Take a look at the "Chroma Key" plugin. It does exactly what you want it to. Alternately, if you just want to change the color of one element in a scene (like change a shirt's color), try the secondary color corrector.

If you are using Vegas 4, the second colour corrector will let you change one colour into another (make a blue shirt red).
If your originals are steady you can create masks in an image manipulation program and then replace what's under the mask with whatever you like.
You can use the cookie cutter to create masks (adjust the feather to make soft edges). Use this to darken or colour parts of the image. This is not as accurate as a mask, so it depends on what you want to do and how your originals look.
A genius called Satish has developed a plug-in for Vegas that allows Vegas to use (free) VirtualDub filters.
Boris Red is about to become available as a plug-in to Vegas. I don't know what it does, but it costs about three times the price of Vegas, so it should do something.

Thank you both for your answers.

But isn't there anyway I can take away or make one part of the picture that has one colour transparent? Let's say I have footage consisting of but a few things in one scene, shot when using a tripod, for example: ground, a person, sky, and a tree. It would be really cool to, for example, take away the tree and replace it with let's say a christmas tree from another footage. For that to be possible I would have to make the tree in the original (first) footage transparent and then take the footage with the christmas tree as video2 and make the size appropriate to fit the original footage. As an idea, I think that would be a cool effect when doing movies on an amateur level.
That effect would be possible if you could lower the tranparency of only part of a clip: by first marking the area that you want to change and then lower the transparency for JUST THAT AREA to 0. But that isn't possible or?
But thanks Brian and Tor. I will try what you suggested.

Well, chroma key will remove a common color or part of the spectrum and render that area transparent, but I mean that in the literal layer sense, so you can see to the video track below it in the Vegas timeline.

You now sound like you actually want to remove an item from a scene, like taking a person or tree out of the scene and still rendering what would be behind it. That's a much more complicated effect, usually accomplished by Rotoscoping in a tool like After Effects or Commotion. Search on this and other forums for "Rotoscoping" and see if that's more like what you're after.

i am trying to import a video file exported in premier with avid dv codec but vegas doesn´t recognizes. Also i have problems on the settings of the codec. For PAL what do i use? 420 or 411. 601 or RGB?

Plase help!

Howdy Vegas Users .... I am looking for someone in Florida that might want to tutor me on Vegas 4.

With and experienced editor, I figure and hour or two will save me about 10 hours on the front end.

The pay is good so give me a reply and lets work something out.

Ok back to this manual.

Mark

This sounds like a morphing tool - that might get you what you want.

From what I understand you wish to a have a an item change into something else - this is called "morphing". Vegas has the ability to use "some" third party plugins. A real wizzard at doing this stuff is our friend over there on the Vegas fourm called Satish - yeah?

Do a search on the Vegas site for "morphing" "satish".

Hope this helps

Grazie

You may also want to read my newsletters. You can find them at http://www.jetdv.com/tts/

Although not listed yet, issue #4 is available at http://www.jetdv.com/tts/TTS01-04.pdf

Edward, that second link isn't live.

My web host has been having some problems over the past couple of weeks after upgrading software. If the link goes down, keep trying - it WILL come back. For example, it is working now.

Highly recommend Ed's site for any questions you may have.

need a little more info.

you rendered in premiere using avid codec. now you take that rendered clip and Vegas will not play/open it .. will windows media player play it ?

do i assume that you have premiere and avid installed on your computer that you have Vegas installed ?

or was the premiere/avid rendered on a different computer?
if this is the case you would need to install avid codec on the computer that you have Vegas installed ...

You can download the Avid Codec from Avid Support. (http://support01.avid.com/support/ProdRef.nsf/AdminProbSolByProduct/837BFD6A617C2BE285256C13005F6DA2)Not every program supports Avid Codecs. QuickTime does, as well as Adobe After Effects. I would be very surprised if Vegas did. Basically, if you want to use Avid Codecs, you need to use their NLE's.

Sorry about the incorrect link up above. The correct link to issue #4 is http://www.jetdv.com/tts/archive/TTS01-04.pdf

no, I don't want to keep what is behind the object. I want to delete, or make an area transparent (which would lead to almost the same effect). I want to "erase" a certain part of the picture. Imagine a picture with a blue screen and one person infront of it: I want to "erase" the bluescreen (or lower the opacity of that area to 0) but keep the person as normal (100 % opacity, for example..).
But I don't mean that I just want to be able to erase the colour "blue"; I want to be able to take away, erase, whatever it might be in the picture that I don't want to keep. After having done that I would add a second videotrack with, for example, an environmental shot, and the result would be the person in a new surrounding. Is that what what chroma key does. I tried it, but only shortly, and it didn't seem to be exactly what I wanted.

What I want is to be able to mark an area of my footage, lower the opacity for only that area, and after that use some other footage as background. I want to erase part of the picture. Like when they produce proffesional pictures. Is that possible with Vegas (or any other similar program)?

Sounds like you want to create a matte or "travelling matte" in photoshop that is the same shape as the object you want to erase.

Use this matte as a video layer.

Good luck

"Is that what what chroma key does . . . " That is exactly what C-K does. For this to work you would have needed to "film" the "subject" against a pefect solid blue or green background like Superman flying through the air, that was a typical example of C-K, then Christopher Reeves was next seen flying over America. For this you need perfect lighting on the blue or green screen - yes? That's how you get Blue-Screen C-K.

You can do quite a bit with text in Vegas 4, but how the hell do you do :

V
E
R
T
I
C
A
L

Text?

I'm sure it's simple as hell, but I just can't figure it out? Anyone?

Michael Botkin
Vegas 4 and Premiere 6.5 User

Anyone had any experience removing that annoying 60hz hum (Fluorescent lamps) or any constant sound for that matter from a single channel dialogue track captured with a Sennheiser ME66/K6 on a GL2? The dialogue would be so much cleaner without it. I've tried messing with the noise gate, but I'm definately not a "sound" editor. I try to stick with the picture, but since Veags's audio tools seem to be great, I'd like to learn. Thanks,

Michael Botkin

Try using the 60hz notch setting on the Track EQ. Another option that would work well is the Noise Reduction plugin (but it is expensive)

Just like you did here? Or are you wanting to rotate the text? If you want to rotate the text, just use Pan/Crop or Track Motion. Either will work fine.

The noise gate just clamps down on noise after your track drops to a certain volume level, for things like reducing noise between breaths. Usually it's not worth using though, as the quiet gaps result in a less natural sound than spaces with some background fill.

For removing the hum, you want the Track EQ, with a hard notch at 60Hz. Apply the Track EQ to your audio track, active only one of the 4 filters, set it to 60 Hz with a narrow range, and crank down on the db. You should get a notable reduction in the hum, in realtime as you play with the effect. If the hum doesn't go away, try sliding up and down the spectrum until you find where the hum really is, and apply the EQ there.

load in the paragraphic FX

you'll see 4 sliders ( 100, 256, 1000 , 5000 grayed out)
move the vertical slider on the 100 down to bottom ( the 100 will now have white BG) ... then below is a horizontal slider (center frequency) ..create play back loop 10-20 sec of hum and dialogue) now move that horizontal slider to right very slow and listen very carefully till you hear humm get softer/dissapears .. when you hear it quieter then use the OCT slider ( horizontal slider above the 100 window) to either make it narrower or wider depending on how much hum you want to get rid of VS. how much voice it affects = you'll have to compromise ..

then do the same with the 256 slider as there might be 2 different frequency's to adjust to get rid of hummm

Thanks, I'll give these methods a try when I get home late tonight and let you know.

Michael Botkin

Yeah, I'm trying to get text vertical like I showed

V E
R T
I C
A L

anyway to do this?

Michael Botkin

Type in a letter, press enter. Type in a letter, press enter.

Or am I missing something?

LOL Yep, I'm a f'n idiot. Thanks,


Michael

Thanks! You all brightened up my day.

I have a project with multiple layers of video during some scenes and layers of audio (sound effects) in others. I want to insert a new event in the middle. Is there a button to select where I can insert the event and all of the following events (on all layers) will move to the right accordingly? So far when I try it just crossfades the clip onto the current video events. There are way too many events to manually move them and more than I want to click on to make one big "group".

Anyone know how to do this?

Put the cursor where you want to insert the clip, choose TIME from the INSERT menu and enter the length of the clip.

turn on auto-ripple its the icon at the top with an arrow inbetween two boxes

Aaron,

What settings did you use in their mpeg2 encoder?

You can also untangle any program stream (that includes video
AND audio) into their elementary streams by using a demuxer.
Such tools can be easily found on the web these days.

I shoot everything in Frame mode on my GL2. When picking my project settings in Vegas 4, is it best to turn the "deinterlace" option to None/Blend/Interpolate? Since the GL2 shoots "frame" mode by copying the image on each line, I shouldn't need to deinterlace correct? Let me know what your experiences have been, or if this even matters vs. shooting in "Normal" mode and using the default setting "Blend".

Michael Botkin

It should be None since there is nothing to deinterlace.

Well,
Those are great tools, but I'm still unable to get rid of the hum completely. I'll play around with a combination of filters and that should do it. I figured out that it's not just a quiet 60hz hum, it's really solid noise from the airconditioning system I believe. Vegas has some great tools, and they seem to be very simple to use well. Thanks again,

Michael Botkin

thanks Richard and Graham!

Another tool to use if you have it is Sound Forge. Even if you still use the track effects in Vegas to make the final filtering, I'll take a section of noisy track into Sound Forge just to run the Spectrum Analysis on it. In a case like yours, it'll show where the spectral peaks are, so you can identify where the filters should be applied. Then sometimes I do the edits in sound forge, and sometimes I'll just drop back into vegas and apply things there.

michael ...
i'll take a look at the hummmm . if you like email me a 15-20 sec wave only clip include humm and voice . render it out as wave at 16bit/48K ..

i'll take a look at it and if i can get rid of hummm i'll email you the Vegas Veg file.

be sure to keep copy of wave for yourself as the return VEG will ask you for it. ...

Anyway, I was putting something together in Vegas, and I letterboxed it by blacking off the appropriate portions of the screen. Since I didn't have the forethought to shoot for this framing, I had to move the picture up or down to get the desired framing, using the 3d plugin pac le plug-in. When I rendered this whole thing into a single AVI file, all the clips that I had reframed had a jittery, stuttery look to them, as far as movement was concerned. The other clips looked like regular 60i video. Anyone know why this happened? Anyone know what I could do about it? Without the letterbox, it looks less artsy, and of course being 30fps doesn't help.

Just tried the method in Vegas for converting interlaced video to 24p. It works! It rules! It's free!

TMPGEnc being a particularly useful tool for exactly this kind of thing.

simon

Could it be that the 3D plugin is working at a different fps or that
it is not interpolating things?

First off I'm a audio geek at heart (of 20 years) and have dived into video in the last year to great success thanks to Vegas.

Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction is exactly what you need. Feed it some of the hum or noise and it builds a "noiseprint". It will then remove it from your recording. You can even solo just the noise that is being extracted to make sure you're not removing important stuff. I use it when I transfer LPs to my computer. My B&O turntable has a bad connection somewhere and it's a bit noisey, SF Noise Reduction takes that hum out and still leaves the rest of the frqs. It like magic. It's one of those plugins I have that sent shivers down my spine when I first used it.

good luck
jack

need little more info ..

the orginal clip was shot at 60i or 30p ?

you are now reframing some shots and you are rendering out at 29.97 progressive ? 29,97 interlace , or 24p ?

have you tried using pan/crop instead of the 3d pac to reframe ?

i assume the 16x9 matte was created either in generated media or you have a jpeg/png 16x9 still you are using to create the letterbox THEREFORE it is video track 1

This is what I would do---(It works great)

1. Create a second video track above the video you want to manipulate.

2. Place a 16:9 png event above it (If you want it, I have an excellent one).

3. Go into the event pan and crop tool for the image and move it up or down into position.

4. Parent the upper track with the lower track.

It works perfectly--I do it all the time. IF you want the 16:9 template email me at sligo11@hotmail.com.

Donatello. . .

Original footage is regular 60i, 30 fps interlaced. I found a way to render out at 24fps. The jitter came before I found out how to do this, so it was jittery with 30fps.

Is it looking jittery on your computer monitor? Have you viewed it on something other then your computer monitor? Usually DV viewed at full screen on a computer monitor, with most players, will look like it has the shakes.

No no no. Jittery viewed on a television.

Sorry it took me so long to post back. I'll send you a clip tonight after I get home, let me know what you can do with it. I've got 2 interviews in this "hum" situation. I'll send 2 small samples.
Thanks again!

Michael Botkin

I do this sort of thing all the time using After Effects. Works great for motion graphics such as moving pics around. It also gives you lots of options for FX.