Smooth fade in effects

[Milt Lee]

I don't know how to state this in a cogent way, so please bear with me.

I am creating a tag to run on the beginning of my films (think dreamworks, miramax, castle rock)

It seems fairly simple. The first track is generated media Hollow Bone Films - it fades up one color, changes background, the glow on the letters disappears, everything is really nice.

But the second track is a jpeg. I added Light Rays and put the sensitivity at .60 and strength at .60 I moved the rays to come from the sun in the picture. Then about 1 second in, I set the sensitivity to .00 and the strength at .00. So my assumption is that the effect will gradually fade from fuzzy to clear over 1 sec.

Is that assumption correct? What appears to happen is that the effect starts to fade out, but then rather than completing the smooth fade out, it just plops out.

Should I try to use some other program to do this effect? Is this the way that it works in Vegas or is there another trick that I just don't know about - a setting in options that I'm missing?

One more note - I do some stuff in 24p and some in 30i - so I've been changing the settings to match the different renders but it looks the same in each version. I would love to hear anybody else's experience in this.

Thanks a bunch!
Milt Lee
Hollow Bone Films

[Edward Troxel]

Sometimes changing an effect to "0" doesn't always totally remove that effect. In your case it sounds like it DOES finally get removed but is a little abrupt in the process.

What if you try this: Set that event to fade the effect down but not all the way to zero. Now have it crossfade to the same image WITHOUT the effect and use that image for the remainder. That might get you the efect you are looking for.

[Milt Lee]

cool, I'll give it a try. Is this the sort of thing that people use Boris for?

I've never tried it.

I'll give your solution a try and see what happens. It make sense that it would work, but in the scheme of things, it seems a bit cludgy.

Thanks again,
Milt

[Milt Lee]

SO KEWL!!!

Wow, it really worked beautifully! Thanks for the solution! I'm going to remember that for all kinds of effects that I want to do. The idea of cross-fading into an image or the very same video without the effect never occured to me. And it was very very simple to do.

You restored my faith!
Milt

[Edward Troxel]

Glad to hear it worked well. It can be used in many cases and is really simple to do. Just an extra split and then extend to overlap itself. and you're done!

[Matt Brabender]

Good to see you got it sorted out.

As for the Boris question .... for that particular effect, I'd use after effects with the Sapphire plugins. In general, for stuff like that I use compositors rather than NLE's, for the reason of having more control over everything. I think you'll find Boris would give you greater scope to customise the effect, but having said that, there's no reason you shouldn't do it in your NLE if you get the desired result and you're comfortable working that way.

[Milt Lee]

I think I'm starting to see what you folks are talking about. Up until this time, most of my work has been pretty straight - cuts, dissolves, some titles etc. But I have noticed that as I move further into video production vs. audio production that I'm starting to see the divisions in software. It appears that some programs concentrate on cgi, some on editing and and placement. I have seen that lots of Vegas folks use a variety of other programs, from other venders for the effects work that they are doing.

Maybe I just haven't really explored all that you can do in Vegas (actually I'm sure of that) But still if there are software packages out there that can do that stuff with more control, and precision, then that works for me.

One final note on this issue. I noticed that the type I was using for the words "Hollow Bone Films" looked beautiful BEFORE I rendered them as an AVI file, but the end result is not that sharp. I don't know how to describe the look - I would say that it doesn't have the nice sharpe straight edges that it did before it was rendered. It looks muddy after the render - the glow has melted into the letters themselves.

I am using Times Roman transparent, added an outline and drop shadow - which - when I use a black background gives a beautiful outlined letter style. But after I render it, it comes out fuzzy looking. Is there some reason for this? It doesn't seem to make a difference if I render it at 24p or 30i.

Again, thanks for your help on this.

Milt

[Milt Lee]

OK - I don't know if I conveyed what I was trying to say in my last post, so I put the final tag up on a web page - along with the 2 images that I was talking about. If you want to check it out, I would love to hear your comments about the type. As I look at the Windows Media Video, encoded at 3mg, it shows what I mean about the type looking much fuzzier than on my un-rendered version. I'll admit that my display on my laptop is pretty sharp (sager x-brite wide screen) but I would assume that the rendered AVI file would look the same as the unrendered. Perhaps I need to gain a deeper understanding of what rendering really does to images.

Anyway here's a link to the pictures and tag: http://hollowbonefilms.com/hbt.htm

I appreciate any comments.
Milt Lee

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Milt Lee

One final note on this issue. I noticed that the type I was using for the words "Hollow Bone Films" looked beautiful BEFORE I rendered them as an AVI file, but the end result is not that sharp. I don't know how to describe the look - I would say that it doesn't have the nice sharpe straight edges that it did before it was rendered. It looks muddy after the render - the glow has melted into the letters themselves.

Milt, the basic problem for any titling is the technical limitations of the DV format. The other issue (especially for your situtation) is that red is just about the absolutely worst colour to use for titles because of the issues you've experienced.

Adam Wilt has an excellent article on his site at http://adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#colorSampling Pictures of what happens are at http://adamwilt.com/pix-sampling.html

There's also a good article on tiltling with the DV codec at http://www.creativecow.net/articles/...philip/titles/

Mike

[Milt Lee]

very cool, I'll take a look. Appreciate the info.
Milt