Hollywood FX

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything you needed was a plug-in to Vegas. Unfortunately, there are lots of standalone packages that do great FX but don’t integrate into Vegas. One of these that I use is Pinnacle Hollywood FX. It has some great canned 3D transitions for weddings and other events. I thought I would share my workflow for doing this.

I also have some transitions that I created in HFX for you to download and enjoy. These transitions along with many other FREE high quality HFX transitions are also available on the Déclic Vidéo site which I highly recommend you visit if you are into Hollywood FX.

Exporting and Importing a Transition made with Hollywood FX

The following steps should be done in Vegas:

1. Create your normal transition in your video. Note: since Hollywood FX 3D transitions have a lot of movement, you may want them to transition longer so your viewer can "soak them in". In this example we use a Wedding Book transition which lasts 3 seconds.
   
   
    

2. Turn on Ignore Event Grouping (Ctrl+Shift+U) This will allow you to move events independent of their groups (i.e., move video without audio)
    

3. Split the video one frame before and one frame after the transition (S) (This will leave the audio uncut).
   
   
    

4. Insert a new video track above the track you are working on (Ctrl+Shift+Q)
    

5. Move the two split transition clips up to the new video track and place them end-to-end (as a cut with no transition so it is twice the size of the original hole it came out of)
   
   
    

6. Make a selection around these two clips and render just this section of the video to a new DV AVI file. This will be the file you work with in Hollywood FX.
    

7. Delete the clips on the upper track, they are no longer needed
    

8. Press Ctrl+Shift+U again to turn off Ignore Event Grouping (which will keep groups together again)

The following steps should be done in Pinnacle Studio:

1. Bring the rendered clip into Pinnacle Studio
    

2. Use the razor to cut at the original place where the two clips meet
   
   
    

3. Drop a HFX transition and overlap so there is only one frame remaining on each size (this is why we added an extra frame in Vegas)
   
   
    

4. Render this new clip with the HFX out as an DV AVI file without audio

The following steps should be done back in Vegas:

1. Drop this new AVI file in the hole in the video track that was left by moving the two split clips up a track.
   
   

The new AVI file should fit perfectly into the hole and be frame accurate.

The image on the left is the Hollywood FX Wedding Album transition. There are many 3D transitions that are appropriate for certain event videography. This tutorial can be adapted to export and import video to be used with any standalone application.

Happy Editing,