First off i'd like to say hi, im new to this forum seems like a great place.

Here's the thing i want to know if someone could walk me through a technic
i want to use a still image and overlay a video file but in a special way
what i mean is well for example lets say i have a picture of george bush's face and i would like to replace is eyes and mouth with a video file of my eyes and mouth therefore making it seem like hes talking and moving is eyes .. if theres and simpler way then adobe after effect i'd like to know

dont know if that makes any sense but you see that sometime like on the david letterman show or jay leno they'll use a still image of a celebrity and make it seem as if its speaking

Thanks in advance for any info..

It depends on how you want your final output to look, if your using moving images over a still image I'm assuming that you aren't going for a serious flawless composition and it could be very easy.

The problem is knowing how familiar you are with after effects. If you aren't I'm afraid I can't really go into the workings in too much detail here, it would be time consuming and really needs a book rather than a few paragraphs.

Can I assume you aren't very familiar as a familiarity with the program would tell you in itself how to do it, am I wrong?

If so; put your still image in the timeline and add the video footage as a layer above it, draw a mask (probably an oval one would do) round the mouth of the video file. Feather the edges to a desired amount). And set the mask proberties to none.

Then draw a mask around each of the eyes and do the same. Once you have the 3 masks drawn you may need to keyframe their positions, render the video out with alpha, and put it back in split up again with keyframed positions. That's if your video footage wasn't still.

If your shooting specifiacally for the task it's of course easier if you just keep your head perfectly still. As would re-shooting any not still footage if possible.

That way you just position and scale the video footage untill the eyes and mouth are in line with the still images eyes and mouth (If you lower the opacity of the video file temporarily you can see through it to line them up then adjust it back to 100%)

You need to change the mask properties from none to add now to see them.

Even if you are just wanting a funny and obvious composite you'll probably want to adjust the colour values of the video footage to get a close match with the still image.

You could do it in premiere.

Put your still image in video track 1, and your video file in track 2. Use the same temporarily lowering the opacity values and resizing/scaling to line up the mouths and eyes then put the opacity back.

Open the titler and make white oval shapes over the mouth and eyes. Put the title in video track three and apply the gaussian blur effect to feather the edges of the shapes.

Put the track matte effect on the video file, turn video track 3 off and set the setting for matte (in the effects controls) to video 3. You'll probably need to tick the Reverse box. Either with it ticked or un-ticked the eyes and mouth will be all that is seen of the video and the still image will be behind and around it.

You'll probably want to adjust the colour to match too.

David.

Your right im not to familar with it but i've used similar software before but i mostly work on photo editing . but your reply was very helpful and im quick learner it seems like most of the tools are similar to working with photoshop or image ready ..just need to play around with a little i'll get fast enough ..

Thanks again what you gave me is what i was looking for.