How to make Keylight look on a different layer making a key.

Hi,

I want to make a text where some of the words are cutouts from two other layers. So some of the text is just black, one word is filled with video from layer a, another word is filled with video from layer b. The text lies on top of a backgroud image. 

This is easy to accomplish with precomps. Or several text layers. I would like to avoid this.

Because we are going to make many films and I want to create a template, where it is easy and quick to add new texts and animate those to follow a voice-over.

Therefore it would be a great advantage to have just one text layer for each text, so you only have to edit the text in one place. And then add the text layers into one single composition. Then it is much easier and quicker to adjust the text animation to follow the voice-over. The image layers of course come on top of that.

One way of doing it is to have one text layer, where the text is black for just text, green for image cutout a, and blue for image cutout b. Then put the image layers ON TOP OF the text layer. And apply some kind of key effect NOT on the text layer, but on each image layer, but let the key plugin look at the text layer below. Is there a key effect that can do that? Or is it possible to make Keylight do this with scripting perhaps?

Or is there a much smarter way to do it all together? Probably. 

I have experimented with track matte – no success. It can only look at layers on top of present layer. And it can't handle two different mattes from the text layer. 

I am sure there are other possibilities.

The requirements are:

1. That you can control every aspect of the text, including animation (animate opacity and range to make the letters appear one by one) from only ONE layer. 

2. That some of the words can be filled with moving video from at least two different video layers.

3. That you can add a background (see through the text layer, where there is no text).

4. That all the layers you need to edit, is kept in the same composition, so you are able to adjust animation and movement according to one long audio file with voiceover – and to keep the overview of the project. 

5. That you can apply motion blur on the finished result. (Used when the texts are animated in and out of the frame.)

Any ideas? I know I am trying to use AE in an unconventional way. But I am sure there are many smart shortcuts that might solve it. 

Thanks, Markus