Discussion with the Pros: Unexpected Behavior with Masks

[Phillip Harvey]

Hey all, I've got one for you.

I've struggled with this for as long as I can remember masking in Premiere. Over the years as a freelancer I've worked on dozens of different computers, both Mac and PC, so it doesn't seem to be isolated to any single Premiere build, computer, or operating system. That being said, I've never heard a single other person mention this, so I sincerely hope that it's user error.

I was doing masking/roto in After Effects long before ever doing it in Premiere so maybe it's a habit that I've carried over? I only ever do simple masking in Premiere and it's often just framing something with a rectangle mask. (I use Crop whenever possible now, but I'd like to see if I can figure this out.)

Attaching some gifs here:

Premiere 2019Premiere 2020

So to be mind-numbingly specific, here is what I'm doing:

1) Select the points, either with lasso or shift+clicking. Works fine.

2) I click and hold a point, hold shift, and start dragging. It snaps to "rails" but it's slightly off, so I can never keep a perfect rectangle.

In After Effects this would lock the points so that I can resize and my rectangle would stay perfect.

I tried turning off snapping in my Program Monitor to see if it was locking on to something invisible I'm not seeing, but that had no effect.

(These gifs come from my Windows 10 PC, but I just leaned over and did the same thing on my Macbook. Also sorry was having some formatting issues with this post.)

[R Neil Haugen]

(Sigh)

Yea ... mask point moving in Premiere is at times wonky.

On my rig, selecting a pair of points, holding down Shift, then click/drag works to keep things on the same line and will 'snap' to a different angle if I move up or down much, but it's like often like a 20 degree up/down movement. And I can pull up or down and get it to snap into line.

Unless of course it's Blood Moon on a second Tuesday following a 5-Satuday month, when it won't stay even close to nor snap to anything.

It's often best to create a guideline, and snap to the guide. That's of course, if it decides to snap to the guides. And yes, this is with snap in monitor "on".

Neil

[MyerPj]

It's so clear and easy in AE, exactly what one expects. PP couldn't hardly be more, ah.... odd.

Especially not being able to select a side, but have to select the two points then click one of them?? I've had 2020 on this machine for sometime bu have 2017 on a machine I don't turn on often, I can check that, but I'm able to get the correct drag/shift as expected on 2020.

[Ann Bens]

I get a correct shift/drag action too.

[Kevin-Monahan]

"It's so clear and easy in AE, exactly what one expects. PP couldn't hardly be more, ah.... odd."

I agree and this is a problem the product team should solve, especially after touting improved masking. I will raise this as an issue and see if I can gather some data around people failing on this. In the mean time, can we find a good request to upvote on User Voice and drive the people there to upvote? If not, let's definitely create one.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Phillip,

Thank you so much for bringing this topic up for discussion. I do see it as a pain point, as well.

Kevin

[Phillip Harvey]

Thanks. At least I'm not the only one who has experienced this, but it sounds like it works as expected for some. Don't get me wrong, it'll work for me every now and then, but it's honestly the exception. I figured there's no better place to get a sense of what others are experiencing than here.

[MyerPj]

Post it over at UserVoice Phillip and link back here and we can get some upvotes.

[Phillip Harvey]

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/40476049-odd-rectangular-ma...

User Voice Request. There are a lot of mask-related posts but I didn't see anything this specific. Some of the posts with a few upvotes just generically say to make the masking like it is in After Effects, which would theoretically address this situation, but I will hope that more specific = more actionable. Thanks!

[R Neil Haugen]

I done voted ...