Editor’s Toolkit: Overlay Mattes and Transitional Wipes Overview

Variable transparency mattes and masks are a fundamental part of many advanced compositing techniques, but they are also the basis of even the simplest composites underlying the built-in titles, transitions and overlays found in every editing application. Unfortunately, they can be tough to understand, at least in part because they are invisible. The basic concept is that the black and white parts of the mattes are used to generate transparency between two clips, with the black areas being transparent to one clip and the white areas being transparent to the other. The following tutorials explain, in detail, how to use the Editor's Toolkit mattes. While we are working to explicitly cover all of the industry standard editing application, if your application is not currently listed, please take a look at an existing tutorial to get you started: the terminology, track order and concepts are often nearly identical in professional level editing applications.

Tutorials