Tutorial 17: Creating Overlays

While creating amazing keys in ULTRA, you may have looked down the row of input icons and wondered, “What is that Overlay 1 window for?” or “What options does it have?” In the past, right and left clicking on it have only brought up grayed out options. Now is the time to make those options available. Let’s create an animated overlay within ULTRA to go over our keyed clip.

Start a new session by choosing File > New Session. Remember to save out session information if you’re in the middle of a project. Click the Browse tab and double click the Hands Apart.AVI sample clip. Click the Keyer Tab and hit the Set Key button.

Adjust the transparency level down a bit to about to .264. That should do for our overlay.

Fig 1: Hands Apart overlay

Now, click the Output Tab. Under the Codec options choose Uncompressed and select the 32 bit AVI with Alpha button. Make a note of the output file location and Click Save Output.

Fig 2: Selecting the Codec

When that’s finished, let’s start a new session. There should be no need to save the current session information.

Click the browse Tab. Double click the Suzy – Tight – In White (wedding) sample clip.

Use the keyer tab to apply points and set the key for the new clip. Adjust the transparency down to .270. Add a background graphic from your Backgrounds Tab.

Fig 3: Wedding project

NOW for the magic, click the Output Clips tab. Navigate to your Hands Apart clip we just made. Drag the clip and drop it onto the Overlay Input Icon that is gray and says ‘Optional’.

Fig 4: Drag and drop the overlay clip

Scrub through the Output preview monitor and Voila! Our hands are overlaying Suzy. But alas, they are covering her face.

Fig 5:Scrub through overlay

We can fix that by selecting the Overlay Input Icon (green light) to get control of the Overlay layer.

Fig 6: Overlay Input Icon

Then move down and click the Scene tab. There we can adjust the orientation of the Overlay channel.

Fig 7:Scene Adjustment for Overlay

See your final output.

Add up to 4 overlay channels by right clicking the Overlay Input Icon! Each overlay layer can accept an image with an Alpha Channel, such as a PNG file or a 32-bit AVI with Alpha channel. Here are some other example uses for the overlay channel:

• Use a cutout of a desk to create a foreground layer
• Add a title or graphic to a clip
• Add a “corner bug”
• Use multiple keyed clips in a single project

Add New Overlay

Advanced homework! Use this method to make a video showing 5 individual Suzies!