How do I make a transition like Texas Chainsaw Massacre

[David Delaney]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bm5iet9oHBk
at about 1:19 or so, they transition between scenes with that eerie photography type shot with high pitch noise.
How can I do that transition with Vegas? It looks like a burned piece of film that blossoms out from the center with a white glow that encompasses the whole screen.
I would like to do it in Vegas instead of going outside the NLE.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Ian Stark]

Hi David,

Here's how I would do it - may not be the most effective/easiest method but it's just off the top of my head.

1. No need to use a transition between your two clips. Simple cut will be fine.
2. Use a velocity envelope to abruptly stop the action (i.e. set to 0%). Nothing else needs to be done to your clips now, unless you want to treat them with some sepia, say, to make a more photographic effect. Or maybe black and white? High contrast? All down to your taste!
3. Create a track above and insert a generated media event. I used Noise with main settings of Fractal-Smooth and X and Y frequency at 1.5 for both to give a very minimal noise shape. You could probably do this with just a solid colour to be honest but it was what I started with. A 1.5 second clip is probably long enough but adjust according to how quick you want the effect to be. I kept the colour at the default black and white.
4. Fade the event in over about 20 frames and fade it out over around 5 frames.
5. Using pan/crop, at the beginning of your event create a small, roughly circular mask with the following settings: positive, Feather Type both, Feather % at 50. Again, experiment to taste. A perfect circle doesn't look great - make it more globular.
6. Create a keyframe in the pan/crop timeline (on the mask line, obviously) at the end of the event and grow the circular mask so it goes out of the screen area.
7. Apply the Glow effect to the event. I used the following settings: Glow Percent 0.195, intensity 4.00, suppression 0.03. Actually I keyframed the intentity to go up to around 11.5 by the end of the event. Change the colour of the glow to suit - I used 255/248/219.
8. I didn't do this myself (time!) but to achieve the slightly different coloured leading edge of the effect you could perhaps duplicate the track with the generated event and create a second mask inside the first one and play around with the glow settings/colour etc.

I've attached a simple veg to demonstrate it. Right, back to lunch!

Ian . . .

EDIT: Sorry, I thought we could u/l .veg files. Obviously I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, simple enough to reproduce.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Sorry, I thought we could u/l .veg files.

Oops, that is my oversight. At any rate I'm pretty sure I can arrange this. What is a typical size in bytes / kilobytes for these files? The extension is .veg, correct?

[Fergus Anderson]

I too would appreciate a veg file if poss?

Cheers

[Ian Stark]

Hi Chris,

Speaking for myself, my (typically <10 mins) corporate project files rarely exceed 500kb and that's with a ton of generated text, lower thirds from generated solids etc etc. Yep, .veg.

Did we used to be able to upload veg files? I was sure I'd seen some. Maybe I was mistaken (mishtaken as a newt, perhaps).

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Hi Chris,

Speaking for myself, my (typically <10 mins) corporate project files rarely exceed 500kb and that's with a ton of generated text, lower thirds from generated solids etc etc. Yep, .veg.

Did we used to be able to upload veg files? I was sure I'd seen some. Maybe I was mistaken (mishtaken as a newt, perhaps).

You might be able to upload the file if you change the extension first then just tell people to change the extension back. I don't know if vBullitin (the software running this forum) checks mimetypes before the upload (the mimetype is where the file actually self identifies its file type independently of the extension).

[Chris Hurd]

Try it now... somebody post a reply please and click "manage attachments" in the area below the message input text field. You should be able to attach a .veg file which will show in your post as being downloadable. Let's see if this works!

[Ian Stark]

Hope this file is worth your efforts, Chris!!

[David Delaney]

The file didn't work for me - what version of Vegas are you using?

[Edward Troxel]

You should have "removed all unused media" from the project manager first! :-)


Works fine in Vegas 8 - just need to "ignore" the missing media.

[Brian Luce]

"unsupported format" in Vegas 6d.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Brian Luce

"unsupported format" in Vegas 6d.

Most likely just a veg created in either 7 or 8. I know of no way to save a project in a "compliant" mode where older version can open it.

Anyone know differently?

[David Delaney]

Maybe Ian has an older version of vegas he could copy the project to and save it that way?

[Edward Troxel]

You cannot save a VEG so that it is backward compatible. I suspect this one was saved in Vegas 8 as Vegas 8 did not warn me it was an older file when I opened it. To get one in an older version, it will have to be created in an older version.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

You cannot save a VEG so that it is backward compatible. I suspect this one was saved in Vegas 8 as Vegas 8 did not warn me it was an older file when I opened it. To get one in an older version, it will have to be created in an older version.

But I suppose Sony eliminates the headaches that Microsoft / OpenOffice people have because of maintaining a year or so worth of backward compatible file formats (though not very many years back).

It would seem like V8 should be able to save a project so V6 could read it as long as the specific parts are left out or blanked out like anything involving hte new keyframer.