Hi guys,

I have Avid Xpress Studio (Pro, FX, 3D, and PT), and I have been trying to find if there's a way to achieve the type of transitions that are used on the TV show 'Home Improvement' -- you know, where an image will be sliced up into several pieces, say separating a person from the rest of the scene -- stuff like that.

I have been searching all around, and I have heard the term "animatte" being used, but I'm not sure if that's applicable to what I'm talking about here. So, basically, first of all, if there's a common term for such an effect, and more importantly, if it's possible to get this done in Xpress Pro or Avid FX.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Luke

I'm no expert on Avid, but you should be able to create transitions like these if you have Photoshop. Basically, you'll need a stack of still images which you bring into your image editor/Photoshop, cut out what shapes you want to keep and make alpha channels out of those. Then, you should be able to import those still images into your video editor and just animate/keyframe them on a separate layer above two adjoining clips. I don't know if Avid does this, but nesting these transitions into their own compositions will make things a little more organized. Then, all you'd have to do is center the transitional clip over two clips butted against each other. Hope this makes sense, and good luck!

Thanks for the reply, Shawn.

Actually, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'm not totally clear on what you mean. I'm not all too familiar with Photoshop, but I'm just trying to figure out, I guess, how to make a video break into pieces, but allow you to draw where those pieces are (sort of like manually cutting out a jigsaw puzzle), so you can, say, outline the body of a person, then animate that; then outline another portion of the video, animate that -- and so on.

I appreciate the reply! If anybody has ever done this (or seen this done) in AXP or FX, please feel free to let me know. I think it could be a really fun effect.