Excellent work John, thanks so much. I’ll try implementing that in the morning.

Hi Terry,

Here is an updated jpg in Dropbox that you can try.

John

Thanks John, playing with it right now but not quite there yet. Can you please confirm the names and full paths of the files you are now using to get the landscape version and also the steps you take to apply it to a track 1 object. As well as simply dropping your JPG version of the TGA file below it, have you added it to the UI (like the portrait version), which is the step eluding me.

Also, is 'masterobject_portrait_ORIG.jpg' your renamed version of 'masterobject_portrait.jpg' (the flower)?

Terry

Hi Terry,

The beamer and other effects were in:

C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium\VideoEffects\PortraitEffects

I copied them to the following folder:

C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2016 Premium\VideoEffects\Standard

There is an underscore in front of '_masterobject_portrait.jpg' and I renamed the original to '_masterobject_portrait_ORIG.jpg' just so that I could undo my change and replaced the contents of '_masterobject_portrait.jpg' (the flower) with a rotated version - landscape. It seemed that the beamer effect was using or asking for '_masterobject_portrait.jpg' and smoke.jpg. I thought that rotating 90deg would do something, but it didn't, so there is no point in trying.

The jpg that I sent you is a replacement for the tga file. I just applied the beamer effect, ungrouped, deleted the beamer.tga file, used my jpg file with the landscape green screen, and gave it a chromakey green. This left the effects on my original video/image and the smoke.jpg.

I will try later to see what happens if I export my green screen version to tga and then replace beamer.tga with it. I'll probably have to give it chromakey green.

Here is a link to the XAR file if you want to play with it in Xara. If you open up the layer, you'll see that I created a couple of addition pieces for the green screen to fill in, more or less, the original feathered area around the tabletop.

Have to walk the dog now.

John CB

@browj2

Hi John,

Many thanks, all understood.

I had first restored UI access to the portrait effect. (Somehow beamer.cfx had been deleted from the appropriate folder.) So that's now accessed by Import|UserVideoEffects|Other|Portrait|Projector 23. (Logically it should be in Import|VideoEffects.)

I was trying to get your new landscape version to Import|UserVideoEffects|Other|Projector Landscape.

I played with converting your JPG to a TGA (from both IrfanView and PSP), in vain. I don't really understand TGA well enough. And it's so easy to just drop your JPG below the target and apply Chromakey Green. (Even that last step wouldn't be necessary if MEP still supported the old trick of suffix '_green'.)

As you may have gathered from my initial screenshot, I was playing with this as another possible approach to Schmacker's question
(BTW, I see that he hasn't replied to either of our later posts.)

"Have to walk the dog now."

I'd always assumed it was the other way around! 🙂

Terry

Hi Terry,

I tried erasing some of the white in PSP2020 and saving as tga.

It didn't work. Nothing changed when I loaded this back into PSP, the portrait hole was still there, not my modified version. I couldn't find a way to save to tga with transparency. There must be trick to do this somewhere. Anyway, the green screen works.

Back to the wood pile. You can see my head on the other side.

John CB

@terrypin, @browj2

Hi

Back home now - here - - is how to edit the Alpha Channel using PaintShop Pro and the resulting in MEP.

Added: for some reason YT wont allow playback here - you will need to view in YT

HTH

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John,

Great, thanks! I'll try that tomorrow. It's been vexing me for hours.

I hope Cornwall's weather was reasonably kind to you?

Terry

@johnebaker

Hi John,

Thanks for the instructions. I'm now starting to learn how to do this in PSP. I managed to erase more of the screen and get it to be transparent in a tga. It's rather messy, so I'll have to read up on how to create a shape to erase within the borders of the shape.

John CB

@johnebaker

@browj2

Hi both,

Thanks to John EB I now have the TGA method working. But I found it hard work and not very intuitive. I guess it will get easier if I do more TGA work.

A few specifics:

1. Directly after deleting the alpha channel, why does the portrait transparent area still get displayed?

2. I tried several methods to correct the minor selection flaws, but so far have not succeeded.

3. The upside of the TGA method is that it allows the application of the effect from the UI, which is what I was determined to discover. But does TGA have any other benefit to compensate for its relative complexity?

Terry

@terrypin, @browj2

Hi

I think a few notes in relation to some aspects of the editing are in order:

1. The shape is already there in the TGA image it is the whitest part of the screen and the correct shape, it also has a small section tapered at the bottom left corner for where the table is hiding the corner of the image beam.
    
2. The Magix Wand selection tolerance was set to a very tight value of 5 to get only the white area, too high and it picks up the very pale grey perimeter of the screen.
    
3. I am not sure why the selection has to be inverted, however testing with other images shows this is necessary.

John - I prefer PSP to Photoshop and Xara with one exception - Xara tops it it is in the ability to work with video for the animated masking etc which PSP does not do.

HTH

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John

PSP with its layering thing is still a mystery to me. In Xara, I just draw. If I need layers, I can make them, but I almost never do. In PSP, raster layer, vector layer, etc.

In the beamer.tga, the part where the image should go is the white part of the screen, with the grey part not part of it. In the image, the grey part becomes white at the left, so that when the white part is selected, too much is selected. I am trying to limit the transparent area to what should be the image area projected on the screen.

Looking at your video, it tends to have a warp in it. How can we get rid of this warp?

I used the eraser to erase the white within the selection, poorly done, and then just selected checkerboard (transparent) part, inverted, etc.

Edit: You also have better contrast with your screen than I get on either of mine. The grey extends further to the left in your image; it's white in mine.

John CB

@browj2

@johnebaker

Hi again,

Shortly after my previous post I returned to the task and have now succeeded in getting a 'full' display. It's not perfect but it's close to what I was after. Here's the TGA

And the view in MEP's preview monitor:

One of the mistakes I was making was forgetting that only a single alpha channel could be saved. IOW, directly after editing a selection you must delete any previously saved alpha channel.

Terry

@browj2

@johnebaker

It's odd, John's video doesn't have the two flaws ('warps') but they do appear when the beamer.tga is opened in PSP, as you saw from my screenshots. Here's a screenshot directly after the invert:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/grx3a3z2i18i0ua/TGA-Edit-07-AfterInvert.jpg?raw=1

To edit the portrait TGA I found it easier to first save after the delete, then reload, as that residual checkerboard confused me.

EDIT: And up until now I'd forgotten that, unlike in the Schmacker discussion, I have not been making any attempt to resize and deform my target object.

Terry

@terrypin

Hi Terry,

Well done. Downloaded. About the only thing to add would be a bit of feather-edging.

@johnebaker

In Xara, to make part of a photo transparent, I simply drag the image onto the canvas (I use blank photo mode, so the screen is black), select shape tool or smart shape, draw over the photo and close the shape if using the shape tool. Select the shape, add the photo to the selection, Arrange/combine shapes/subtract shape, done. A hole is made in the shape of my drawn shape. Then, export to png with alpha, transparency. Done.

In PSP, draw a shape over a photo and it creates a new layer. Then what?

The only problem in Xara is that I can't find a way to get transparency when exporting to tga.

John CB

@browj2

Hi John,

In PSP: Select All (Ctrl+A) >Selections > Modify > Feather > 100 (or whatever). Or use Feather >Inside/Outside.

Save that as a new image and it should have some feathering.

Terry

@terrypin

Hi Terry,

I'll try that.

I just found out from the TalkGraphics forum that Xara cannot handle tga transparency/alpha channel. Too bad.

John CB

Hmm, Unlike the preview, the actual result still had grey areas where I want white.

Terry