Vegas Tips

Vegas Video Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips are tricks when using Vegas Video that I've learned:

• How to do a split screen with credit roll
• How do I get rid of wind noises in my video?
• My captured Vegas clips don't work with some applications. Why?
• How to get output from Cool 3D Studio as a transparent overlay?
• What can I do with the Batch Converter?
• Can I make animated backdrops in Vegas?
• How do I get images to be the right ratio?
• When I pan a window the speed is not consistent.
• How do I move markers and regions when I insert and delete events?
• How can I print out chapter points for use in my DVD authoring program?
• What's the best way to add vertical pictures to my video?
• Editing Video & Voice without affecting Music
• How do I make a Title Credit Roll slower?
• How to make video clips float like pieces of paper onto a table?
• How to make an animated Hollywood style clapper board?
• How do I make Text look like its being typed on a typewriter?
• How do I make an animated border?
• How do I clean up video with noise?
• How do I sync the length of my music and slide show pictures?
• How can I sync Generated Media keyframes to the timeline?
• How can I make new Themes in DVD Architect 1.0 & 2.0?
  

How to do a split screen with credit roll

This is something you see at the end of many programs. While they roll the credits, the screen compresses to half its vertical size or half its horizontal size and on the other half they run bloopers or other movie clips. To make this effect, your bloopers should be on one track while your credit roll is on another (usually the upper track). Make sure the bloopers and credit roll overlap each other totally. Then follow the instructions below for the version of Vegas that you have.

In Vegas 4 this is easy to recreate using Track Motion. Go into Track Motion and hold down Ctrl-Alt while you drag one size of the video toward the center and it will squeeze it to one side for you. Now open Track Motion on the other track and do the opposite with the rolling credits track. That's all there is to it.

Vegas 5 adds 3D Motion to Track Motion so this is accomplished in a little different manner and its actually easier to just type in the coordinates and sizes than to manipulate the video directly. This is because there is no longer a handle on the side of the frame to adjust (only the corners are adjustable). To do this in Vegas 5 follow these steps:

1. Go into Track Motion on the Credit Roll track

2. Unselect the Lock Aspect Ration button. This is because you want to squeeze the aspect ration to get both videos on the screen at once.

3. (Optional) If you want the split to be gradual, select a cursor position 1 or 2 seconds into the credit roll and create a keyframe. Otherwise skip this step and the split will be immediate.

4. Change the Position values as follows:

   Position	Value
   X:	180
   Y:	0
   Width:	360
   Height:	480

    

5. Close Track Motion for the Credit Roll track.

6. Repeat Steps 1 – 5 on the Bloopers track changing the X: value to –180.

Here is a veggie file for Vegas 5: CreditRoll2x2.veg
 

How do I get rid of wind noises in my video?

I've done this right in Vegas with fairly good results. I never remember to turn on the wind screen on my camera either. Go into the track FX and select the Track EQ that is already added for you. The first point is already set for Low Shelf, which is what you want. Set the Frequency (Hz) to 300 and the Gain (dB) to –Inf (all the way to the left). Now listen to a loop of your audio and adjust the frequency to filter more or less of the wind.

The trade-off is that other audio will sound a little thin because you've removed some bass. If you add some music softly playing in the background on another track, it will mask this because the music will have full fidelity and provide bottom to the mix. If adding music is inappropriate for your video then you have to live with the thin sound or pay a lot more for Noise Reduction 2.0. Hope this helps.

My captured Vegas clips don't work with some applications. Why?

I've found that some applications like Ulead Cool 3D Studio, AlamDV, and particleIllusion SE 2.0 can't open the AVI files I've captured or produced with Vegas but others like VirtualDub and Pinnacle Studio 8 can open them just fine. The problem is that Vegas creates OpenDML (AVI version 2.0) compatible files by default and some applications can't handle this.

I don't know how to fix this for capture but for rendering you have to go into the Options and select the Video tab and deselect "Create an OpenDML (AVI version 2.0) compatible file" checkbox (i.e., make sure there's no check).  Now I can open the files I render from Vegas in all of my programs. So it was the programs that couldn't handle OpenDML that were having the problem.

How to get output from Cool 3D Studio as a transparent overlay?

Ulead Cool 3D Studio is great for making 3D titles for your videos. When you save your 3D animation as an AVI file in Cool 3D Studio, save it as a Video Overlay. Use the menu items File->Export Video Overlay->AVI.... This should make a 32bit AVI file with an alpha channel. Vegas 4 will not recognize the alpha channel until you tell it to. After you drop the video on a track, right-click on it and select properties from the pop-up menu. Then on the dialog that pops up, go to the Media tab and change Alpha channel: property from none to Straight (unmatted) and press OK. Your title video should now have a check board background where the alpha channel was and float over the lower tracks.

What can I do with the Batch Converter?

The batch converter is really great for all of your batch processing needs. How about processing wav files that are in the wrong format. You know, you collect sound FX from the internet but some are 22K samples and some are 44k samples and you want them all to be 48K samples so they're all ready to insert into your videos without further conversion. You can also use it to clean up the audio in your video. Let's say you have a low hum on all your video captures. You can run them through a notch filter in batch mode and remove it. Of course, you could also do this in Vegas while you're editing as well. It's just a neat utility for doing batch processing. Probably a more practical use is to convert a bunch of AVI files to MPEG files before authoring a DVD. Just drop in all your AVI's select MPEG2 as the output format, and go to bed (don't forget to press the "process" button first though). Wake up to a collection of MPEG2 files ready to drop into your DVD. Or start processing those MPEGs while you editing the next batch in Vegas. It's just a great timesaver for batch jobs. Now if I can just get it to clean my basement.

Can I make animated backdrops in Vegas?

Best way I’ve found in Vegas 4 is using the Generated Media Noise Texture. If you add a key frame at the end and adjusting the Progress (in degrees) just a bit it will animate the noise. Of course key framing any of the properties is bound to change something but I find the progress most appealing. Try using the Puffy Clouds preset and adjust the progress just a little on the last key frame to get some pretty convincing moving clouds.

If you want to just have an animated border on a video you can use the Cookie Cutter and another track. The trick is adding the background on the track just below the track you want to border so it shows through the Cookie Cutter.

Here are the steps:

1. Insert two video tacks
2. Drop your animated background on the bottom track 
3. Place your video that needs the animated border on the top track
4. Add the Cookie Cutter to the event on the top track
5. In the Cookie Cutter dialog, select Shape: Rectangle
6. Select Method: Cut away all but selection
7. Adjust Size: to the size of your border.

Finally you can use Generate Media Color Gradient to make animated backdrops. Just change an existing backdrop and save it as a new name (press the floppy disk icon). You can use key-framing to animate the changes. Let's say you don't like the fading edge inside the Hollow background. Just change it. By moving points (1) and (2) on top of each other the fade becomes a hard edge. By moving them away from each other the fade gets softer. You can even add a 3^rd or 4^th point with different color or edge hardness. You really have to play around with this to really appreciate it.

Try moving the two points to the right of the screen and place them on top of each other. This should give you a top and bottom blue border with nothing on the sides. Then change the color of point (1) to white and you should have the effect you need. This should be placed on the overlay track so it's in front of your movie.

How do I get images to be the right ratio?

When you drop a 720x480 image on the timeline you may notice that its squashed a little. This is especially noticeable if the image has a circle in it and the circle appears as an oval. What you need to do is bring up the media properties for the 720x480 still and change the pixel aspect ratio to 0.9091 (DV/D1). This is correctly display the image.

When I pan a window the speed is not consistent.

I had a problem with doing pans and zooms where the pan would start slowly and then speed up and slow down again at a the end.  I set the keyframe types to Linear but this didn't help. The trick is to set the Smoothness to 0%. This will keep the motion consistent through the entire keyframe sequence.

How do I move markers and regions when I insert and delete events?

Make sure ripple edit is on. For deleting events and having the markers move left, make a time selection, and then hit the delete key. The markers will then move in sync with the events. If you want all of the events on all tracks to move, make sure you have all the tracks selected. The easiest way to do this is to select the top track by clicking on the information area on the left, then scroll to the botom track and Shift-click on the left. This will select all tracks in between.

For inserting events and have all the markers move to the right, use the Insert Time first. The markers will move. Then add your new event in the time opening you just made.

How can I print out chapter points for use in my DVD authoring program?

To get a "printout" of where-ever you want chapter points, do the following:

1. Set a Marker wherever you want a chapter point
2. Press "Alt-4" to show the edit details box
3. In the "show" dropdown box - pick "Markers"
4. Highlight all the rows
5. press CTRL+C
6. open Notepad
7. press CTRL+V
8. print

What's the best way to add vertical pictures to my video?

Place a copy of the vertical picture on a lower track right under the original in Vegas. Then crop it to fill the screen and add a gaussian blur. What now shows through on the sides of the vertical picture will be a blur of the original texture that the picture already has. This makes the fact that its vertical much less distracting than vertical black or colored bars. For an optimization, save the blurred event on the lower track as an image and delete the original event and add the image back. This will speed up rendering since VV won't have to apply the blur to the whole event. It just renders the already blurred image.

Alternately you could do all this in photoshop to the vertical picture in advance. I'd imagine you could write a macro to copy the image, crop it to 655x480 (i.e., full width), blur it, and paste the original back into it. Either way, the results are much, much, nicer than black borders.

Editing Video & Voice without affecting Music

So you've got your video almost finished, the music track is laid down, but there are a few more edits to the video you'd like to make to tighten it up. How do you edit the video and voice without affecting the music track? Select the first event on your music track. Right click to bring up the context menu and select Select events to end. This should highlight the all the events on the track. Now right click on the first event again and select Switches->Lock. This will lock all the events on the music track. You can now edit the rest of the video and the music will not move or be cut.

How do I make a Title Credit Roll slower?

The way to make a credit roll slower is to make it last longer so it has more time to scroll up the screen. You change its length like any other event. 

1. Right-click on the credit roll event on the timeline
2. Select Properties and then the Media tab
3. Adjust the Length to be longer. The longer it is, the slower it scrolls
4. Finally, you have to drag the end of the event out to the tick mark to take advantage of the new length.

If you go beyond the divot (a little tick mark at the top) the event will loop which is not what you want so make sure you stop at the divot.

How to make video clips float like pieces of paper onto a table?

This can be done with Satish's 3D LE PluginPac. If all the clips you want to use are the same length it becomes quite easy. Just make the first one float down the bottom and then use Paste Event Attributes to copy the float to the other clips on other tracks. Here is a step by step once you add 3D LE to the clip:

1. Make the clip smaller by adjusting the Scale X/Y (I used 0.40)
2. Use Rotate X in a negative direction to tilt the clip back in space (I used -50)
3. Use Rotate Z to tilt the clip in the direction of its first downward movement. (I used -25)
4. Use Position X in the negative to fly the clip off the left side of the screen.
5. Create a new keyframe and move Position X positive to fly the clip to the right side of the screen
6. Use Rotate Z in the positive to change its direction for the float back to the left (I used +25) (optionally adjust Position Y along the way to make the video clip fall faster)
7. Create a new keyframe and move Position X negative to fly the clip back to the left.
8. Use Rotate Z in the negative to change its direction for the float back to the right (I used -25) (optionally adjust Position Y along the way to make the video clip fall faster)
9. Repeat steps 5 thru 8 until you have floated the clip to the bottom of the screen.
10. For a rippling effect to the floating pages, add a Horizontal Only Wave effect to the event.
11. Now go back to each of the keyframes and add a keyframe for the Wave effect changing the Horizontal waves parameter and Horizontal amplitude parameter slightly at each keyframe to make the waves more random.

You can see how by keyframing Position X and Rotate Z it is very easy to float the clip to the bottom of the screen. Just use Copy and Paste Event Attributes on the next clip to give it the same float. Now stagger these clips on multiple tracks and they will all float to the bottom of the screen. Adjust the last keyframe so that it ends just above the last one my adjusting Position Y for a nice stacking effect. Also a slight adjustment on Rotate Y (positive on some and negative on others) on the last keyframe will make the pile look messy and more natural.

Special thanks to Jim G for the horizontal waves idea and for Satish for his excellent plugin. Here is the Vegas 4 FloatingPages.veg file for this effect. I've also recreated this file using Cool 3D Production Studio. Here is FloatingPages.c3d and a sample video of what it looks like.

How do I add shadows to flying video created with 3D PluginPac?

Watch for this tutorial soon. In the mean time, here is the ShadowPages.zip veggie with a JPG file to show the previous FloatingPages with shadows. Notice the shadow is only cast on the table. This is done with a mask and I'll show you how. 

Here is a picture of the final results with shadows. This uses the JPG of a childs table that Jim G. sent me.

Imagine each colored page replaced with your video. Using a velocity envelope you could have the video freeze when it hits the table.

How to make an animated Hollywood style clapper board

When people need a little animation in their videos they often think of using animated GIF files but Vegas can do some pretty nice animation using generated media and track motion. Here is how to make a Hollywood style clapperboard using only generated media: 

1. Create 4 video tracks by pressing Shift-Ctrl-Q 4 times.
2. Label them as follows: Track 1: Clapper Top, Track 2: Stripes, Track 3: ClapBoard, and Track 4: Background
3. Make a selection on the timeline to be the length of your animation. I selected 5 seconds. I do this so that the generated media become the correct size when added using the right-click method.
4. On Track 4, use right-click, Insert Generated Media to insert a Sonic Foundry Solid Color so you have a nice contrast for the black clapperboard that we're about to make. By using right clicking on the timeline instead of dragging from the Media Generators group, the media will default to the size of your selection. You can replace it with your video later but having a solid color background makes it easier to see where you're placing things while building the animation. I selected the color Blue for my background. Don't use Black as that's the color of the clapperboard and you won't be able to see what you're doing later.
5. On Track 3, use right click, Insert Generated Media again to insert Sonic Foundry Text with a solid black background. Change the text to say Scene 1 or whatever you want your clapperboard to say.
6. Use Track Motion on Track 3 to make the text media smaller and position it toward the bottom of the screen. Leave enough room at the top of the screen for the clapper to open and close.
7. On Track 2, use right click, Insert Generated Media one last time and add a Sonic Foundry Checkerboard. We're going to use this to make the stripes.
8. From the Video FX, add a Sonic Foundry Deform to Track 2. We need make the checkers tilt to one side so on the Deform dialog box, change theAmount to 1.00 and Horizontal Shear to -0.099. You'll notice that the right side is now slanted but we want the edge of the stripes to be straight. We'll fix that in the next step with a Cookie Cutter.
9. From the Video FX, add a Sonic Foundry Cookie Cutter to Track 2. Change the Shape to be Rectangle. Move the center of the cookie cutter to the left until the right slanted edge on the bottom row of checkers is flat. We're only going to use the bottom row so don't worry about anything above that.
10. Now we need to crop the media so only the bottom row of the checkerboard pattern shows. We do this by using Pan/Crop and deselected Maintain aspect ratio and Stretch to fill frame from the Source area of the Pan/Crop dialog box. (You may need to resize this dialog to make these options show). Next hold down the Atl and Ctrl keys and drag the top bar on video window down until only the bottom row of checkers is showing in the preview window. You should have what looks like the clapper stripes at the bottom of your video window.
11. Use Track Motion on Track 2 to resize and position the stripe bar at the top inside of your clapperboard.
12. Control drag or Copy and paste the media from Track 2 to Track 1. When prompted toCreate a new copy of the source media press OK.
13. Use Track Motion on Track 1 to resize and position the stripe bar on top of the previous striped bar on Track 2. Close Track Motion for now, we'll come back to it after the next step.
14. Go back into the generate media on Track 1 and move the Grid Position to right until the stripes line up. This is key to making the clapper bar look like one solid bar when closed.
15. Open Track Motion on Track 1 again because its time to add the animation. Before we move anything, we wan to change the center of motion to be the lower right corner where the stripped bar ends. Notice it doesn't end at the extreme right because it moved when we sheared it and cropped it with the cookie cutter. So position the center of motion at the bottom just a little left of the extreme right hard corner.
16. Select the point on the timeline that you want the clapper to be fully open (I used about half way through the length of the media) and rotate the media to the right by positioning the mouse outside the video area until it turns to a circular arrow. Hold the mouse button and drag to the right. You should see the clapper open on your preview screen. If the point of rotation isn't at the right end of the clapper, move the center of motion indicator and try again.
17. Finally find the point you want the clapper to be closed again and copy and paste the first keyframe (which is already closed) to that position. You might want it to close faster than it opened so don't space it evenly with respect to the open position.

That's it. It was lot of steps but shows a lot of the concepts of track motion and cropping. Here is a veg file with the completed project: ClapperBoard.veg  

How do I make Text look like its being typed on a typewriter?

The easiest way to do this is to keyframe the text media like this:

1. Insert a Text Generated Media and set up the font, size, color, etc that you want.
2. Make sure you press the Left Justify button because text is center justified by default. If the text is centered it will move as you add more letters.
3. Start by typing the first letter of the text only.
4. Now make a keyframe a little further down the timeline and type the 2nd letter.
5. Make another keyframe further down the timeline and type the 3rd letter.
6. Keep making new keyframes and typing one letter at a time until your whole message is written.
7. Finally, highlight all the keyframes and right click on one and select Hold from the popup menu for the keyframe type. This will cause the letters to instantly appear at the designated keyframe.

That’s all there is to it. Add a typing sound effect and you're all set.

How do I make an animated border?

Getting the animated border is easy to do in Vegas. Just use the Cookie Cutter. The trick is adding the background on the track just below the track you want to border so it shows through the Cookie Cutter. 

To make an animated background just uses some generated noise media. Then add a key frame at the end and adjusting the Progress (in degrees) just a bit. Of course key framing any of the properties is bound to change something but I find the progress most appealing. Try using the Puffy Clouds preset and adjust the progress just a little on the last key frame to get some pretty convincing moving clouds.

Here are the steps to make it into a border:

1. Insert two video tacks
2. Drop your animated background on the bottom track (generated media noise textures work nice for this)
3. Place your video that needs the animated border on the top track
4. Add the Cookie Cutter to the event on the top track
5. In the Cookie Cutter dialog, select Shape: Rectangle
6. Select Method: Cut away all but selection
7. Adjust Size: to the size of your border.
   
   

How do I clean up video with noise?

Every once in a while I get have some analog footage that has noise in the signal. I like to clean this up before I start editing. After I capture it, I run the raw footage through VirtualDub with the Border Control and Dynamic Noise Reduction 2.1 filters to clean it up. Border Control allows me to remove the noise that often occurs around the border of analog footage. This is never shown by the TV so it's OK to just blacken it. It also saves bits when encoding. Dynamic Noise Reduction is a temporal processor that compares frames before and after to determine what is signal and what is noise. It does an excellent job of removing analog video noise.

I also use that opportunity to trim the in and out points since analog capture is not that exact. Once that’s complete, I bring the video into Vegas and edit. If I had to color correct all my clips, I’d probably do the same thing. I usually capture a clip and then run it through VirtualDub while I’m capturing the next clip. So this really does save time.

How do I sync the length of my music and slide show pictures?

Synchronizing music and pictures takes a bit of playing around. If you want to hear the whole song then you need to add enough pictures to fill the time. If you don’t want to repeat pictures, you might keep each of them on the timeline longer adjusting their time to fill out the music. The quickest way to do this is as follows:

1. Right-click on the first picture on the timeline
2. Pick Select Events to End from the pop-up context menu. This will select all the pictures on the timeline.
3. Type the letter ‘G’ to group the pictures together
4. Scroll to the end of the timeline and hold the Ctrl key while stretching the last event to the duration of the music. You should now see a zig-zag line the length of the timeline which indicates it has been time stretched.

That’s it. This works with picture shows because the pictures are static and stretching them only affects the time they are displayed on the screen. If these were AVI files, they would play in slow motion, which is probably not the desired effect you were looking for.

Alternately, you could adjust the music by cutting out a verse or extra chorus to make it shorter. Vegas will allow you to do nondestructive editing to shorten the song. Usually you also have to adjust the length of the pictures as well as cut the length of the song to get a perfect match.

There is no magic here. I usually try and pick a song that’s shorter then the pictures and then lengthen it by adding verses or choruses multiple times. People might miss it more of you make the song shorter than if you make it longer (especially if you cut out their favorite verse). Many “extended play” cuts of song are done this way so it seems more natural an approach.

How can I sync Generated Media keyframes to the timeline?

As you may know, Sony Vegas does not have a Sync to Cursor option in the Generated Media keyframe timeline. Here is an easy way to sync the cursor manually:

Scrub the Vegas timeline to find the place where you want an event to occur in your generated media. Then use Ctrl+G then Ctrl+C to copy the cursor position to the clipboard.

Now go to your generated media and double-click on the time readout in the lower right-hand corner of the keyframe timeline and use CTRL+V to paste the cursor position there. When you press ENTER the cursor in the Generated media keyframe timeline will jump to the project cursor position. Just place your keyframe there and you're all set.

How can I make new Themes in DVD Architect 1.0 & 2.0?

Making new themes in DVD Architect 1 & 2 is sort of difficult because you have to understand XML. I find the easiest thing to do is:

1. Find a theme that is close to the one you want.

2. Copy theme directory under the _Themes folder for that theme to somewhere else on your PC and give it a new name (don’t leave it under _Themes).

3. Replace the media in the new directory with your media without changing any names.

4. Edit the default.xml file in that directory and change the contents of the <NAME> tag to the name you want to appear in DVD Architect

5. ZIP the contents of the directory (do not including the directory itself, just the files) into a ZIP file.

6. Rename the .ZIP file to .THM and move it to the themes directory under the DVD Architect 1.0 directory.

The next time you start up DVD Architect, it will see the new THM file (which is really just a renamed ZIP file) and it will expand it into the _Themes directory so that it shows up in DVD Architect.