Create Lower Third for Vegas in Boris Graffiti??

earthrisers wrote on 8/29/2007, 10:31 PM
I'm sweating my way up the mountain that is the Boris Graffiti learning curve, with its terrible documentation trying to push me back down every step of the way... but that's a story already told by several folk on this forum.
My question for the point I've reached, is this:
I've managed to create a "Lower Thirds" title in Graffiti, and it resides on its own track in Vegas. But it has a non-transparent background, which occupies the entire screen. I can lower the "compositeness" of the track to let my Vegas track show through,... but that's really not a satisfactory solution at all, because it makes my "main" screen look washed out.
Lower Thirds are supposed to let the screen show through, except for the portion that actually IS the lower third.
Has anyone worked with this in Graffiti, and found a way to produce a "real" Lower Third?

PS: I know it's easy and fast to create Lower Thirds in VASST UltimateS, which I also have. I wouldn't really use Graffiti for Lower Thirds, except that it's part of my effort at learning how to use Graffiti at all.

Comments

farss wrote on 8/29/2007, 11:19 PM
Most likely Vegas is not recognising the alpha channel in the clip.
R-Click it and change the Alpha channel property, sorry I can't be more specific, all Vegas machine working at the moment.
AlistairLock wrote on 8/30/2007, 4:31 AM
In the Boris project settings, try setting alpha to "premultiplied on black"

If the boris event is above other tracks, try deleting the bottom track in Boris, so you are left with only your text/lower third etc.

Hope that helps.

It is a steep learning curve compared with the ease of Vegas, but have been using it to do Title straps that look like a brass nameplate for a trailer for the New Dirk Gently radio series, and it's looking rather nice...
JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/30/2007, 8:25 AM
> I wouldn't really use Graffiti for Lower Thirds, except that it's part of my effort at learning how to use Graffiti at all.

You may be past this point already but check out my tutorial on using Boris Graffiti LTD with Vegas. It is very basic but I take you round trip from Boris into Vegas and show you how to render and import so that the alpha channel is correctly recognized.

~jr
Dreamline wrote on 8/30/2007, 9:38 AM
Can't you make an empty event and apply Boris ot that?
Dreamline wrote on 8/30/2007, 9:38 AM
Can't you make an empty event and apply Boris ot that?
earthrisers wrote on 8/30/2007, 3:00 PM
Yes... I did create the Graffiti "lower third" in an empty event.
The trouble is that when it creates a lower third, Graffiti also fills in the "upper 2/3" of the screen with a non-transparent background.

I'm gonna go run the tutorial mentioned a few messages back... every little tip will help in this enterprise...

Ernie
earthrisers wrote on 8/30/2007, 3:10 PM
HEY THANKS, JOHNNY ROY

It's right there in the first few paragraphs of your first tutorial...
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Before you output to Vegas to use as an overlay, you want to hide the background track by clicking the eye icon in the header of the background track on the timeline. Otherwise the background will be output as well.
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Exactly what I need, for the current problem. (It woulda been nice of Boris documentation to mention this early, somewhere --- it probably is mentioned, someplace buried deep in the later parts of the documentation.)
Now ONWARD to learn some more and discover the next problem...
Thanks again!
earthrisers wrote on 8/30/2007, 4:04 PM
Oh, well.
I went on to the next Johnny Roy tutorial... and when, in Graffiti, I try to use Fonts in the Style Pallette, or try to change textures in the text window, Vegas crashes.
Every time.

The day after I start trying to learn Graffiti, I hear that Vegas8 is going to have a new Titler in it. Bad karma or something.

I'm still trying to learn Graffiti -- as I go along, I'm making note of which features to avoid, in order not to crash Vegas; and also making note of which features actually seem cool.