Adding a motion blur to a moving mask

[egeller7]

Hi all,

I've a clip with 2 layers. The top one has an animated mask which reveals the bottom layer over time (and hides it again).

I'd like to give a motion blur effect to the mask (rather than to the clip itself).

Is this at all possible in Premiere or must I do this in After Effects?

Thanks in advance.

[Ann Bens]

A mask is part of the clip.

Just add the motion blur to the (top) clip with the mask (assuming you used it from opacity).

[egeller7]

That's exactly the problem.

If I add the blur to the clip, it gets blurred as well.

Maybe I wasn't clear but I want only the mask to be blurred not the clip itself.

[Ann Bens]

Post screenshot timeline with program window and both EC for the clips.

[Ann Bens]

You dont have a clip with 2 layers as stated in the original post. You have a bunch of layers...

Hard to say what all those layers do.

When adding a blur to a clip that has a mask from opacity then just the mask gets blurred not the rest.

Shot in the dark:

add blur to mask layer and nest.

[egeller7]

Ahhh... You're totally right. I wrote 2 layers to simplify the issue.

Only 2 layers matter, the rest are there but are not relevant.

Added some remarks on the screenshot.

If I add a blur effect to the masked layer, the layer gets blurred, not the mask.

I can't seem to find a way to add a blur effect to the mask.

[Ann Bens]

You have two things going on on the mask layer

Motion keyframed and a mask keyframed.

The mask is the size of the frame, yes?

If you add blur then yes the whole frame gets blurred.

Might need to separate the motion from the mask and make them into two layers.

[egeller7]

Thanks Ann Bens for taking the time to help me.

You wrote: "Might need to separate the motion from the mask and make them into two layers."

I don't think I know how to do that 😞

If I'll nest the layer then mask the nest, will that work?

[Ann Bens]

Trial and error.

Its all gueswork for me as I dont have acces to your timeline to see how its set up...

If you like you can send me just that part of the timeline in a project.

[egeller7]

I'll try and err then. 🙂

Thanks.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

It seems to me that this is more visual fx work then simple editing. My advice: After Effects is far better equipped for this kind of work.

If you want to add motion blur to a masked clip, you have to nest it first. So that PPro will treat the nested clip as a new clip that can have additional effects added.

Hope this helps.

[egeller7]

Sure thing Richard, that's the direction I was about to try.

Truth is I already managed this in After Effects but wanted to know if there was a way to do it in Premiere Pro as well.

[egeller7]

Update.

Tried to nest the clip but a blur effect affects both the mask and the footage nested inside. What's worse is that it also blurrs the none moving edges of the mask.

Another way to go at it is to use the crop effect (after nesting the clip) and then manually animating the edge feather value in the crop effect to match the keyframing of the crop itself.

I'm open to more ideas 🙂

[Ann Bens]

If you want help, upload the project!

As of now, it's just a guessing game.

[egeller7]

In the end I used the feather-value-in-the-crop-effect method.

It's good enough for me so i'll leave it at that.

Many thanks Ann Bens

[paulbirman]

Had the same issue. I fixed that by turning off the motion blur tag, adding on the top adjustment layer, and added to it CC Force Motion Blur.