Lost Video Island

[Aislynn]

Like Neo said, you just put a fade on the end of your text by putting the cursor up at the top corner of the clip, then when it changes to a half-circle-ish sort of symbol, you pull it back to the left. The farther back you pull it, the longer and more gradual the fade. (That's the same way that you can get an overlay to gently fade in and out instead of popping in more harshly, by the way. )

Putting a fade on a clip that's on the timeline above another clip kinda works like a "floating crossfade." Try it and you should see what I mean. Just watch that you don't pull the fade back too far if there's no clip underneath it or you'll see the black of the empty timeline for a split-second. If you do, just drag the fade on your text back to the right a bit, or extend your text out a little farther. Hopefully that all makes sense!

This screencap was from a few pages back when I answered another question, don't know if you saw it there or not. Anyway, see how the ends of my watermark on the top line have those little leaning blue lines? That's where I put a fade on the start and finish of it, so my watermark fades in instead of just popping in. Also you can see it on my title credit itself, which is on the same timeline as my clips because you have to conserve your timelines in Movie Studio since you only get 4. But if it was on a higher timeline, it would've worked just the same but if I would've wanted it to crossfade into my opening shot, I would've just moved it over to the right a bit more and the title would've appeared over the video clip then faded out.

[riay_night]

Yes that all makes sense now! I just wasn't putting my cursor up far enough for the fade to kick in and I was like, 'Whhhat??' It makes perfect sense now though! Thanks so much ma dear....

*gives you some cookies and hugs*

Thanks you!!!
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<3 Jourdan





Banner and Avi by me. I take requests.

[Luthien3329]

Hey, I have Sony Vegas 8. I wonder how some people get those cool borders like for example in Phoebekate's vid "Anything for you". It depends on a version of Vegas you have? Cause as far as I know in my version there aren't such borders.

[Powis97]

Im a Vegas Newbie

And i still dont know how to use Vegas, im more Confussed now

[Aislynn]

The new Sony Vegas All-In-One Help thread is now up and running. It's a collection of the answers and tutorials written in this thread, so hopefully that will make it easier to find answers to questions that have already been asked and answered.

This thread, however, is still the place to come to ask your questions! The new thread is just a read-only archive.

Luthien, if I had to guess, I'd say that Phoebekate used some sort of black grungy texture or brushes around the border overtop a solid blue background, then imported that into Vegas, put it on a timeline over the video clips and stretched it to fill the entire vid, then used the Chroma keyer to remove the blue so that only the border remained.

Powis, I'm hoping that the new thread might have some of the answers you're looking for! *fingers crossed*

[Luthien3329]

[Aislynn]

Did you try it by making the center of the texture (where you'll want to see through it to the vid ) blue and then applying the Chroma keyer's bluescreen effect to it? That should turn everything that's blue transparent and leave only the edges (which should, of course, be a color other than blue). I haven't tried leaving a texture border around my vids like that but I've used that same technique to make other sorts of masks and as far as I can tell, that should work. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

[Luthien3329]

I figured it out. Thank you!!! You helped me a lot.

[Aislynn]

Yay, I'm glad you got it to work for you!

[cagedfreedom]

Would phoebekate have to of done those brush effects herself? Because I'm not good at art and would love to be able to create a scratchy border like that?
Could you explain what you explained to Luthien in special layman's terms for me, Aislynn?
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[cagedfreedom]

I've recently had a problem when doing split screens and having two scenes faded on to one shot etc is that some of the clips I have are stuck in widescreen and when you do "Pan/Crop" It only zooms in on the widescreen box, whereas some other clips I have can be zoomed to fullscreen. Is there a setting that can adjust the 'boxing' of the clips, if that's a way of putting it, so that when you do Cookie Cutter etc you don't see the edges of the widescreen?

Does anyone know what I am getting at? I could put pictures up if that would help?

Please someone get back to me
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[Aislynn]

[cagedfreedom]

Thank you so much Aislynn. I will give that a go
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[cagedfreedom]

It works!! Good Lord, something so easy and straightforward as well! Thanks alot Aislynn
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[Aislynn]

Yay, I'm always glad when something will work with just one button click!

Okay, I had a go at making a border to see if this would work. Mind you, this was just something I quickly did so it's not a masterpiece, lol! But it looks like the principle itself should work.

To make your own border:

1. I'd suggest starting with a screencap of your scene at its full size or at least check to see what the size is so that you'll be making your border to fit it exactly without having to try and resize it with the pan/crop tool later. My footage is 428x240 but I went ahead and capped it anyway to be sure.



2. I use Paintshop Pro 8 but any similar graphics program should work. I added 2 layers on top of my screen cap, one a solid blue color, then the one on top of that I used black and a couple of different brushes to make a border around the picture. I turned off the blue layer while I was building the border so I could actually see the cap of the footage beneath it and get an idea of how much I was going to be covering. I didn't want to make it so thick that there was only a little "window" to see my footage through later on. In this case, I tried to make it uneven and with a soft edge just for visual interest. But you could, of course, also make it hard and even like a picture frame if that's the look you wanted.

Here's what my border finally looked like when I was done and turned the blue layer back on:



3. I imported that picture into Vegas and put it on the timeline above my video footage. Then I went into the Video FX tab - Chroma keyer - blue screen and dragged the blue screen onto my border pic on the timeline. That opens the Chroma keyer controls. From there, I used the little eyedropper symbol at the bottom of the Color: control and then touched it to the blue on my border pic on the timeline. That helps the Chroma keyer to more exactly match the color I wanted to get rid of. Then I adjusted the low and high threshold and blur amount sliders until I liked the way it looked.



This is a screencap from Vegas of how the border looks over the actual footage itself:



This would also work if you have premade textures that you use to make graphics. Just put that texture over a blue layer in that second step, then erase the parts you want to be able to see through. It should work the same.

Now, I don't know if this is even remotely how other people have been doing their "homemade" borders or not, but this was kinda similar to how I've done other masks in the past so figured it should work in theory! Hope that helps!