Edit Suite: Fearless Compositing

Compositing. Say the word aloud. It's really not as scary as it sounds. In fact, you probably already know more about compositing than you realize. The most important thing to remember about compositing is that there really is nothing to fear. Once you understand how simple compositing can be, it will soon become just another tool you use to enhance your video projects.
A composite video, by definition, is a combination of images joined or blended together into one image. In its simplest form, this could even be a dissolve. Blending two images together for a brief moment, a dissolve is a composite of two different video images for whatever duration the transition lasts. Adding titles and graphics, also called CGs (character generator) is compositing. If you look at the title as a separate image blended with the video background, adding the title is a combination, or composite, of images.
Because most editing software integrates dissolves and titles into the programs, we tend to overlook the fact that these are composite shots. But they are. Dissolves and transitions are the simplest forms of compositing. Once you understand that you're probably building composites already, taking steps that are more advanced isn't so scary anymore.

Simple Compositing

The next step up in technical complexity is full-image compositing.
Watch the local news tonight. Often the anchor has a box over her shoulder with video or a graphic inside it. This is a full image composite. Notice that this smaller box has the same aspect ratio as the overall image. The effect is called full image compositing because the box that sits over the shoulder is actually a full screen video element. The editor or director reduces the size of the full image and positions it over the background. The effect is quite common and works well if you're producing a mock newscast.
Full image compositing is not limited to two layers. You can use multiple layers to create effects that are more complex. A good example of this is the Brady Bunch effect. The old TV series opened with a shot of the six kids, two parents, and Alice the maid in a tic-tac-toe arrangement. Seems complicated, but it really isn't. Try it yourself. Put your camera on a tripod in front of a neutral background and videotape nine family members. Use your pets and neighbors if you have to.
Once you digitize or capture the footage to your hard drive, set the nine different clips on separate layers in your editing software. Reduce all of the clips to one third of their original size and give each clip a small black border. Now, instead of leaving all nine clips layered on top of each other in the center of the screen, offset each image into the different squares created in a tic-tac-toe arrangement. Because most editing software can only play back one or two layers at time, you must render, or build, the composite. After completing the render, congratulate yourself on building a nine-layer composite without fear.<…