Ok let me explain what we are going to do. We are going to use a mask to make the sun stay behind the ocean, and not on top of it. How? Using masks. If you still have the two rendered videos from last time, we place the one with no lens flare on top of the other one, and cut of the top half. This way you still have the reflection of the sun on the ocean, but the sun itself is not on top of the water, thus making it look like it’s behind and not on top. Confusing?

Step 1

Load both your rendered videos from the last tutorial into a new project file. The second video with the lens flare should be on top, and the first video with no lens flare, only the “light” filter, on the bottom “Overlay Track 1″.

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Select the video on “Overlay Channel 1″ and up in “Attribute” click “Alignment Options” and “Fit to Screen.”

Step 2

Now, click on the icon for the original video and take a screenshot with “PTRN SCRN” on your keyboard. Paste this in an editing program (I’m using Paint Shop Pro, but you can use Photoshop, GIMP, or what ever program you have).Cut out the image to the exact corners. Here’s what you should have:

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Now select the top three-quarters of the image (the sky) and fill it in with white. Then select the bottom one-quarter and fill it in with black. We now have:

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Good. Save it to your hard drive. Anywhere, even your desktop. Once we’re don you shouldn’t need it again so you can always delete it.

Step 3

Back to VideoStudio now, with the video on “Overlay Track 1″ still selected, go to “Mask and Chroma Key”.

Select “Apply Overlay options” and choose “Mask” from the drop down box.

Then click the “+” sign and browse for your mask. It might ask you to convert it to a 8-bit image. Click Yes.

Then select it, if it isn’t already selected. You should notice a change right away to your video. Good.

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If you noticed, we have an error.

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The problem is that the two videos aren’t the same exact size. We can fix this my dragging the little yellow node on the “Overlay Track 1″ video up a notch. You’ll have to play around with it to get it right, but you should have this after your done:

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Now, we fixed one but got another- Error that is. You can see the sun UNDER the other image. Wrong! In rea life, we don’t have ultra-ray vision to see under the earth. What I did was add a solid color block and cover up the bottom. Here’s my result (oh yeah, you’ll have to add another Overlay Track to do this):

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Now watch your video, along with your last video. Notice the difference? I’ll bet you do. Here’s the two results, the one from the last tutorial, and the one from this tutorial.

Hope I tought you a little about masks. If not, all well, post a comment and maybe someday I’ll make a better tutorial on it. :P Cheers.