Have edited a small choir singing on their phones from home. 14 singers in a Picture-in-Picture arrangement of little frames, each with a small white border. There are now hundreds of clips, various sizes and arrangements on the screen in the three minute song. My problem: the Producer now wants to change the white border from white to off-white or a single color. Is there a simple way to change the border color of all the images at once.  Can I highlight the entire sequence then change the border color of each square en-masse in the effects editor?

It seems like it must be posable, maybe I missed that class when I was learning back in the ‘90s

Thanks for your help

Rick

Hi Rick,

I am afraid this can't be done the way you would like to do it. My wisdom, of course, is limited and the hive knows more than I do. So maybe someone has the trick up his or her sleeve. But if not and in case you're still looking for a way to somehow do it without manually changing each and every effect:

Are the PiPs animated or static?

Is every PiP individual or are there some repetitive setups?

 

Depending on how you built your sequence, you may be able to change a series of clip effects at once by changing the colour on one of the clips, dragging the effect icon to a bin, selecting all the clips in the sequence that need the same effect parameters, and double-clicking on the effect in the bin. This will apply the effect to all those clips.

If each of the clips need different effect position/size parameters, though, you may have to manually reajust them.

what may help you a little bit to speed up the process: You can change individual parameters by dragging the stored pip-icon effect from the bin to the appropriate section of the next to-be-changed pip. So don't replace the whole pip with the stored pip but drag it ONLY to the OPEN parameter in the effects editor. Then you are a at least a little bit faster than adjusting each parameter in each FX with the mouse... HTH best j

If your existing borders are peak white it might be worth just trying an invert luminance key over an off white or colour Bg.

(Even if this is far from perfect it may give you the oppurtunity to audition the colour for your producers approval...)

Ok, here is an even more crackpot idea.

1. Take the media offline.

2. Use the colour corrector to tweak the border white.

3. Mixdown the sequence.

4. Bring the media online.

5. Luminance key the mixdown over the sequence.

 

So, Rick, just in case you come back to this thread: what my questions were headed to, is...

1) If the PiPs are static and the setups repetitive and reasonable in numbers, the cleanest thing I can imagine would be to make grids (Photoshop, Title Tool etc.) and edit those on top of your video. One could of course do it in a specific color if the color is sure to be approved. If not then...

2) If one would like to have a universal setup you could take #1 one step further: Make the grid in pure white (255, not 235), put it on a pure black (0, not 16) background. Then use the white-on-black-grid as a mask and a solid color as fill by combining them in a matte key. Once set up you can easily change the coulor by either replacing the solid with another one or by using a color effect on the existing solid.

3) Now, if your PiPs are animated, what I had in mind is David Yardley's approach - with a few additional steps. It's just hypothetical. I don't know whether the outcome would be significantly different from what David's trick would do: After taking the media offline and tweaking the border white now clip black from the other end. The media offline template is dark/mid grey and will turn all black quickly. As in #2 the plan, again, is to use the result as a mask for a matte key. Therefore you should allow the color correction to work in full range (0-255) instead of limited levels (16-235). Once done, mixdown or export&reimport - Media Composer might not mixdown when there is offline media in the sequence - and you're ready to use the matte key as indicated in #2. The "compositing", just like with the luminance key, will most likely have pixel-thin white edges where the grid meets the footage. If you're going for an off-white fill (as the producer favors) or another light color, that thin line will probably not stand out too much. If the fill shall be a darker color you might want to tweak (=thicken) the white portions of the mask.

Oh, last but not least, instead of doing any of this: do you have any FX-plugins on your system? (BCC etc.) You could experiment with plugins that are made for finding and manipulating edges.