Does anyone know how to make a trail effect that follows someone moving quickly, kind of a flash gordon thing or if someone was on drugs? Can that effect be done with Vegas or is that effect obtained during videotaping?

I believe the effect is called Ghosting.

You can also echo time as well, i know after effects can do it, dunno about vegas.

Zac

Premiere can do it too

I have done this in Vegas as follows:

Put the same clip on 3 timelines.

Move the top timeline right a few frames (say 4 or 6)
Move the middle timeline half that distance right (2 or 3)
Reduce the opacity of track two to about 50%
Reduce the opacity of track one to about 30%

Experiment with the settings and see what you can come up with.

I use Premiere, but I would do it like Edward suggests. Use a garbage matte to crop out the surroundings on the ghost tracks, and only space them 2-3 frames apart.

Thanks. It came out pretty good. I think it didn't come out great because I had both actor motion and a pan at the same time. At some points the ghosts got ahead of the real track although they were the same velocity. I can't figure that one out.

HELP! I'm being overtaken by my own ghost!
It gets more difficult if the camera is moving with the actor. nd if you use blur, the surrounding will blur more than the actor. I think you must use pan/crop and zoom and/or pan a little to keep the ghosts where they belong. Use keyframes to set the effects excatly where you want them. (But do it before you duplicate the track.)

umm.. i would suggest you try Pixelans 1.2 plugins for Vegas or premiere if thats what you use to edit...

it has "Step Motion" and "Step Time" which can be set to do what u are asking.. u can also pinpoint what RGB channel are set to flow (or ghost) and set the length and luminance of it...

very VERY effective.. especially with high action shots....

Peter,

Thanks for the tip. Sorry so long to reply, I was on vacation. I downloaded the Pixelan demo. It very easily created the effect I was looking for. Very nice. I played around with it some, but it seemed just a little bit buggy. It would leave ghosts at the beginning of the event when they shouldn't be there. I don't know if that was just a fluke or just because it was the demo. I'll probably buy it anyway since the little problems I had could probably be resolved but I just wanted to see if you have had any problems like that with it at all?