thank you....the part of the problem is that I'm editing on a smaller than ideal LCD screen that only allows me to view portions of the software - which is why the text preview screen was hidden....I need a 27" LCD SCREEN and I'd be happy!!! :-)

When you hold down the control key and click on the edge of the clip and drag it out longer, you are lengthening the time of the clip, turning it into a slo-mo clip. You have to hold down on the control key as you are dragging it.

What are you recommending for advanced titling. In Vegas Movie Studio. Is there something that will work withing the program as a plug in.

Yes, it is easy to do in Vegas. Follow the same process.

Basically shoot some white surface for a few seconds. Drop that footage into a separate track in Vegas. Invert it. Stretch and/or copy it to fill the length of the timeline. Put your real footage in another track below it. Choose a compositing mode (probably Add or Overlay).

No point in getting a pre-made filter, the approach described above will give you a corrective mask that exactly matches the vignetting on your setup, in those circumstances.

Though you could use the gradient generator in Vegas if you wanted too.

thanks Chris!

How do you change speed of scrolling?
 

I am trying to slow down the scrolling speed so you don't have to be a speed reader....I tried shortening the "length" time, but all that did was cut 1/2 of my credits out....Is there a way to change the scrolling time?

Vegas 6 nesting observations and questions
 

I'm trying out Vegas 6 mainly for the nesting capabilities and I'm a little dissappointed with what I'm finding so far. Maybe I'm missing some settings or just missing the point altogether.

1) When nesting a group of veg files one has to be careful to not to exceed the limit of the PF memory or vegas crashes. Would another gig of RAM help this? Are there some presets that I need to change - either in XP or Vegas?

2) The nested 5.1 files are rendered on the timeline as stereo. I expected the nesting portion of a project to be a final unification on the way to the final product (with some tinkering at the end). Instead it is a preliminary step to starting to build the narration and music and mixing audio. What is the idea behind this? What shoud the workflow be at this point? Do you mute all of the audio tracks except one on the individual nested projects, then bring in the music and narration or simply use the stereo file as a reference and drag in all of the audio tracks and mute the reference track before mixing the 5.1 audio?

ps...i have vegas movie maker + platinum DVD

Make the "length" time LARGER and then then resize the clip to match that new time.

You can also hold down the CTRL key and resize it larger - just like your other slowing down task.

duplicating a portion of audio from timeline
 

I need to duplicate a portion of a wav in the timeline - I've selected the portion I wanted to duplicate and typed in control C - and then pasted, but it's not duplicating on the timeline...what can be done about this? Any easier solution?

Set up another AUDIO track below the original then copy and paste to that track. That should do it.

Don

It worked!
 

Hey Gian -it worked sort of!

I ended up with 5 different filters and 5 negatives of them -they where shot at different exposures from grey to black and white to black (sorry lost my Internet connection last night so was doing it from memory of your post -I see now I should have taken the white to black at the corner)

On the 5 masks I then used the Invert to create a black in the centre and white at the corners Mask set then an Add composite at a certain % -say 20%. I am guessing this simply Adds 20% of the mask (white=<say>100) value to the darker corners and 20% of black (=0) to the middle -so it 'bumps up' the edges and does nothing to the middle.

I tried all the masks -to be honest I ended up confusing myself a bit with 5 masks and their 5 Inverted Masks, %s, etc. What does 'Overlay' Composite do -would this have been better than Add?

I was a composite/mask newbie and learnt a lot last night! Thanks again.

The footage from the Letus35 is looking very very cool btw. When I get a chance I will post a Vegas edited/Masked/Magic Bulleted HD image.


Nick.

Simple Masking in Vegas 6
 

Ok, Ive been using Vegas 6 for a few months and Ive learned a ton. But I cant seem to do a simple masking technique, that I used to do with MediaStudio Pro.

Lets say I have a .psd pic made up of a solid black triangle with a solid white background and I want to use it as a mask. Ive been inserting it on the top track, then a video clip in the next track, and a copy of the same video clip in the last track (with the brightness and contrast adjusted, so its different from the original clip). I just want to see the original clip, with the triangle cutout of it, so I can see the second clip in the triangle.

A basic mask, but I cant seem to get it to work. Ive tried making the psd pic the parent track, and the two video clips child tracks. Then setting the compostion to different settings, sometimes making interesting effects, but not the simple cutout that Im looking for.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

The triangle area needs to be transparent. If you are making the .PSD file, set your background layer to transparent, lay the triangle layer on top and cut out the center of the triangle. Then, put the .PSD file on the top track. Alternately, you can use the Bezier masking tool to cut out the triangle.

Your mask is fine . . . but you need to make the top track a parent track and the lower track a child track. (You do this using the bent arrows in the track controls.) Then, change the compositing mode of the parent track to "multiply (mask)" and drop a Luminance Mask effect on the mask.

If you just take a black card and cut a triangle out of it, all you'll be able to see is the black card and whatever is behind the triangle. I don't think that's what you're going for, is it?