Creating an opacity mask turns rest of the clip black

[Guillesapaj]

Hi there,

I'm new to Premiere but learning fast. Lately though I've run into this issue which won't allow me to color grade a specific subject of a clip. The problem arises when I finish drawing the opacity mask around the subject (in my case the subject is an aquatic bird), and as soon as I close the loop around it, the rest of the video turns black. When I press Track the mask forward, the tracking process is run correctly, keeping the mask tied to the subject, but the background will stay black.

Am I doing something wrong? I find it strange since I did the exact same exercise a week ago and it gave me no trouble, allowing me to color grade a moving subject distinctly as its background. I remember that when that worked well, a kind of mask layer was created on top of the clip in the sequence. Now however, when creating the mask around the bird, this mask layer won't be created on top of the clip.

I'm adding some images below to show the problem.

Thanks in advance!

[Meg The Dog · Accepted solution]

A couple of ways:

1) Don't use the Opacity Mask, instead, create the Mask in the Lumetri Effect itself. This will restrict the effect of the color correction to the area within the Mask only.

2) Place the same clip directly above itself on the timeline in a stack, then create the Opacity mask in the top clip so that the mask only shows the area you want to color correct, and do the color correction:

MtD

[Ann Bens]

It is perfectly normal for it to go black when using the Opacity mask op a single clip.

This is because there is nothing under the clip but a void which shows as black.

You can check this by setting the Transparancy Grid on in the Program Monitor (wrench).

No harm in using the Opacity mask as long as you put the same clip under the clip you masked.

[Guillesapaj]

Thanks so much!