Easy way to create a lower third for titles?
 

I'm not advanced with Vegas 7 but I would like to be able to create a simple lower third to use over and over again in this DVD I'm making. Can someone help me do this?

simple, inside vegas would be to open a new video track and add the color of your choice from "media gens." open that track for track motion and move it down to the lower third area and select your opacity and add your text.

I made one, how does this look? Are safe regions still a big issue on today's televisions? I'm previewing this on a 20" samsung flat screen crt tv and when I put the text just inside the inner safe region, it looks so high from the bottom on the TV..

Absolutely - if you want it to work on the largest number of displays possible.

Looks good! Yes, TV's can crop up to 20% around the edge. Use the guides and output to a few monitors if you can. You'll learn the safe areas pretty quick.

I'm just using the default safe zone areas then.. Does that frame capture look ok on your computer monitor? It looks really nice on the TV, but on my monitor, it looks really dark..

Does that screen capture look too dark for people who are going to buy the DVD that intend to watch it on a computer? I took the frame straight from the Vegas timeline..

I think it looks very pro. Not too dark at all.

Wow, very pro?? That's the first time I heard that with regard to my video editing haha. Thank you. Well I guess if it's not too dark on your computer monitor, it must mean that mine isn't set bright enough. Do others reading this thread agree with Brandon?

Yes
 

Yes. It looks well done. Keeping in mind that this is just a screen grab, but judging it so far it looks very clean. No crap in the background like if it were filmed in a bedroom, living room. If the audio quality matches the screen grab then you have a quality product.

Yes, it's just a simple black background so there's no distractions from the subject giving the lesson. My concern was with the overall levels since it is looking great on the TV I'm using as a monitor, but looks rather dark on my LCD computer monitor. Is there any way of properly calibrating my computer monitor ? Then again I guess everyone has all their monitors set differently. The main thing I'm trying to avoid is having the overall levels look either washed out or too dark between the two viewing mediums.

Ulead Photoimpact 12 has lower thirds, which can be saved as jpegs, pngs gifs, and work pretty well, then use pan crop

Calibrated Monitors
 

THe only wa to get nearly 100% sure answers to this question is to actually spend the several hundred and buy a calibrated monitor. Yes they are expensive (The DVInfo.net classifieds has one up for $600 right now).

I didn't know one could buy a calibrated computer monitor...

For a lot less than $600 ($79 to $249 US), pick up one of the Spyder products and calibrate yourself.