Using a window and an external matte at the same time

I'm using Resolve 16.2.8.005 on a Mac. I can't upgrade. Fusion crashes the program all the time so I have to do this in the Color tab.

I have a PNG that I want to cover parts of a video. I used a window with polygon to cut a hole in the PNG and I like the hole I made. I will not be able to reproduce it in a paint program. Then I decided I wanted more holes. Since the new holes are more complicated, I used a paint program. I made a black and white matte as a PNG and imported it.

I saw how to use an external matte. You just drag it over and connected it to the Alpha Output, with the original video node connected to whatever the green dot output is called.

The problem is that the window gets ignored. All I get are the new holes, without the original one. How do I use an external matte at the same time as a window?

The thing I tried a thousand times and seemed the logical method but didn't ever work until after I posted my question finally worked after the program crashed. One feature of DR, I have painfully discovered, but always forget about, is that it won't do what it's supposed to until you restart it.

The thing that worked was to point the external matte to the source video instead of the alpha output. It seemed like a logical thing to do when I first tried it, but the program told me that was the wrong thing to do because it didn't work. Five hours later, I tried it again and it worked.

the tool you are looking for is called key mixer node. with this node you can add/subtract/etc. multiple mattes.

the tool you are looking for is called key mixer node. with this node you can add/subtract/etc. multiple mattes.

I tried it then and I tried it now and it was not what I was looking for. There were not multiple mattes. There was a single matte and a source image with a window. The mixer node stripped the window.

I saw how to use an external matte. You just drag it over and connected it to the Alpha Output, with the original video node connected to whatever the green dot output is called. The problem is that the window gets ignored. All I get are the new holes, without the original one. How do I use an external matte at the same time as a window?

What if you put the power window/mask before the external matte is connected? What if you put the power window on the key line after it's connected? (I'm not in front of my system at the moment, so I'm going from memory here, but I think it's possible).

I'm using Resolve 16.2.8.005 on a Mac. I can't upgrade. Fusion crashes the program all the time so I have to do this in the Color tab.

What specific Mac are you using? What CPU and GPU? Which OS? There is a minimum system requirement you have to have in order to run Resolve, and there are older machines that won't work well.

the tool you are looking for is called key mixer node. with this node you can add/subtract/etc. multiple mattes.

I tried it then and I tried it now and it was not what I was looking for. There were not multiple mattes. There was a single matte and a source image with a window. The mixer node stripped the window.

From what you wrote above I still think the key mixer is the way to go. You'd have to connect the alpha from your polygon node (blue output) to the first input and the png to the other input. If the black and white png is not an alpha yet but simply rgb values you can convert rgb to alpha by adding a node inbetween and connecting green (out) to blue (in). Now you connect the two alphas in the key mixer.

In the key output section of the key mixer you can adjust the boolean operations / the way those alphas are mixed together.

Maybe, if I'm completely off, a screenshot of your nodes might help to understand the set up better