animated arrow pointing to something

liz_king wrote on 4/14/2013, 2:19 PM
Yes, I have been trying to find something on youtube showing me how to do this and have had no luck.

I have a video that has me doing something (in a game) and I want to add a drawn/animated arrow or an animated line circling something I'm doing in the video--sort of like what they do on t.v. when they're showing play replays for football games. In a perfect world, I would somehow put microsoft paint on top of my video and just draw what I want to draw as the video is going along but, of course, I can't do that. Does Sony Vegas pro allow one to be able to do something like this?

Comments

Byron K wrote on 4/14/2013, 3:05 PM
I've seen many sports highlights just use simple oval w/ faded background. I've done this by
-splitting the event where the subject is to be highlighted
-freeze the frame
-place a oval cookie cutter shape on the event segment
-fade event darkness to highlight the subject in the oval.

If you want to use a simple arrow I believe Wingdings 3 has a bunch of arrow characters.

BTW, if this is to highlight you or someone playing a sport or executing a play, all you need to do is briefly freeze frame, point or highlight yourself or the subject for a few seconds and let the event continue. Coaches or talent scouts can follow the subject from that point. To have an arrow or oval follow a player through the clip can be very distracting, or may insult their ability to follow a player. (;
videoITguy wrote on 4/14/2013, 3:06 PM
liz_king....what you suggested in your question about technique is called roto-scoping and VegasPro is NOT setup to do that - BUT NOT TO WORRY - roto-scoping is a form of compositing and VegasPro excels in the NLE world with built-in compositing tools.

Investigate your help file a bit about the subject of compositing.
Basically you can put a graphic on your timeline above the video you want to composite with a drawn image of your circle/arrow that has a transparent background.

If you want an animation effect - then you import multiple frames of the arrow moving into position above the subject.

VERY VERY easy!
john_dennis wrote on 4/14/2013, 3:06 PM
Obtain or draw your arrow with a transparent background in Photoshop or another program of you choice. Save as .png and insert on a track above your video. In Vegas the arrow should be opaque while the background will show your video through the transparency.

You can use pan/crop to move the arrow.

Here's a red arrow for you.
rs170a wrote on 4/14/2013, 3:32 PM
If you want to use a simple arrow I believe Wingdings 3 has a bunch of arrow characters.

I do this all the time and it works like a charm :)
Select the arrow you want in Wingdings, copy it, paste it into a Generated Media event and choose the size, colour and border and outlines you want.
If you want to do a simple animation, use the Placement tab in this tool or use Pan/Crop on the event.

Mike
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/14/2013, 4:23 PM
You can use pan/crop to move the arrow.

Track motion, not pan/crop. I assume that's what you meant.

Depending on how long the clip is and how obvious the object to track is, I have a script for Vegas that I could use to track the dot in Syntheyes & automatically sync up track motion in Vegas.

Or, if it's not worth that much effort, use track motion to set your start/end locations for the arrow, go to the middle, set that point & keep going to the middle of two keyframes & moving the arrow where it belongs. It's very very very easy.
richard-amirault wrote on 4/14/2013, 5:07 PM
Why do you want an "animated" arrow? It would be much simpler for a non-animated object.

I've used a capitol letter O to highlight an area I want the viewer to look at.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/14/2013, 7:34 PM
Vegas Pro also supports GIF files so any animated GIF with a transparent background will work as well. You can make these with Photoshop.

~jr
rs170a wrote on 4/14/2013, 8:07 PM
Track motion, not pan/crop. I assume that's what you meant.

I meant Pan/Crop.
It works on the event instead of the entire track so your timeline doesn't get too cluttered.
Also, I prefer using it over Track Motion for things like this.
YMMV.

Mike
john_dennis wrote on 4/14/2013, 9:38 PM
I use pan/crop because it operates on individual events on a track. Besides, I can never get John Meyer's admonition out of my head.
Laurence wrote on 4/14/2013, 10:01 PM
I have used a wipe transition to expose the arrow in the proper direction. You can do this with feathering on the leading edge. Looks great and it is very fast and easy.