Carl, you are going to know a whole lot more about track motion by the time you are done with this.

Grab some frames of video to make your stamps with. (if you need guidance on this, look at the second post in this thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=48730)

Take them into photoshop or paintshop pro or your favorite image editor and cut out everything but the stamp area. Export as a .png with transparency.

You could also do this within Vegas using cookie cutter on a still that you copy and paste if that's easier than photoshop - either would work fine, I find working with an external still image editor a little easier.

Create a new video track in Vegas, above your existing video track(s). Drop your png into the new track, over the relevant section of video.

The next steps are to open track motion for that track (the icon with two rectangles & an arrow in the track header), and then move the image around until it covers the blob. If the blob is stuck to the lens I guess you don't need to do any motion tracking.

If there are transparency issues, look for the "compositing mode" icon in the track header and make sure it's set to "source alpha".

If you do have to do some tracking, check out Edward Troxel's excellent Vegas Tips newsletters at www.jetdv.com

Take a look at Vol 1 #12 - November 2003
Blurring Faces a la “Cops”. The application is different, but the use of keyframes in track motion is the same.

very basic question
 

I am attempting my first Vegas edit and have problem with audio. When I place my clips on the timeline there is an audible click between adjoining clips. I cannot find the way to join two clips seamlessly. I've tried to drag all the clips together from the media pool to the timline but than I get audio compression between each clip. I am stuck.

I'm not sure exactly what the problem here is... can you give us more info?

The clicking part seems really strange. You're talking about two clips of audio that are touching each other, right? And the clips sound fine by themselves?

Can you explain what you mean by getting "audio compression between each clip"?

Peter,

Yes, I checked the footage on an normal TV, but that was the first time I noticed something was very wrong. On my computer, Windows Media Player shows regular interlaced footage very smoothly (just like a TV) and with no weird horizontal lines by the way. It just goes wrong with the by Vegas 7 anamorpically stretched interlaced footage..

Furthermore, those screengrabs are from Media Player and not from the (low quality) Vegas preview window. Also, Premiere Pro 2 isn't de-interlacing. It looks just as smooth and sharp as the original AVI (trust me on this, I know how to recognize de-interlaced footage)

Perhaps it's nog a bug, but it's just a feature Vegas doesn't have?

Have you tried using the primary color corrector that comes with Vegas? It's very powerful and that (plus the secondary color corrector) is what most people use for fixing white balance in Vegas. There's quite a lot of discussion about how to do it on the Sony forum.

If you are looking for a "one click" solution, I don't know that there is any solution (for any NLE) that can get consistently good results. But I know there is an "auto levels" plugin from Mike Crash that is free.

Excalibur Sync Question
 

I have three camera feeds from a shoot this weekend. Due to an error on the beginning sync, I have to sync near the end of the feeds. That is the first problem. The second is that one of the cameras starts and stops halfway through, before the sync point.


I split that track and made the second half camera 4 and fround the sync point, calling it s4.

Is there any way to set up a second set of sync points for the first half of that track, I can sync it to one of the other tracks, just not both.

Make sense?

Thanks!

Before you go out on a limb, DO try Vegas' own Colour Curves "Warm Colours" profile - EXCELLENT! Or you could knock-up your own.

Andrew, I'm in Windsor as well so I've sent you a private email.

Mike

Go ahead and just sync that one clip manually. You can use the 1/3/4/6 keys on the numeric keypad to fine tune the placement left and right.

Zoom in and check for the presence of very short fade out and fade in at the intersection between two clips. That's one thing that causes a click. Vegas will insert such fades when you split a clip in Vegas if the prefs are set that way.

You didn't mention how the clips got created to begin with. But in the event that they are not clips that were split from a single track, then they simply may not match well enough. I've had success with cross-fading such clips by simply dragging the end of one over the beginning of the other slightly.

Thanks Edward!

I hit create project after putting in my markers, and nothing happened.........?

You hit "Sync" instead unless you're talking about the camera switches - in that case you use the Multi-Cam button.

Create Project is used if you have nothing on the timeline and want the clips you select to be automatically added and the tracks automatically named in preparation for the rest.

After closer scrutiny it looks like both audio and video are affected. I had 3 cameras rolling continuosly but my capture was set to scene detection so I ended up with lots of clips, even from stationary cameras. It seems that I cannot seamlessly connect those events (from one camera/one tape on a single track- I haven't attempted to sinchronize all three yet). With audio I get either a compression when it slightly overlaps or a "click" when there is a space between the events. Actually click perhaps is not an acurate description - it is an audio artifact similar to one when someone is plugging in audio cable or something like that. I tried different settings with "quantize to frames" and snapping tool off and on but to no avail. I've tried to manually connect the events on the timeline or drag a selection of clips from the media pool to the timeline hoping that Vegas would put them together seamlessly. Perhaps I expect to much from the program and need to recapture each tape as a single clip. Thanks for your help.

Mike - great to find a local expert!

While that would be the best bet, since there's no way to join video files together without editing them together and rendering them, I still don't understand why an empty area of audio track between clips would give you anything audible at all. And I still don't know what you mean by "compression" when audio events overlap. Do you mean there's a crossfade or fade ins/outs at the edges of events? If that's the case, you can turn off these auto fades in the preferences somewhere (or at least adjust the length of the fades down to zero).

Thank you Seth
 

I will give your advice a try... hopefully it is not too time consuming...