Corner Pinning: The Super Easy Effect That'll Make Your Videos That Much Better

Have you ever wanted to replace a TV screen or computer monitor in your film or video with footage you shot yourself, like your own news story about a zombie apocalypse or a video chat between two characters? If you thought it was a complicated, time-consuming process, no no no, my friend, it's not. It's incredibly easy to superimpose your own footage onto a still frame in After Effects using "corner pinning," and here to show you how to do it in less than two minutes is filmmaker Peter McKinnon. 

Now, you might be thinking, "Yeah, it's crazy simple to corner pin stuff on a still frame, but what about doing so on a moving frame?" Well, you will have to do some motion tracking with the "Perspective Corner Pin" tracking type, but it's essentially just as straightforward. All you do is take your four track points, place them on the corners of the screen you want to apply the effect to, drop in your footage, and that's basically it. Hit apply and After Effects with analyze your footage and create keyframes for you. You may have to adjust the positioning here and there if it's not tracking perfectly, but it's a hell of a lot faster than you having to set points frame by frame.

Here's a tutorial from TipTut that walks you through the process:

Got any other tips about corner pinning? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Peter McKinnon