Adobe Premiere discussions from 2003

[Mike Zorger]

THANKS A LOT. What about when i'm watching it on my TV and editing?? That helps thought, thanks. I'll try it out.

[Bryan Roberts]

Hey all. I am trying to have an image appear during a TV short I have to do and I'm having trouble making my icon have a transparent background around the edges of it's round shape in Premiere. I always just have the picture on a white background so that when I try to have the picture appear, it's got a big white box around it. I've tried cutting out the background in Adobe Photoshop but it reverts back to a white background when I save. What do I do?

[Ed Smith]

Bryan,

Save the photoshop file as a PSD, make sure that the white area is transparent.

Import the PSD into Premiere, it will ask whether you want to import a single layer or merge the image. (If the image is just one layer, select that layer).

Drag it onto the timeline in any track above video track 2. Right click on the picture in the timeline and select video options, then select trasparency. From the drop down menu select Alpha channel.

Hope this helps,

Ed

[Bryan Roberts]

Ed - that was it! Thanks so much. My only problem now is that I'm having trouble getting rid of all the white around a dark red colored button. I did the magic eraser tool and it leaves a good deal of little white jaggies all around the button edges. I tried carefully taking them out with the background eraser tool but it's not cooperating..... Any suggestions? Thanks again!

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Hi all.

Going through the Premiere Pro manual, it says that one of the audio effects you can apply is "swap channels".
Using the audio mixer, I can get to the dropdown menu with all the audio effects except "swap channels".

Can any of you point the way?

Best regards,
Arnaldo

[John Britt]

If the button is well-rounded, you can create an elliptical marquee around it in Photoshop, right click and "Select Inverse" and hit your backspace button to clear out the surrounding area.

As for the eraser, make sure your eraser "brush" is solid and not feathered -- for minute removals, you need the exactness of a solid brush.

And don't forget to make your future graphics against a transparent layer in Photoshop!

Oh, and if you can't get a good crop on the button, you can always try a Chroma Transperancy in Premiere and choose the white area around the object as they key color.

[Ed Smith]

Bryan,

Glad that sorted your little problem!!!!

Try what John said, I tend to use the magic marque tool, and then invert it and try to erase the little specs. You might also what to anti-alias it as well, this will smooth any jaggie edges.


Cheers,

Ed

[Bryan Roberts]

You guys are great...... Sorry, but I have one more problem now which is even worse than the last two: my buttons worked perfectly the first time I inserted one into my project, but then I couldn't get the same button to show up in a different part of the project. Then, I went back to my first button that used to appear perfectly only to discover now that it's not showing up. When I see the thumbnail of the image in my BIN, I can see a picture of the correct button however, when I double click the file, it brings up a preview window of the image that is black! I tried using a couple of different files. It seems that this only happens when I'm using a psd. I've tried just about every option with this and can't get any results. Now I can't get any of the buttons to appear! Titles work fine and everything else seems to be in order. I'm not a newb, I've used Premiere on MANY projects now but I've run into a problem like this. I really hope someone can help me with this.....

[Ed Smith]

Bryan,

Yep I 've seen that sort of problem before, I believe that its a bug. Were you selecting a layer, or merging the layers?

Try saving pictures as 32bit targa files Premiere should also see the alpha channel.

Hope this helps,

Ed

[John Britt]

I've actually had this happen before...more than once -- but let me see if I can remember what I did... Try these in this order:

First, try closing Premiere and restarting the app. Open the project again and see what happens.

Second, try saving the project under a new name. When it asks if you want to copy the preview files, say no. Close Premiere and reopen the project.

Third, righ-click on the .psd files in the Timeline and choose Edit Original. Make some minor change, undo it (to activate "Save") and save the file. Return to Premiere.

Fourth, if you don't have a lot of effects/settings tied to these .psd files (like motion, etc.) simply delete them from the project and re-import them.

I know that when this has happened to me that I was able to fix it with a minimum of fuss. And yep, it always happened with .psd files. Still don't know why. Unfortunately, I also don't remember exactly what I did to fix the problem. But I do remember that it wasn't too big a hassle -- one of the four things above should fix it.

[Bryan Roberts]

None of those tricks worked although I figured out a ghetto way around the problem. I'm doing a commercial and a button appears after my video source freezes. So, I created two frames that the picture freezes on: one with just the video source, and then one I made in photoshop with the frame and the button pasted on top of the image. Voila, problem overcome but not solved. Man, was that frustrating. Thanks anyways!

-Bryan.

[Peter Burton]

I am thinking of buying Premiere Pro.

My question is: Does Premiere Pro automatically create clips like other editing programs.

My understanding is that earlier versions of Premiere would just create one large clips unless you manually stated the times where you wanted the clips.

Any help here would be much appreciated.

[Ed Frazier]

You should find it here:

Effects Window/Audio Effects/Stereo/Swap Channels

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Hi Ed.

Thanks for your help.

Meanwile I got there, but when I try to drag the "swap channels effect" to the audio track, nothing happens. It gives me a "not allowed" sign.

Best regards,
Arnaldo

[Ed Frazier]

I'm not sure what's going on there Arnaldo. I've used that effect several times because audio captured with my camera always comes in reversed and needs to be swapped so I know it works. If you can't figure out why it's not working for you, try posting on the Adobe PPro forum. I'm sure someone will be able to help you over there.