Rasterizing a video stops it from playing back?

[southwestform]

I have a short video clip that was shot in front of a green screen. I brought it into CC2015 and wast to use the Magic Eraser tool to remove the background. When I try to, it prompts me to rasterize the layer first. After rasterizing it, I'm able to remove the green background, though the video no longer plays in the timeline?

Thanks.

[Benjamin Root]

You're going to need to remove the green screen one frame at a time, to my knowledge. A real video editing program such as Premiere Pro is set up for this sort of thing. Photoshop? Not so much.

If you have to do it in Photoshop, you should be able to use Color Range to make a selection of the green screen then use the delete key to remove. Then repeat on the next frame. Actually, if the camera was set for manual WB and exposure, you could even create an Action for Color Range, Delete, Deselect. Like this:

If it works, you can even set one of the F keys as a shortcut for the Action, to quickly get through all the frame in the video.

Again, a keyer in a video editor would be a much better option..

To answer your questio, though... Yes, rasterizing a video will turn the entire video into one long frame!

Hope this helps!

[southwestform]

1. For clarification, rasterizing the video will just convert it to the first frame of the video?

2. If I key it out in Premiere, and bring a short clip into PS, any idea if it will preserve transparency where the green background was removed?

Thank you.

[Benjamin Root]

I am not at my workstation currently to test, but it is either the first frame, or the the frame which the playhead is at when the rasterization takes place.

That is a very good question, also one which I do not know the answer to. If I had to guess, I'd say no..but that is a just a guess. I'd think you'd need an alpha channel for each frame.

May I ask what you are trying to do? You may be able to do it all in either Premiere Pro or After Effects.

[southwestform]

I want to simply create some short little video clips of people composited into different backgrounds with different graphic styled effects that can be used as ads. I know that this could absolutely be done with AE and PP. I was just hoping to be able to do it with PS just because I do not know AE and do not know how to pull a key in PP, though I guess that is where I will try and start...

Thanks for your help.

[Benjamin Root · Accepted solution]

Not too hard to do in Pr. If you have any questions for the Premiere Pro experts, here's the forum: Premiere Pro​