Free Final Cut Pro plug-ins: Alex4D Mask+ effects

These effects improve on my first Final Cut Pro X effect, ‘Mask 8 Points.’

The current version of Final Cut doesn’t allow keyframing of mask shape co-ordinates in effects. These effects (which come in 4, 8 and 16 point variants) add transform controls to the mask (like my 8-point matte effect for Final Cut Pro 7).

The default effect:

With the mask points scaled, repositioned and rotated:

Drag the transform control to reposition the mask, drag on an edge to scale, drag on a corner to rotate.

Here are the controls:

You can see here that keyframes have been set for the Transform parameters.

Warning: Sometimes Final Cut Pro disconnects the numeric parameter controls from the on-screen controls, so it is best to use the on-screen controls.

As well as being able to transform the mask, you can also control its perspective distortion. Note that the perspective controls don’t move the mask shape co-ordinate controls, so you must choose either to see the Mask Points control or the Perspective Distortion control.

Viewing the mask points control:

Change the Control menu to Perspective Distort.

To prompt Final Cut to update which controls are visible, click elsewhere to deselect the effect and click again to reselect the effect.

Drag the corners and edges to add a perspective distortion to your mask:

You can still manipulate the transformation of a mask with a perspective distortion applied:

Like my previous mask effect, you can control the interior and outside strength of the mask:

In this case, the outside of the mask is fully visible (100), the inside is half visible (50):

This means you can have two copies of a clip on a timeline, and apply Mask+ effect to the connected clip:

In this case a blur has been applied to the connected clip (which is visible around the outside of the mask), and a sepia effect has been applied to the main storyline clip:

As well as two ways of changing the overall shape and position of the mask, there is also the option for applying an additional mask which can be based on the luminance or transparency of another clip. The additional mask can add to, subtract from or intersect with the main mask.

So that the effect’s result can be used as an input to other effects, you can choose to show the computed alpha as a luminance map (as well as see the additional mask).

Installation

Download this disk image:

It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs the effects in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 or MTT installed for these effects to work.

Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Alex4D Mask+ 1.0.mtt’ file.

If you don’t want to use MTT, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Effects / Keying:

Find them in the ‘Keying’ section of the Effects browser:

Check out my other free effects and articles on my Final Cut Pro X home page.

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