Sure, this is very possible in Vegas.

1 - Hurray! You're gonna have fun!
2 - Good for you!
3 - Completely immaterial. Who hasn't been one, often?

A - Yes, emminently.
B - Probably only the fireball. There's probably tons of free fireball clips you can find for download with a little googling.
C - Yes, probably in a few minutes. Even an idiot could do it in short order, so i'm sure you'll do even better than that!

A few concepts to keep in mind that tend to trip up new folks:

- Multiple tracks. The Vegas track structure is top-down, like you were laying several pieces of film on top of each other. Wherever you can see through the top layer (track), you will see the tracks below. So, put your text on track one and your pictures below it. Lots of new folks try putting them on the same track and can't figure out why the picture disappears.

- Overlap. Vegas does crossfades by overlapping two pictures on the same track. Drop the first picture on the second track, then the second picture right after it. Now drag the second one so that it overlaps the first part way. When you play it back you'll see picture one fading out as picture two fades in.

- Timing. The amount of time the picture appears on the screen is specified by how much of the timeline it takes up. If you want it to last longer, stretch it out wider. If you want it to go away sooner, squish it shorter. Same thing for crossfades: the length of the overlap determines the length of the crossfade.

- Moving pictures (read the next paragraph before this one). For lots of various reasons Pan/Crop is way better than Track Motion for making a picture scroll across the screen. It might not be quite as easy, but it's close, and it's just plain better. At the bottom of the Pan/Crop frame is a miniature little timeline. You can click on that timeline and add a <+> symbol for a "keyframe". You can then move the cropping frame around to specify where the picture should be at that point in time. Add another keyframe further down the line and move the picture again. The picture will now glide from the first position to the second.

- Aspect ratio matching. Speaking of Pan/Crop, Vegas has two idiosyncrasies. First is that it always shrinks the picture to fit within the frame, leaving black edges on the sides or top/bottom if necessary. When you move the picture or zoom in or out, Vegas also uses the original picture's shape for cropping rather than the finished video's frame shape. this means that parts of your picture can disappear even when it seems like they should be visible inside the frame! The simple fix for both of these problems is, first thing when you open up Pan/Crop, right-mouse-button click in the middle of the picture and from the popup menu choose Match output aspect. Bang! Both problems gone.

- Weird transitions. Vegas doesn't do the fireball thingie. However, if you do a short crossfade between the two pictures on track 2 and put the fireball on track 1 aligned with the crossfade, the fireball will cover up the crossfade and it may look like what you're after.

- Play. Have fun! Don't be afraid to ask anything.

Free clips of fireballs and explosions can be found at www.detonationfilms.com

Peter

My thanks indeed to all who have posted replies. In sum, they put me leaps ahead already :-).
As anybody mad enough to wander by my site could probably guess, I'm working on a concept for a Book Trailer. Mostly because I'm far too broke right now to afford the skills of those much better at making them than I will ever be (blushes).
I'll wander by the detonation site - for that, many thanks. Should I be looking for something with a transparent background, or does that matter?

Transparent. If you want to add a color background, just do that in a layer below your blast clip.

MT

In essence, what's in my head is a still with a fireball exploding from the centre, washing out over the whole still, then disolving into the next still. Or I think I do. I've probably got the language and terms all wrong - after all, I'm an Idiot :-).
My thanks indeed, sir - now I want to get home and try to mess around :-).

What I want to try to do is move from across a stock image, zooming closer as I go. Why? Well, the stock image has an element in it which is the main element of my cover. So I want to travel across the stock image, then focus in on the castle which is the main element - then transition from the castle in the stcock image to the book cover. Does that make any sense at all, or am I just talking absolute aardvark's ankles? :-)

Aardvark's ankles aside, you should be able to accomplish what you want within limitations. Start looking at chroma keying within Vegas as that is the tool that is going to make your background "transparent." The clips you'll find at detonation are shot against black backgrounds. In a nutshell, keying is erasing a particular color from a clip. By erasing the black background, you'll be able to place that explosion over your castle and see the castle behind it as the explosion dissipates. I think this is what you're after.
The limitations I spoke of earlier will become apparent to you as you begin experimenting with keying your explosions. The quality of the explosion clip will determine how closely you can zoom in without it looking pixelated. How closely you can zoom in will determine how much you can pan the clip around the screen, etc., etc.. There's a lot to it but you have a great attitude and ought to have a blast tinkering with it.

Don't forget to check Youtube for a gazillion tutorials on 'How to to things using Sony Vegas Video'

I'm an amateur at all of this too.

While I agree with all that has been said; Vegas may not be your best choice for what I consider a slideshow. I been using Vegas Pro (8. 9, 10, 11) to to create hobby videos (mostly nature and wildlife).

My daughter recently got married and wanted a slideshow of her wedding; there were well over a thousand pictures. Someone on this site has suggested Proshow Producer or Proshow Gold for slideshows.

Proshow excels in making slideshows consisting of mostly static pictures with a bit of video thrown in. In my opinion that is exactly the opposite for Vegas.

Although your described slideshow is very simple and Vegas will be able to accomplish what you want you might want to take a look a some slideshow software. I personally recommend Proshow (by Photodex); but there are many choices available.

regards.

Lord (heh - or Lady) Goshep

Oh, dear. I guess the whole 'Book Trailer' thing sort of gives it away, but yes, I'm a writer. Well, part of me is. So I spend far too much time with words. So forigve me if I cracked up when I saw you say, while talking about expolsions, 'you...ought to have a blast' :-).
Hmmm. Now. Where did I leave the C4? Oh - and a camera. Oh, and I need to check my life insurance... :-P.

I let slip a pun and didn't even realize it! I've fancied myself a writer but have never had the guts to put anything out there to be lampooned by people who...well...lampoon things.

Best of luck to you in this endeavor...

Lord goshep

Lord Goshep

Well and all. This isn't the place for me to be blowing my own trumpet, nor yet gilding my own lily. But as I tell new friends in the writer support groups I haunt. Finidhing a book is hard.. Very hard. But if you want it out on there street, whether in mainstream or e-pub, it's the easiest part :-). 'A Comedy of Terrors comes out as an e-pub from a Canadian publisher in July, hence my learning curve deadline.
But there. I'll shut up about it in case people think I'm trying to do drive-by advertising or market building. Which is what the Book Trailer is for :-).

Hire a professional to do it.
Would have been completed by now - at a much higher quality than you'll achieve.

Lord [r]Evolution

You are 100% right. Heck, you're probably 1000% right. On the other hand:

1: I would have learned nothing about how to do it
2: I probably couldn't afford them. Without wanting to whine the whole 'starving artiist' whining, er, I'm a starving artist. I started down this path when I did some searching for what the Great and Wise are charging to make Book Trailers :-). I'm sure the type of professionals we're talking about here wouldn't be any cheaper, and rightly so. Skilled people deserve their money - even if I don't have it to give them :-(. Never mind the whole 'flying dragon' thing I have in the back of my head... :-(.

But youi're still right. Lots of right. Like I said. I'm an Idiot... (blushes)

Hi Graeme, I don't think the self deprecation is needed on this forum. You're someone who has curiosity and wants to learn more about editing with Vegas. This forum is a great resource, please don't be intimidated. I've been using Vegas for years and yesterday I was within 3 mins of posting a question that anyone with a few days experience might have been able to answer ( but I was still going to put my pride aside and ask anyway). Fortunately a light bulb came on, just in time. Agree with the earlier advice re YouTube video tutorials & on this Sony site as well. If you're wanting to dive in, there is a very good book published by Douglas Spotted Eagle that walks you through most of what you'll want to know. Welcome, enjoy & ask questions here

Graeme,

Loved your last response!

Do it yourself, learn something. You may discover a new passion.

While there are very many good and generous people on these boards, I'd like to advocate a search of Chienworks (reply #2) past posts. And don't limit yourself to the "Vegas Pro" forums, he's very active in the "Movie Studio" forums as well, helping a lot of novice editors. The reason I know this is years ago I was in your situation (minus the literary talents...) and I found his advice to be patient and seemingly always speaking to me, with the issues I was having.

So peruse the older topics (both forums), get the software and dive in. The worst that could happen is you learn a new skill.

Cheers,

Keith

Lord Duncan

While I'm more than used to admitting to all my failings, faults and flaws - heh, I'm married, after all - I confess. That isn't the entire nature of the Idiot. The Main in my 'A Comedy of Terrors' is Court Idiot - and his job is to be blamed for everything that goes wrong. And he's _not_ even married :-). But the title sort of stuck... :-).

In respect of Lord [r]Evolution's (whose assessment of my potential ability and chance if success is likely accurate (blushes)) comment (did I mention he was 100% right?). If it gets to the night before release, and the best I have is still a bunch of the aforementioned aardvark's ankles, where might I go looking to find out I was right about not being abel to afford someone who actually knew what they were doing :-)?
No. That's not me giving up already :-). I haven;t even got started on failing yet, so I can't give up until I've at least managed to fail :-)). But like somebody (who may, or may not, have been Sir MacPherson (Mac) Robertson) once said - time spent in reconnaisence is seldom time wasted...

If I can add some petroleum to the fire ball mix

You can use fx noise texture with a color gradient ring spot bump on ring and noise texture composite displacement map to get fire fx
New project nest fire ring use as displacement on image and use gradient ring whit as mask for image

Filmed footage will give better results but this is more fun and you won’t get smoke in your eyes

In both nest and mask image simply enlarge to get ring expanding. Add head banging audio to match.

[LINk=

Awesome effect! But I'm way too dumb to figure out what you did from watchin' your tutorial. But thanks anyway!

Rory is a FX magician. This forum should have "like" button (or in this case "love" button).

...Jerry

Graeme, welcome to the forum. Can't add anything new to help you with your project, but I might suggest you see a doctor about that blushing problem... could be the heartbreak of rosacea.