Editing Sample available from Vegas

jkb242 wrote on 1/14/2006, 12:16 PM

I have looked at the sample that I believe is entitled as above which shows some very interesting but somewhat simple techniques that realy added quite a lot to the short TV spot.

This is a promo for things that make Boston a truly unique city. The nature of my question deals with one technique that was used with which I have not experimented much. The Boston "write on" effect is an interesting use of the media generator. It appears that is also used a transparrent mask on which the Boston was written letter by letter. Can someone shed some light as to how this is created in a bit more detail or point me to some further reading? The demo files were not the least bit informative as to how this efffect is created from scratch and how it works with the media generator. I have not seen a plug-in chooser in vegas that automatically accomplishes this and there was no mention of a plug-in necessary in the demo description.

I would apprecaite any assistance and suggestions.

Thanks!

Comments

busterkeaton wrote on 1/14/2006, 12:38 PM

You need to open up the veg file for that project and then look at what information is there.

If you are fairly new to Vegas, you may need to get more acquainted with the Vegas interface and the tools before you can figure out how to analyze a veg file, but all the information is in there. Sharing veg files is one of the best ways to learn Vegas.

If you open up the veg file and look at the text event for Boston, you will see that both the Event Pan/Crop box and the Event FX box are colored in. These means that both of those tools are active. Click on the boxes to see how each tool was used.

The FX used is a masked generator. You can unclick the Mask generator box to see what this is doing in the clip. In this case, it's gettting rid of black background.

Now look at the Pan and Crop tool. If you look at the keyframe timeline, you will see that mask is selected and there are dozens of keyframes. Click from one keyframe to the next and you will see how they did this. What they did was use the Bezier mask tools in Pan and crop and, slowly mask in more and more of the text. If you right click the keyframes, you can see what type of keyframe they used. In this case they are all linear.

Also you can solo that video track and play the effect and it will show you that the effect relies on no other video tracks. For a minute I thought linear wipe used below it, was used to make the effect smoother, but the linear wipe is just for the lower third text.

Bezier tools are really powerful, but as you see it can be a bit complex to get the look you want.

jkb242 wrote on 1/14/2006, 12:44 PM

Thanks Busterkeaton, great adivice. I have not attempted to read the VEG file but I did study the effects and keyframes and had a general idea but did not realize that the Bezier plug-in was creating the mask. Yes, somewhat complex for sure.

Thanks!!

jkb242 wrote on 1/14/2006, 4:16 PM

I see what you mean by studing the VEG file which actually I did in my first attempt to understand what is going on here. I thought you were refering to another means of examining the veg file to uncover certain hidded events or attributes. When I looked more carefully after reading your comments still saw no referece to the Bezier mask in the PanCrop drop down menu that was used in this clip. Perhaps you just knew this intuitively but is inot obvious to me. I have used Pan&crop many times but not in combination with another plug-in like the mask. I simply do not understand the order or relationship of this particular veg file as it relates to my original question.

If you can point me toward any tutorials or further reading, please do as I would like to master and understand this conceop more fully as I develop own uses of these capabilities.

Thank you Busterkeaton..