An Amazing Picture-in-Picture Plugin for Content Creators: FCB's PiP Effect

The video opens with an unboxing of vintage Indonesian instant noodles (purple edition, chopped peppers and stringy onions), a story about Jennifer Love Hewitt, and instructions for taking a fat one on the chin. The point of those bits: pretty much every type of content creator, from unboxers to storytellers to whatever that last one was, could use a good picture-in-picture effect. And the one we're covering is not only the best out there for Final Cut Pro, it's budget friendly and so, so easy to use.

It's FCB's Picture In Picture effect from Mr. Dylan Bates, The Final Cut Bro. Apply it from the effects browser and bing, bang, boom: resize with on-screen controls, drag it anywhere on screen, and fine-tune the position of the clip INSIDE the picture-in-picture. Simple things like that make editing so much easier, and that alone justifies the price. But the customization is where it shines. Here's the tour, section by section.

Section 1: Animation

Make the PiP animate in or out at whatever speed you like, going from your full-frame shot down to a floating window over another clip, without ever touching a keyframe.

Section 2: Shape

Square it off, round the corners, resize the inside shot. The sleeper feature is Extend Video Edges: it mirrors your shot inside the PiP so you get extra room to zoom out, and it makes the in/out animation look smoother because you never see black bars while it scales down. Just don't zoom out too far or the mirrored edges become visible.

Sections 3 and 4: Borders

This is where you brand it. Pick any border color (the eyedropper can grab a color straight off your viewer), set the thickness, and play with the offset, which effectively floats the border at a different size than the shot. Offset the border bigger than the shot and fade the inside a touch for a really unique look. Toggle on the second border in section 4, unlink its color, offset it differently, and you get a cool tube-looking double border. Fade parameters on both give you endless variations.

Section 5: Backgrounds (the fun one)

Give your PiP a custom background. Cut yourself out of your shot first, either with a green screen and FCP's keyer or with the excellent Keyper plugin from FxFactory if you don't have one. Order matters: place the keyer BEFORE the PiP effect so the cutout happens first.

Then go beyond solid colors: hit the drop zone, and any video or image becomes your background. My gaming-content example: take a logo, put FCP's built-in Blobs generator underneath with custom colors, select both and press Option G to make a compound clip, then choose that compound in the drop zone and switch the type from color solid to drop zone. Resize, reposition, toggle on the source drop shadow so you cast a shadow on your own background, and you've got a professional, fully branded effect that took minutes.

Section 6: Drop shadow

A realistic shadow behind the whole picture-in-picture for depth, with distance, blur, and angle controls.

The price

This plugin is so solid, and at the moment it's only $25. Use my code DYLANSUCKS for 10% off and make a cheap plugin even cheaper. Grab it here, and have a great rest of your day!