How To Clone Yourself in Video with Magix Video ProX and Magix Edit Pro Plus [Video]

I'm gonna show you how to clone yourself within a video. But before we get into that you should familiarize yourself with a few other concepts used in video editing.

And these are:

• Cropping the video
• Alpha masks
• Keyframing

If you combine these 3 techniques you can do all sorts of fun stuff with your footage. In this tutorial, we're using Magix Edit Pro Plus or Magix Video Pro X.



There are two ways to create a ghost of yourself in a video:

1. First method involves cropping one vid and overlaying it onto the other. You need constant lighting for this (otherwise you'll notice a vertical line between the two clips). 
2. The second method relies on alpha masks - images that go from white to black (gradient). The gradient defines how one video is overlayed onto the the baseline track

With keyframes you can animate the position of media objects. In this case, we animated the alpha mask by defining two keyframes - that makes the alpha mask travel from a particular point to another. This trick helps you correct the artifacts that may appear when working with masks. 

The example at the end of my video was done with Section (cropping) and even though the footage was shot indoor, you can still notice the vertical line between the cropped clips. That's because the camera does't have a constant exposure value set (in auto mode the EV and aperture are constantly changing).

But of course, you need to pay attention to lighting - make sure there is no variation otherwise it'll be too obvious that you have two clips combined. Indoor is better coz the lighting is constant. Also the shot must be static (use a tripod).

If you do get some variation in color between the two shots the gradient within the alpha mask helps to diffuse the contrast. But to keep that to a minimum don't stop the camera as you are shooting - get both scenes recorded within the same file. Since I shot in daylight there was some variation (sun covered by clouds) so I preferred to use this method (mask) for my video's intro. 

Get Magix here. 

Hope this helps. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions. 

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