I am a happy Vegas user, but I still find the ability to create and employ basic masks frustrating in Vegas 5.0. A much easier and inviitng method of using masks is seen with After Effects. One can draw single or multiple rectangular, circular, or free form Bezier masks directly on the preview window, add opacity settings, feathers, etc. Then you can either slide the clip beneath the mask or drag the masked event by simply dragging it anywhere. Scaling is easy and there's no need for pan/crop window manipulations or resorting to separate track motion settings.

Being limited to the Bezier pen is painful in that it is difficult to create basic shpaes easily. Also, when I want to slide the image under the mask or move the cropped image, it is not always intuitive and simple.

Also, using the alpha/luminance masks on a parent layer, then adding a masking filter can also be cumbersome.

Perhaps the Cookie Cutter Filter could be expanded to let users draw free form geometric shapes and then drag, scale, and rotate them easily?

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

-Marc S