Clint Milby
MorphCut is a new transition available now from Adobe Premiere CC2015 which promises to eliminate jump cuts from your project. Since its release, I’ve had an opportunity to utilize MorphCut while editing some interviews we did at Cinegear Expo 2015. During an interview with Atomos I had to make a cut for content and as you can see, what I’m left with is the dreaded Jumpcut.
To resolve this jump cut, I have a couple of options. First I can leave it and just pretend it doesn’t exist or try to pawn it off as part of the aesthetic which looks really terrible.
I can also try some old remedies, like at adding a dissolve. However, because it’s not a natural place for a dissolve, it just kind of looks weird, and to the trained eye it’s obvious that I’m trying to cover for some editorial problem. The other option is to use the old reliable “Dip to White”. The problem with that is that it’s really distracting. And, when used too often, it’s almost like over using an exclamation point.
But now we have MorphCut. Simply go into the video transitions tab and then click on the dissolve tab. Scroll down and you’ll find MorphCut. Just drag it over just like you would any other transition and place it between your two clips.
Once you place it in between the two clips you’ll get a bar across the program monitor that says “Analyzing in Background”. This is similar to what you’ll find when using “Warp Stabilizer”. Depending on your processor speed and your GPU speed and how detailed your background is, analyzing could take a few seconds or a few minutes. Keep in mind, that when you move the transition, shorten it or extend it you’ll have to run the analyzer again.
Once the analyzer is finished, just hit enter to see the finished results. My interviewee moves slightly between cuts and after adding Morphcut, it looks like he’s just shifting his weight from one foot to the other, however, it totally looks natural.
Making the most of MorphCut
- Make sure that your background is stable or static any motion in the background.
- The more stable and simple your background is Morphcut will work much smoother.
The less your subject moves their body or head, the better the results. - The more motion the analyzer has to contend with, the more likely you’ll see some distortion.
For more information about Adobe Premiere go to the website at www.adobe.com
Sorry but: fail. I’ve tried and tried and, so far, morph cut solves nothing. And your video is proof of that: that transition is in no way better than the distracting dip to white.
Hi Fabby – thanks for watching. Are you familiar with using transitions in Premiere? Try mastering something more basic like a dissolve first. Once you get the hang of that, then try using MorphCut.
Remember, for best results try shooting in front of a static background.
Hi Clint,
I’ve been directing and shooting TV promos and interviews since 1992 and have been using Premiere since the mid 90s. Asking the person being interviewed not to move is out of the question. Choosing a static background is often impossible and… pretty boring.
Recently, I did have a guy who wasn’t moving that much in front of a background with tv monitors. Since I was shooting with 2 cameras at different angles, it was pretty easy to hide the cuts by changing the angle. Just for fun, I wasted a few hours trying to do magic tricks with morphcut.
What morphcut did to the monitors was quite funky, but not at all distracting. What it did to the guy’s face was really unnatural. My client would have noticed, for sure, and I wasn’t going to tell him I was trying a new “not quite ready for prime-time” software to hide cuts that were not really hidden.
This thing needs to be seemless, and it’s not. It’s much more distracting than a good old “cutaway”, dissolve or dip.
Yeah, my guy wasn’t totally stable and not quite flat-facing the camera or looking at the lens.
But that would have been… weird and boring. Changing my style of cinematography to get weird looking artefacts is out of the question.
But maybe version 2 will solve those issues!
Morphcut seems to be the wrong tool for that particular situation, I think most people are used to a jump cut or quick dissolve during an interview. Even bettter would be something to cut away to related to the topic, or not.
Interesting idea. Do you have a more concrete example?