Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q3Q4)

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Working along on my final color corrections/tweaks it suddenly hit me that a guy walks behind in one of my man-on-the-street interviews, and his face could be recognized (whoever he is). But neither of us noticed him walk past at the time (heck, I've watched this section over and over, and never thought anything of it). The bottom line is, we never grabbed him to get a release form. But there must be a way to blur him out, isn't there? Anyone have any suggestions? I noticed a Pepsi can in another shot, too, so even though trademarked things are supposed to be ok if used for their intended purpose (so I've read) maybe I should take a shot at blurring it out as well? What a pain...
Marcia

[Glenn Chan]

If it's a documentary you have more lee-way for these kinds of things, although I'm not sure what the laws are. You could also consider the chance you will get sued- is it possible that guy on the street will sue you? (In some cases the answer may be no.)

2- Anyways to blur things:

Vegas 5:
Use the masking tool to isolate either the thing you want to blur out, or the person who is talking. If you isolate the person who is talking, then you will get fake shallow DOF instead of the Cops effect.

Before you mask, duplicate the video onto itself and apply a blur to the top/bottom layer. Apply a blur like gaussian blur to the top/bottom layer.

[Michael Wisniewski]

I use tape for video footage, and a data CD/DVD for all other files.

[Edward Troxel]

You may also be able to use the "cookie cutter" to isolate either the walker or the talker. I have an article in the newsletter that discusses blurring out a face. You can either to that with the walker or set it backwards to use with the talker.

[Adi Head]

that's cool. i was looking for something like that in vegas. i once had to recapture a few tapes using scene detection as i did when originally capturing them. but due to frame drops or what-not, there was a slight difference between the first captured batch and the re-captured batch (which was a bit of a headache to sort out).

so what information does it save? timecode? camera date/time (as scene detection uses)?

[Edward Troxel]

Basically the clip name, tape name, and start and stop times for all clips captured. I'm sure there's other information too but that would be the basics.

[Peter Jefferson]

DOF and RacK Focus tracks are dead easy with vegas :)

the easiest and thought free way is to run 2 video tracks, one running a soft gausian blur, the other running a cookie cutter effect.

u can easily create a rack focus by moving the cookie cutter node.

Also if u use a linear blur instead of the gausian, u can creaate some strange horizontal warped blurs, akin to the rack focus shots found in the Meg Ryan Movie In The Cut, youll notice the bluring has a strange warp strecth feel to it.. u can do this easily in Vegas

[Peter Jefferson]

its strange..

ooooooh and for those working with ac3, make sure u get the latest DVD2.. theres a bug which crashes the pgoram when importing large SEPERATE ac3.. so for example, if u had a stereo linked ac3 and then u were to import a seperate 5.1 track, it would poo itself

[Jonathan Gentry]

I have set regions in my video. How can I lock the regions to the edited clips so that when I move things around prior to the markers they lock to the video they are marking?

Make sense?

[Michael Morlan]

Um, there is no magical combination of filters that will create the look of "Waking Life" because the film is an act of creation, as it were.

While much of the footage is rotoscoped from live footage it is still rotoscoped, frame by frame, by hand. There are contemporary cel-animation programs that remove some of the tedium of keying, tweening, and coloring cel sequences, but is still the work of cel artists and craftsmen.

There are also a variety of cel animation styles present in the film. Which one would you be desiring to implement?

[Edward Troxel]

If you are using ripple edit, make sure you use one of the modes that also affects markers & regions.

[Joseph Lawrence]

Thanks for all the suggestions,

I experimented with the 'pencil sketch' technique described in the the webpage referenced in Ed Troxel's post above. I use Vegas 4.0c and followed the steps exactly as written. I started with a single previously rendered AVI file dropped on the timeline in Vegas. After following the pencil sketch steps, I adjusted the settings on the Bump Map dialog to the following:

Light Type = omnidirectional
Intensity = 0.500
Ambience = 0.150
Shininess = 0.500
Bump height = 1.000
SRC x: 0.000 y: 0.000 z: 3.000
Bump Channel: GREEN (anything but alpha)


The key is to check the 'flip input surface' box and voila all the colors return. I have a short (35 second 10Mb MPEG1) clip as an example, but I don't have a webpage to host it. If someone could help me, I'd be glad to send it to him/her to upload. The result reminds me of the 'American Pop' appearance and some scenes in 'Waking Life'. The Bump Map dialog leaves lots of room for tuning to personal preferences.

Joseph Lawrence

[Ron Guilmette]

Sorry if this is such a basic question but I've read the manual and tried a search but no luck.
I have a scene of a jewlery shop interior. I want to crop a another frame down to just a diamond ring and then fly it into the interior shot. Like a small picture in the lower right of the screen.

This is what I have done:
I cropped the frame down to just the ring and then put it above the scene of the interior. I also add some keys to the cropped shot to make it travel accross the lower portion of the screen untill it reaches the lower right.

Am I in the ball park? Because it still is not working. I'm sure there is something that I'm missing.

Any help would be extreamly appreciated.

[Edward Troxel]

Use Pan/Crop to crop the image. Use Track Motion to make it move.

[Ron Guilmette]

Track motion...... I was trying to use pannig from within the crop window......
Thanks I'll give that a shot.