Bars and tone, countdowns and colour mattes in Video by Zaweba
The Graphics menu in Video by Zaweba makes black and transparent video, bars and tone, a countdown leader with a beep, and colour mattes for your edit.
Not every clip on a timeline comes from a camera. Editors constantly need plain filler: a stretch of black, a solid colour behind a title, a countdown before the programme starts. Video by Zaweba makes these for you from the Graphics menu, so you never need to hunt for a black image or render a coloured square in another program.
What you can generate
There are five kinds. Black video is a plain black clip. Transparent video is a clip with nothing in it at all, which sounds useless until you need it. Bars and tone gives you the familiar colour bars with a test tone. The countdown leader counts down with a beep. And colour mattes are solid colour clips in whatever colour you choose.
Black and transparent video
Black is the workhorse. Put a second of black at the start and end of a film so it doesn't begin or finish abruptly on the first frame. Use it as a background for titles or credits. Drop it in to create a pause between sections.
Transparent video is for building things. Because it shows whatever is on the tracks beneath, you can put effects or titles on it and they appear over the footage below. It's a handy base for a graphic you want to sit on top of the picture without covering it.
Bars and tone
Bars and tone come from broadcast, where they're used to check that picture and sound are being passed along correctly. The bars let someone check colour and brightness on their monitor, and the tone gives a steady reference level for the sound. If you're delivering a programme to someone who asks for bars and tone at the head, this is where to get them. For everyday online video you won't need them, and you should leave them off the final export.
The countdown leader
A countdown leader counts the seconds before the programme starts, with a beep. Its practical use is synchronisation: the beep gives everyone a fixed point to line up sound and picture. It's also a fun retro touch on a short film or a mock cinema intro, used deliberately.
Colour mattes
A colour matte is a solid block of colour. Behind a title, it gives you a clean branded background. Under a picture-in-picture, it frames the inset. With a blend mode on a track above the footage, it can tint the whole picture. Paired with masks, it becomes a coloured shape or a border.
Trimming, fading and keeping them in their place
Generated clips behave like any other clip. You can trim them, stretch them, put transitions on them and keyframe their opacity, so a colour matte can fade up behind a title and fade away again.
Keep their purpose clear. Black at the head and tail, bars only when someone asks for them, and countdowns only when they serve sync or style. A colour matte is often the simplest answer when a title is fighting a busy background.
These small tools in Video by Zaweba save a lot of fiddling. They're always the right size and frame rate for your timeline, and they're there whenever you need a gap, a background or a reference.
