Something's bothered me for a long time. Why is there not a tool in Vegas to simply draw a shape on a layer to cut it out. It would look like a little pencil or something.

Why does the cookie cutter have to use preset geometric shapes, and why, or why does the Bezier Masking have that interface that results in hard-to-control loops?

You can always create a mask of any shape you desire in a paint program such as Photo Shop.

We may see that in the future; Vegas gets more powerful -- and simpler to use -- all the time.

But hey, I figure, if the complaints about Vegas are about not having super-advanced tools -- which no other NLE comes close to having -- that speaks volumes about Vegas!

Try "drawing" with the bezier tool like you would with pen and pencil.

Except you have to imagine lines that touch the shape you want to draw, and draw along that line.

Or another way to look at it:

2- When you click, it puts a point down there. While holding the mouse button down, drag in any direction. This controls the curvature of the line. Let get and the point is set.

I have always fumbled with Bezier masking.

About creating a mask in photoship. How, roughly, do I do that?

Want you want is white for the area you want to keep and black for the area you want to mask out.

Then, using the mask as your parent track and the video as your child track (set compositing mode to "multiply(mask)" and drop a mask generator on the mask event), the only part of the video which will be seen is that which corresponds to the white part of the mask.

Take a look at Vol 3, #1 of my newsletter. It describes ways to split screen but the same principles would apply.

ive been hassling Sony/Sonic foundry for afew years now...
Basically the ability to load in Gradients/BW images into the cookie cutter and use THAT as the shape...
since before the version 4 beta came out in fact.. it would save alot fo time with bezier masking etc etc

You can use a gradient or a B/W photo as a mask. It would work out to the same thing.

You can use a gradient or a B/W photo as a mask. It would work out to the same thing.

While you can do that now, it takes multiple tracks and setup time. I agree with Peter. It would be neat to simply load the image into the Cookie Cutter as an effect to the image instead.

Here's an interesting possibility, though. Install the Luminance plugin transition from: http://www.endor.demon.co.uk/

Now you can add an event to the timeline, make the entire event a "fade out", apply the transition and pick the mask, and then add and adjust a "Transition Progress" envelope.

Well, I certainly would agree that more options in the cookie cutter would be nice.

One thing I'm surprised it doesn't have is the classic "TV" shape, with rounded corners.