Matt Tavani, who has a blog dedicated to the Canon TX1 ( http://powershot-tx1.blogspot.com ), shot a video entitled "New York City 720p video" and created a cool "lower thirds" effect using a "gaussian blur" band with clear text that tracked across the screen revealing the scene below as it moved. You can see the movie at either one of these two links:

http://s3.video.blip.tv/0270000554783/CanonTX1-NewYorkCityWithTheTX1819.mov

http://blip.tv/file/284638

He states in the blog that he used iMovie to create the lower thirds. Does anyone know how I might go about creating the same effect using Vegas 8?


Frank.

You can do much more complex stuff than that in Vegas.

It looks like they used a combination of keyframing and a top layer with reduced opacity.

You could do this a number of ways. I don't have the key strokes and menus.

3 Layers:
Top Layer: horizonal scrolling text effect as a mask on
Middle Layer: a solid layer with reduced Opacity
Bottom layer: video

I would probably create a single semi-opac layer in Photoshop with the text screened out and keyframe it over the video.

Here's a tutorial (http://vegas.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=168742) that gets you part of the way there.

Top layer-Text. Track composite mode is Mask
Second layer-video, second track is child to track one
Third layer-same video as on track two, but this one has blur applied.

Done.