Adding a shadow to a graphic

up_north wrote on 1/13/2007, 2:16 PM
Hi all

On the menu page I want a movie to play in the background on top of one of the DVDA supplied backgrounds. I've created and rendered to .avi in Vegas. I then Insert it as a graphic with a style of "Animation" in DVDA4. I can then resize it etc and that works great. But what I'd like to do is to put an offset shadow behind it to lift it off the page a little. But I can't work out how to do it!! I know i can do it in Vegas with track motion and 2D shadow and that gives m the effect I want - but if I then import that into DVDA I also get the black background from the Vegas frame - like this - http://www.bidly.co.uk/screenshot.jpg

(Of course on a black background you can't actually see a black shadow.) I can't crop because the shadow makes it an irregular shape.

I guess what I really want is to render in Vegas but with the rendered background invisible (alpha?). Is this possible?

Thanx

Ian

Comments

bStro wrote on 1/13/2007, 3:21 PM
When you render the file in Vegas, render to Uncompressed AVI. Also click the Custom tab (in the Render As dialog) and, on the Video tab, be sure that Render Alpha Channel is checked (which it will be by default, but just in case).

I never could get DVDA3 to recognize my alpha channels (although it did recognize them in Sony's files), but I believe DVDA4 will.

Rob
richard-courtney wrote on 1/13/2007, 4:06 PM
If you click on the graphic and bring up Graphics Properties -> Object Media
click on the pulldown arrow. Then click on Media Properties.

What is the Alpha channel set to? Try Premultiplied. Does that help?
up_north wrote on 1/13/2007, 4:27 PM
Hi Rob

Thanx for your quick reply.

I tried doing that but to no avail. I must be doing something wrong because I then reimported the output avi into Vegas and it has the same problem and I've experimented with the alpha setting on media paroperties.

I am correct in thinking that if you use track motion to reduce a clip the background is empty and just appears balck - it isn't actually black - if you see what I mean??

Ian
up_north wrote on 1/13/2007, 4:53 PM
Rob and RCourtney

I went back and rechecked everything - I must have missed something. It's working perfect now thanx to your 2 tips. Thanx very much. I was looking for the premultiply thing in DVDA but couldn't find it - I thought it would be right click on graphic->properties - but it's on the menu below the name of the graphic!

<goes off to invest in bigger hard disk for uncompressed avi)

Again - thank you.

Ian