Think bubbles

[Ian Stark]

I wonder if anyone can sugest an effective way of producing picture in picture think bubbles.

Mature Brits on the forum may recall the hippo that Reginald Perrin used to see in a think bubble every time his mother in law entered the room. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks . . . Ian . . .

[Gary Kleiner]

Create your think bubble in a paint program with a transparant background. Size and position in Vegas with Pan/Crop and Track Motion.

Gary

[Tor Salomonsen]

Or use a think bubble from a truetype font, which is the easiest way to do it.

[Tor Salomonsen]

You'll find think (and talk) bubbles in Webdings - a font once issued free from Microsoft as part of their Webfonts program.

[Edward Troxel]

Or use a few tracks with a single color generated media and the cookie cutter to create multiple circles. However, I think Gary's method is probably the best.

[Tor Salomonsen]

However, I think Gary's method is probably the best.

Why?

[Edward Troxel]

Because you create is single image with the actual bubble and then simply overlay that image using a single track above the video track. Using the Cookie Cutter, several additional tracks would be needed.

The font option would certainly be a valid possibility. However, I just looked through every font on my system and NONE of them contained anything that looked like a "thought bubble".

[Tor Salomonsen]

That's too bad. Like I said, the Webdings font has it, in fact several sets, with handles righ and left etc. Too bad Microsoft stopped giving it away.
I suppose spreading the font on a forum like this would be a not done thing. ?

[Guy Bruner]

The Webdings font set I have in OpenOffice.org has right and left handed balloon bubbles and multiple bubbles. It is an open source office suite available from the website of the same name so this font set is probably shareable. However, you will still have to use cookie cutter to fill in the balloon. With Gary's method you have more control over the shape and other attributes.

[Guy Bruner]

Actually a quick web search turned up this link to the free font:

http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/webdings.html

[Edward Troxel]

Thanks for the link. I'll download it and take a look!

[Tor Salomonsen]

Get it while it lasts.
Here's how you make a PIP in a font symbol (could be a think bubble or any other shape)
Look at the examples: http://home.hesbynett.no/saltor/_test/hund2.wmv (rightclick and save)

The first is a simple font symbol. Add the bubble like normal text on a track above the video. On the track further above, add the symbol that goes in the bubble, as text, and adjust the colour and placement. That's it.

The second example has video in the PIP.
First, add the bubble like you did in the first example. Add the pip video on a track above the bubble, and copy the bubble to the track above the pip video.
Press the little arrow on the left of the pip video track head to make it a composite child.
And if you want, add a thin outline to the original bubble image (text generator effects).

If you want oddly shaped PIPs, this is the way to go. You can do it with text, too. A bold font would be best, of course. Plus, you can animate them with pan/crop or 3D LE, and defromation FX, like waves.

Now, start collecting TrueType fonts with curious shapes.

[Edward Troxel]

The picture method will ultimately be the most flexible. However, the font method is still fairly easy to accomplish.

[Ian Stark]

Thanks for all the replies and tips. I'm off to play now.