Effect presets and masked effects in Video by Zaweba

Two features in Video by Zaweba change how you work with effects rather than adding new ones. Effect presets let you save an effect's settings and apply them again later, stored as .ozfx files. Only inside mask lets you give a single effect its own mask, so that effect acts only inside the mask while the rest of the clip carries on as normal. One saves time and the other adds precision, and together they make effects far more useful in real projects.

Saving and reusing presets

Getting an effect right can take a while. A glow with the right size and strength, a film grain that suits your footage, a shadow that matches your house style: once you have found those settings, you don't want to rebuild them from memory. Save the effect's settings as a preset, and next time apply the preset instead.

Because presets are files, they travel. Keep a folder of them for a series so every episode uses identical settings, share them with someone else editing in Video by Zaweba, or keep a personal library of looks you like. The .ozfx extension makes them easy to find and back up.

Presets are especially handy for things that should look the same every time: the border and shadow on picture in picture windows, the blur behind lower thirds, the grain on a flashback. Consistency is a large part of what makes a series feel professional.

Limiting an effect with a mask

Normally an effect changes the whole clip. Only inside mask changes that. Give one effect a mask, and the effect applies only inside the masked area. Other effects on the same clip are not affected and still apply to the whole frame.

This opens up a lot of jobs. Blur a face, a screen or a number plate while the rest of the shot stays sharp. Add a glow to a neon sign without making the whole scene hazy. Brighten a dark doorway with an exposure effect while leaving the sky alone. Desaturate the background while keeping the subject in colour by masking the background area.

Masks in Video by Zaweba can be rectangles, ellipses, stars, polygons, pen curves or freehand shapes, with feather, expansion and other settings that can all be keyframed. Mask tracking can follow the picture inside the mask from frame to frame, so a masked blur stays on a moving face.

Masked effects compared with masked clips

There is a difference between masking a clip and masking an effect. A mask on a clip cuts away part of the picture, making it transparent so lower tracks show through. A mask given to an effect leaves the picture whole and only limits where that effect works. If you want to hide part of a clip, mask the clip. If you want to treat part of a clip differently, mask the effect.

On an adjustment layer, a masked effect changes only part of the frame for every track below, which is a neat way to darken a corner behind a logo throughout a whole section.

A series workflow that uses both

Suppose you are making a weekly video with a guest in each episode, and privacy rules mean some faces must be blurred. Build a blur with the strength and feather you want, save it as a preset, and in each episode apply it with Only inside mask on the face, tracking the mask through the shot. Every blur looks the same across the series and takes a moment to set up.

Pitfalls to avoid

A mask with a hard edge on an effect gives a visible line where the effect stops. Feather it so the change fades in.

When you load a preset, check it on the new footage. A grain or glow strength that suited one camera may be too strong on another, so treat a preset as a starting point.

And remember where an effect's mask lives. If a clip looks odd and you can't see why, open its effects and check whether one of them is limited to a mask you forgot about.

Presets and masked effects are simple ideas, but they turn Video by Zaweba's effects from one-off experiments into tools you can rely on project after project.