VS2018 - Using mask? to blur background?

[garjobo123]

VS2018

Is it possible to blur the background of a video. Eg, Person talking to camera, i want to blur the background.

Aware of Masks, gave it a go, couldnt really get it too work.

Checked youtube tutorials, appears do-able but perhaps not with VS2018. Also, couldn't see a 'feather effect mask' which is probably useful for something like this.

Thoughts welcome.

[alanball]

Have you looked at New Blue Rack focus:
https://youtu.be/GxBKafkHVRg

[Davidk]

Yes, it is. But it might not be the situation you haven't talked about.
Option 1 - this way you need 2 clips to do it.
Background on the timeline: can be a photo image or a video clip.
Person talking to camera: clip on the overlay track: size to suit. Suggest you use a green or blue screen (choose to avoid clashes with the background) to record this, and apply chroma key to mask the colour out in project mode
Locate, select and drag a filter to the timeline eg blur, or average; and this will blur the background while playing the whole sequence.

Option 2 - if the video clip is already recorded. Use the mask creator item that's been in the timeline tool bar of every version since X10 (as opposed to the masks option that is brother to chroma key) and create a mask around your interviewee or person speaking to camera. Then use the filters to blur the non-masked area.

[garjobo123]

Alan, yep tried all that Rackfocus is one of my fav's although since reinstallation of VS18 for some reason that one appears very slow to click and drag to timeline clip. Odd. Works ok once dragged but takes a while, and as mentioned on a previous thread whch went no-where! - really bogged down my 4k smartproxy footage to a unworkable crawl! however rendered fine.

Still, for this, thats not what i am after. As DavidK states. yes, aware green screen, but no this is after the event. Had messed about etc

Actually downloaded trial of VS2020..yeesh! took an hour to load in clips and literally stopped for no reason about 10x! useless. Did try something - youtube tutorials - but the blurred background effect - worked- but didnt really look right for what i was after.