type shape
and double click on the animated shape.
Now I'm gonna disconnect this
and I'll feed this into the background of the transition.
So not only is the transition node doing all
this other matting and generated in the border
but it's kind of acting as a compositor in this case
'cause I can composite the foreground
and background together.
I'm just gonna set this
to an arbitrary color right now so it's not white
and I can see the difference of the colors together.
So I need to set this to a six-sided polygon
change the relative width
to 1.0 and bring the overall size down.
Now I'm well aware
that I am kind of eyeballing everything right now
and I have a Photoshop document that I need to
be referencing in terms
of its size and border width and all that.
So I'll show you how to bring that
in so we can reference it and make sure
that our design matches the design that we're given.
So I'll hit okay and jump back to our sequence.
And I can see that we'll need to do some size
adjustments here to match the size
and obviously we'll need to position it into place.
So what I can do is in S_Effect in my effect controls
I can define the background and I'll set this to V2
or video two so I can reference this Photoshop document.
Now before I do that
let me open this up in Photoshop real quick
and show you the layers that we've got.
So what we've got going on
we've got a green layer that is to be our video matte area.
So I need to crop the video inside this green area.
And then the shape and borders need to be variable
and they depend on the brand that we're working with.
So for example, this tutorial I'm doing right
now will need to use the Sapphire colored border
because the tutorial is oriented around Sapphire.
So with that in mind, let's jump back over
to Premier and I'll hit edit effect
and this will launch the builder again.
And now because I've defined
that Photoshop document as the background
this background node now has the Photoshop document image.
Now I don't really have an extra composite node
here to feed this into, so I can either create a new one
or I could just directly feed this
into the result so I can see it
but I should have an extra compositing node to
put these together for reference.
So I'll do that right now.
So I'll tap tab and the one I like to use is layer.
I just pretty much use this
for any compositing that I need to do
in the builder because this allows multiple inputs.
So it has a foreground and background,
it allows me to swap the inputs if I need to
and also has all the blend modes I would ever want.
So I'll feed the background into the background here,
feed all this design stuff into the foreground.
And now we can see these at the same time.
I'll insert one more node here to move this into place.
I'll transform it and kind of center it right
where this shape is so I can match these a little better.
So with that wipe star selected, I'm gonna go in here
and type transform and use warp transform again.
And I will use the shift and X Y to line these up.
In fact, with this layering node, I can turn
down the foreground opacity to kind of blend these together
and just get the video kind of centered.
Now I need to backtrack
and do some better scaling in the original design.
I try to avoid using scale to scale these down
because you're gonna scale the anti aliasing of the edges,
result in some flickering in video
or just unpredictable things
and I just don't like to do that.
So back in my wipe star
I'll bring the wipe down and I'll go
to the animated shape and bring the overall size down.
And in my source I will bring the Z distance up
to kind of push my source video away and also shift it
over just a little bit.
So that's kind of an approximation, I need to dial this
in to actually get it nice and aligned
with the original design.
So I'm gonna disable this animated shape
to get rid of the colored background, I'm just gonna focus
on the video matte and the white border.
So I'll hit command or control and windows D to
disable that node.
And in my wipe star transition, I need to get the wipe star
to not only align with the video matte, but where
the border is.
The border of the white transition actually goes
on the inside.
So I need to make sure that the edge of my white border
aligns with the edge of the white border
in the Photoshop doc.
Looks like I need to transform this down just
a little bit more.
There, that's looking pretty close.
And then in the border, I'll simply bring the border down
in terms of its overall thickness.
And this post transform looks
like it could nudge down just a little bit
There, so that's looking pretty close.
And then I'll turn my animated shape back on
and I will bring the size down just a little bit.
I think that's looking pretty close.
I'll turn the foreground opacity back up to one.
And I think we're looking pretty good.
Now, a really cool thing we can do
in the builder is rename these nodes
so that the name is a bit more practical.
So in this case,
this warp transform here is more of a pre transform
or maybe I'll call this the source transform.
This animated shape is actually the border color.
So I'll call this the border color.
The wipe star is not really a wipe
it's actually our hex mat
and warp transform two is a post transform.
And now that I've dialed this in,
I don't need this compositing node
so I'll just get rid of that.
And all of this stuff is feeding
into the result that looks good.
And if I hit okay,
I'll need to turn off video too so I can actually see it.
So we're pretty close here.
So things that I want to be able to do
with this effect are fine tune the source video.
If I dropped this on here and somebody else is
framing their video
a little bit differently, there's different headroom,
the face is bigger or smaller we'll need to be able to shift
and scale that source video down.
Now we can do that here in our source transform
but it does get a bit messy
because we've got all these parameters in here
that we don't really need.
Same goes for all these others, like all this hex mat stuff.
And we could greatly clean this up.
And this is a really cool thing that the
Sapphire Effect Builder can do
which is define which parameters are actually visible
in your effect controls.
So for any given node, I can select that and
with these check boxes,
define which parameters are visible or not visible.
In fact, up here at the top, I can click
on this one to turn all of them off
and then just turn on the parameters that I need.
In this case, I want shift X Y
and I want Z distance so I can scale the source video.
In terms of the design, I really shouldn't be touching much
of anything that affects the overall size
of the borders or the video mat.
I've dialed all that in so I don't need to touch it
and nobody else should be touching it either.
So I'm gonna turn all those off.
Post transform is the same thing
it really shouldn't be touched.
So I'll go in there and turn all of those off.
The border color,
the only thing that we really need to worry
about is the color itself.
Like I showed you in the Photoshop document
I've got different layers of different colors
so I should be able to change the color to match the brand.
So I'll turn all of these off and just turn on color.
So now in my parameters here
I just have shift X Y,
allows me to shift the source video around
and the border color that allows me to pick it
to one of our brand colors.
Now in my libraries here we have a shared design library
where all of our assets, and
at the very bottom I have all of our brand colors.
So for this one, which is a Sapphire product,
I use my color picker
and grab the sapphire color right there.
Now as I was talking about workflow at the very beginning
of this tutorial, I can go into the effective builder
and I can click on save as and I can save my effect here.
So I'll call this picture in picture Sapphire
and I can save it, but I can also click
on export and save this file externally.
So I could throw it on my desktop
or on a Dropbox location or Google Drive,
anywhere that I can share with editors all over the world.
So I could simply save this to my desktop.
So I'll have it to share with my coworkers
and I can save the effect here as a preset as well.
Now every host app is different,
but here in Premier I can also save this
as a preset that I can drag and drop right on my video.
Now, before I save this,
I wanna remove the background designation here.
So I'll set this to none,
that way every time I recall the effect
it's not trying to call up video two.
So I can go up here, click on save preset
and this will be my picture in picture Sapphire,
click okay.
So now on my source video, if I remove this effect
we've got our full frame video.
And if I go to my effects,
and remove my search under presets,
I've got picture in picture Sapphire,
drag and drop this onto the video.
And now I've got my picture in picture effect right there.
So drag and drop preset.
So I hope this is shown for you how incredibly powerful
and useful the Sapphire Effect Builder can be, even
for something as simple as a picture in picture effect.
This allows us to work in one environment
and output presets that multiple platforms can use
keeping everybody aligned.
So my name's Harry Frank for Boris FX.
Please don't forget to subscribe
to our channel if you haven't
so you can get all the great content in the future.
I will see you in another tutorial.
(upbeat music)