One really cool way to incorporate text into your video projects is by using an Alpha Matte to fill text with video instead of color.
Let me show you how it works.
Setting up text and video for an alpha matte
First, add your video to the Timeline.
Next, create your text layer and make any adjustments.
This effect works best when the text is large, taking up a good portion of the composition.
So, we'll increase the size of the text and set the style to Bold.
Applying the alpha matte using track mattes
Now we'll go down to the bottom of the Layer panel and select Toggle Switches/Modes.
This will allow us to see the Track Matte column.
On the video layer, select the Track Matte dropdown and change it to the text layer.
So, this so far is really cool with the black background, but let's kick it up a notch and add our original video back in as a background.
Adding a video background behind the text
Start by dragging the video from the Project panel into the Composition panel, making sure it's at the bottom of the layer stack.
Now we have a bit of a problem.
Our text is completely unreadable, but we can fix that with a few effects.
First, for this particular clip,
Enhancing text readability with scale and layer styles
I'm going to adjust the Scale of the clip that's being used on the fill layer to create some separation.
That's already getting better right there, but let's right click the fill layer and add in a couple layer styles.
Let's go with Drop Shadow and Inner Glow.
We can make any adjustments that we want to get the effect we're going for.
There we go.
I think this makes a really cool title card for an Aurora Borealis video.
When you try this in your own project, experiment with the layer styles and effects to create your own custom graphic.
Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.
What you’ll learn
Fill text with video
Create a mask using a bold text layer and the Track Matte option. This works best with large blocks of text.
Improve visibility
Add a copy of the video under the text graphic in the layer stack. Adjust properties like scale and add effects like a drop shadow to make the text more readable.
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