How to use glass templates in Premiere Pro
By Spencer Tetik.
Every LaunchFrame glass template, the Glass Lower Third and the whole Liquid Glass Kit, has a Background clip slot. In Premiere you drop the same clip that's under the graphic into that slot, and the glass bends it. It takes about 30 seconds once you've done it once. Outside the glass, your shot underneath stays untouched.
Why the glass needs its own copy of your clip
Real glass works by bending the light that comes from behind it. In After Effects that's easy: the glass is a layer in the same comp as your footage, so it can read the pixels underneath and bend them.
A .mogrt is that After Effects comp sealed up for Premiere. Premiere renders it on its own, as if on an empty canvas, and then lays the finished graphic over your timeline. The template never sees the clips on the tracks below it, so there's nothing for the glass to bend. Premiere gives templates no way to read lower tracks, so this applies to every glass, blur or distortion template made for Premiere, not only ours. Adjustment layers can see what's below them, but a template can't be an adjustment layer.
The Background clip slot gets around that. It hands the template its own copy of the shot, so the glass has real footage to bend. Because it's the same clip, lined up to the same frame, the copy inside the glass matches the shot around it and the result looks like one piece of glass sitting on your video.
1. Place the graphic
Put your shot on V1. Drop the glass template on V2, above it, where you want the graphic to start.
2. Fill the slot with the same shot
Select the graphic. In the Properties panel (Essential Graphics > Edit in older versions), drag the same clip from the Project panel onto Background clip. Only the Project panel works: dragging from the timeline or the Media Browser doesn't.
3. Match the in point
Park the playhead on the graphic's first frame, select the V1 clip and press F (Match Frame). In the Source Monitor, press I, then Cmd/Ctrl+U to make a subclip, and drag that subclip onto Background clip. If your version of Premiere shows a start-time control under the slot, setting it there does the same job. The glass now shows the frame that's underneath it.
4. Trim or stretch with care
The in and out animations are protected and always play at full speed; trimming or stretching only changes the hold in the middle. At the template's own 10-second length the slot stays frame-accurate with the shot underneath. Stretched longer, Premiere may retime the slotted clip along with the hold, which makes it drift. Clear glass shows drift more than frosted glass, so on fast motion keep the graphic at 10 seconds or less, chain two copies, or raise Frost.
5. Keep playback smooth
Glass renders the whole slotted clip through the lens at 4K. While you edit, set playback resolution to 1/2 or 1/4 and render previews over the graphic (Enter). Lower Refraction or Color separation in the Liquid Glass Kit for faster previews, and turn on Use Previews when you export.
6. No clip? It still works
With the slot empty, the template detects it and switches to smoked glass: a solid, readable panel instead of glass with nothing behind it. In the Liquid Glass Kit you can also tick Show background clip full-frame and use the template in place of the shot on V1. The slotted clip is then the picture, so there's nothing to keep in sync.
In After Effects
No slot needed. In the Glass Lower Third, put your footage at the bottom of the template comp and the glass frosts it directly. In the Liquid Glass Kit, replace the Background Clip layer with your footage (Alt/Option-drag the footage onto it).
Building it, or trying it free
For the After Effects side, how to make Apple's Liquid Glass effect in After Effects walks through the build: the height map, the refraction map, the per-channel color fringes and the rim light. To try the Premiere workflow first, the Liquid Glass Pill is free, and liquid glass templates for Premiere Pro covers the whole kit.
