Track Motion assistance

[Jeff Harper]

I will try to describe what I need to do exactly, here goes.

I've never used trackmotion before. I have played with it while trying to achieve the desired effect I need for my current project but I haven't figured it out.

I have a video of a corporate speaker talking for 30 minutes. As per client, in the final product the speaker should be on left side of screen and various powerpoint slides on the right. The images will not be cropped, but instead, made smaller. The slides and video should be side by side, and tilted slightly inwards toward the center toward each other, if that makes sense. I would then use some kind of generic colored background to fill in the empty space around the items.

I am trying to figure out how to tilt the images inward towards each other using track motion or any other tool that is readily available to me.

Any suggestions?

[Juris Lielpeteris]

You must use the 3D track motion to get the tilt images.
Turn Track Composition Mode to 3D Source Aplha for enabling 3D track motion.

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks a lot Juris, will try it.

[Mike Kujbida]

Jeff, the suggestion Juris made will work just fine.
Having shot and burned several projects like this, I do question your client's method of showing the final product. There's no way the viewer is going to be able to easily read what's on the PPT slide if it's at an angle :-(
I bring all the slides into my Vegas project and then do a dissolve to each one as the speaker is talking, staying on it as long as is necessary.
I also include a copy of the PPT presentation on the final DVD. That way, if they want to, the viewer can load it up and watch it while listening to the speech. This is especially critical in the case of detailed slides and we all know that clients love lots of detail and very small fonts on their PPT presentations :-)

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks, Mike, I agree totally.

[Mike Kujbida]

And we both know that the client is always right :-D

[Renton Maclachlan]

For what it's worth...each tilted picture needs to be on its own track as track motion affects everything on the track...at least that's what I've found...

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks Renton, I kind of figured that. So far I've got the tracks sized and tilted, but that's all I've done so far. Very weird thing, 3D.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Once you've got your composite layout setup... you might consider a nice 3D transition where the powerpoint gates forward to full-screen when slides really have to be read, and have the powerpoint fold back revealing the composite when the presenter isn't directly referring to the slide.

This is one of those rich looking designs that Vegas makes very easy...

Then, to really gild the lily, add some dim reflections of the two video sources in the empty foreground of the composite.

Who needs After Effects? ;-)

[Jeff Harper]

Seth, besides the fact I have not selected a background yet, I knew something was missing. It is the reflections you mention. Exactly what is needed. I tried mirror FX but not the right one. How do I get a reflection in Vegas?

[Seth Bloombaum]

Oh darn, I'm more the sort for clever suggestions than actually doing it! What time is it in the U.K.? We need Grazie on this!

Let's see... Not being so familiar with parent/child track relationships in track motion (perhaps someone who knows more here will chime in...),

I'd set up my full composite, which should consist of 3 tracks, background being the lowest. For now you could drop in a nice 2 color gradient from the media generator. Don't go too crazy here, edge of night is a good cold look, deep brick red to autumn orange might be a starting point for a warm look, depending on the PP and presenter color palette. Lots of choices. It should be subtle.

I'd duplicate each of the upper tracks, PP and presenter, to become the mirrored images. I'd move them to between the full tracks and background.

In the duplicate tracks I'd use 3D track motion to set them down where they belong, perhaps having to reverse them L-R in the process, but maybe not. They'll be reverse-reading, they'll be forshortened and will be narrower at their forward end than their back end I think, the back will match the width of the original image.

I think with the look you described they'll want to fall L-R a little towards the outside of the frame.

In the duplicate tracks I'd take the track composite level of each down to maybe 30%.

In the duplicate tracks I'd add some significant gaussian blur as a track-level effect. Play with that and composite level... find a balance.

Now comes the cheat - Any time I was transitioning to/from fullscreen PP, I'd just use a track composite level envelope to fade the reflections to 0%, then back to 100% when coming back. Remember, although this is 100% of the envelope control, we're still at 30%-ish at the composite level control in the track header.

This is really not a bad cheat if done smoothly, because during the transitions the eye will tend to follow the bigger and more obvious moving parts.

[Renton Maclachlan]

Any chance of some screen shots to show the effects you're talking about? I have some track motion stuff coming up and this may enhance it...

[Ian Stark]

Just to add a plugin route for you Jeff, here's a tutorial I did for NewBlueFX about five years ago to achieve something similar to what you're after. There are obvious differences, as you'll see, but the end result is quite easy to achieve with relatively few keyframes. You'd obviously need to tweak the position of the two 'windows' and you'd probably want to use the depth of field effect.

Create 3D Reflections with Picture In Picture - YouTube

Hope that helps :-)

[Seth Bloombaum]

Nice and easy, looks great Ian! Somewhere I've got VE2, never went into the PiP effect, will have to try it out.

Seems pretty straightforward compared to the Vegas-native setup I was describing, it will take less time. And, those reflections track with the source PiPs during transitions. I was also liking the "fade" control on the reflections, a nice look.

Renton, I mentioned that I was more for suggesting than doing? Actually, this is an easy effect that I've used in Wirecast, a webcast encoder that includes a software switcher with efx. Reading Jeff's initial post, I realized that this would all be possible in Vegas with 3D track motion.

I'm booked up this week, but may have time to play over the weekend with both approaches. If so I'll post my results.

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

It's amazing, the amount of features available within Vegas to achieve these effects.
However, without sounding like a Hitfilm evangelist ;-) this software really comes into it's own to make effects like the ones being discussed in 3D space - as well as a lot lot more.
It truly is a viable alternative to After Effects, but the beauty is in the integration with Vegas. You could right-click on your clips on the timeline and immediately open up the shot in Hitfilm and work on any number of layers - then when you're happy with the result, return to Vegas and your completed compositing work is there, contained on just one video track...