First thx Gary for responding to the question I posted yesterday. Much appreciated!
New question – I know I can take any photo and have it displayed / masked into a shape say a circle. What I’m trying to do know is have the same effect for a video i.e., have a video play inside keynote but instead of it playing in a rectangular shape have it played in a circle. Is this possible within Keynote?
If not, can I create a ‘transparent round cutout’ in Preview save it as a PNG and then place that in front of the video? If so how?
Thx again…
—–
Carlos Rivera
You can. And it is a little bizarre how to do it at the moment. Ready for this?
You need a donut. With sprinkles. Well, actually, without the sprinkles. Really.
So it is possible to put a shape in Keynote on top of a video. The shape hides a part of the video. So if there were a shape with a round hole in it, you could place that over the video and it would mask out everything but the hole.
I did a search in the Shapes section of Keynote, and there is one that comes up: the donut.
So I put a donut over a video. It worked. But there are sprinkles and a reflection-like hole in the shape. So I Control-clicked on the donut and made it editable. Then I dragged and selected the points in the sprinkles to select them. Delete key to remove them. Then I had a featureless donut — just a torus shape. I enlarged it to fit and made the color the same as the background. Now my video shows through the hole in the donut!
I suppose if the outside of the donut doesn't cover all of the video, you could edit the points of the shape more to deform it so it does. Or, add some rectangle shapes to cover the corners.
I should do an episode on this.
Thx again. I think I may have come up with a different approach. Not sure if it is quicker but it does provide the flexibility of using any shape with any theme. Basically create a single slide, insert whatever shape you want, size / place wherever you want the video to be. Export the Keynote to images. Open the single image in preview. Using the instant alpha select the shape, hit delete, and save as PNG. Now simply insert the PNG into keynote placing the video behind the new image.
Carlos: Yep, that will work. Nice idea.
Thx - and yes I think a MacMost video on how to do this would be useful to others. Take care...
Can this be done on a Photo Booth Video?
Steven: It can be done with any type of video. Export your Photo Booth video to a file and then bring it into Keynote.
will this work on the video of a children's play? One of the 12 kids is not allowed to have his face posted on line. If he is standing, singing, it seems easy enough to paste the circle on his face. What about if he moves?
Barbara: This wouldn't be a good solution for that case. For one thing, it is only for playback in a Keynote presentation. And, yes, it won't work for someone moving. It takes a lot of work and know-how to blur out a moving element. I have a video on how to do this in Final Cut Pro. https://macmost.com/blurring-a-moving-face-in-final-cut-studio-pro-x.html