Move effect mask by entering coordinates

[.pd..]

Hello,

I've done my due diligence but can't find a post that answers my question.  Maybe I'm looking for a different answer, tho, so here's the problem.

• I'm doing a karaoke lyric display in PP22.
• I've created a text layer and applied a Tint effect with a couple of key-frames to resize a mask over the time taken for the lyric to be sung.  So far so good.
• Doing this for each line in the song is sooo tedious, so I've created a mask for each possible line of words.  E.g.
  • Mask1: Yesterday
  • Mask2: All my troubles
  • Mask3: seemed so far away
• I have a key-frame pair for each line.  All I have to do now is copy/paste the time chunk and change the text.   Again; so far so good.
• I reach a line in the song where the text needs to eat into the margin a little bit but I have my mask positioned in the area that needs text in it, so the text comes up with the tint applied prematurely.
• Obviously, I just need to move the mask to the left a little bit so that it's not covering the first letter of the lyric, but the mask is really narrow and when I hover over it, I don't get the "hand" cursor that tells me I can drag it.
  • Resize the mask?   Oh how I wish it was that simple!  I can't get mask resizing to work consistently and it's driving me crazy.  Sometimes it extends both horizontal lines, sometimes it only pulls one corner.  Sometimes I need to press SHIFT, sometimes I don't and I cannot find anything where the rules on that are spelled out clearly.
  • So, rather than disappear down that rabbit hole, I thought "hey, there'll be properties to this mask somewhere, right?  I can just enter the X and Y and be done.  Right?".  But I can't find a way of doing that either (Get Properties For Selection is greyed out when I select the mask...)

Thank you so much if you can do anything to halt the manual acceleration of my hair loss 😆

Cheers,

.pd.

[John V Knowles]

Rather than use the Tint method and keyframes that you outline, I would recommend something a lot simpler.

In your Essential Graphcis text, check the box at the bottom named "Background." This creates a color block behind your text that will resize automatically based on the size/length of text. You can control the color, opacity and size of this background, and even better it's married to the text so any Transform moves you make on the Text will affect it as well.

Does that work for your project?

[.pd..]

Thanks John - I'm gonna have to check my notification settings cuz I didn't get an email you'd replied.  Much appreciated, tho, really. 

The thing that makes it necessary to key frames is the feature of karaoke videos of following the lyrics as they would be sung.  Audacity does this with an old-school ball bouncing over the syllables, but the standard for karaoke files is now to have the text change colour progressively over time. 

Is that what would happen with the approach you suggest?  Or would I still have to use keyframes and add more text over time?

Cheers,
.pd.

[John V Knowles]

Oh, I see what you're trying to do now. You're changing the text dynamically with the masks; ignore my comment for now as I don't think it will help you.

In a pinch, try this first before we go down a long rabbit hole: zoom OUT in the Program monitor, maybe 50% or less. That will show you the canvas around the video frame; you should see the mask hanging off the edge and that will give you more area to hover over and hopefully get the hand tool to appear so you can drag it. Becaue you're right, there are no numeric position values for a mask in Effects Controls.

[.pd..]

Well, at least it wasn't staring me in the face!  Thanks John.  That's a great workaround for moving the masks, thanks.

For anybody finding this thread, I've managed to figure out the resizing issue.  

The squares on the corners of the mask are selectable, so when you click on one (with the black arrow pointer) it selects that corner and when you drag it, the shape is distorted - basically showing the geometrical consequences of moving that corner.

If you hold SHIFT down and click multiple corners, you can drag them both/all at the same time so you can use this to expand/contract on the horizontal/vertical plain. 

Bear in mind that if you veer from that line, it will skew the polygon on the opposite axis.   I.e. dragging the top and bottom right corners to the right will expand a rectangle but if you drag down as well, you'll get a parallelogram with the angle controlled by the vertical offset the downward drag creates.

TIP: the corner selection stays active after you release the button/key so if you want to make another adjustment using the same corners  - even after returning to this mask from some other control  - just click and hold one of the selected corners. 

Click any other corner to clear the existing corner selection.

Hope that helps somebody  - my stress levels have been reduced dramatically by learning that, thanks to the dude on the FB group who took the time to explain it. 😄