Fabulous Peter!

And Yeah, spill.

Very nice!

Why didn't you just use the "Clone Talent" FX ???

Seriously though, great effort and it shows very well how much can be done with simple tools, planning and a lot of hard work.

Bob.

Thanks guys.

Jack - as you probably know, in Vegas you can layer video on tracks. The bottom most track is the background "layer", topmost is your foreground. I shot five different shots for each camera angle (three camera angles) - an empty background - kitchen table with poker pot but no chairs or "Peters". Then I shot each a Peter at each position around the table (four positions). The hard part of the production was timing out the delivery of my lines/throwing money into the pot, since there was no one else in the room for me to react to/cue off of.

In Vegas I put the empty scene on the bottom most track and then stacked my "Peters" in order of furtherest from the camera, such that the "Peter" closest to the camera was on the top track. This "Peter" would usually require the most careful masking since he potentially crossed the others the most. (Compare that with the "Peter" furtherst from the camera who crossed in front of no one - very little in the way of masking needed.)

Once I got my tracks set up, it was just a matter of using the Bezier masking tool to outline each player on each track as needed. Simple, but very tedious (probably two dozen points per mask) - and ultimately extremely time consuming. When there was a lot of movement, I needed to go in and mask the video frame by frame. 90 seconds of video X 30 fps = 2700 potential frames to mask X 4 "Peters" X 3 camera angles, well you get the idea.

Now as I said, I didn't need to outline each Peter that precisely if he wasn't in front of another (heads, arms, body - even legs since the table is glass). But I'm guessing it took me about 40 hrs to do the work you see - hence the "Too Much Time On My Hands Productions" moniker. :-)

Peter! Excellent! And as for your jibe at yourself at "using" 40 hours? STOP IT!! That was R&D at its best! Not wasted at all. You had an ache to do this; you planned and thought through this work; you implemented it and recognised that hard part about what you needed to do - the sequencing.

Thanks for sharing. Very gracious of you.

And NO! Not wasted - not at all. And you know what when you get a job that might call for those talents - you're in!

Now I really hope that some of the whiners there are about Vegas not doing this or not doing that can see here just WHAT is possible, when in the hands of a "creative" just what can be done, will take their winging elsewhere.

Oh Peter? Did I say I liked it? Well I did! Very much!!

Grazie

that was excellent! I couldn't find a mistake until you were trying to mask out the close up mouth movements.

Very very nice! :D "Awwhh man... Awwhhhh man... Awwwwwwhhhhhh man!!!!"

Classic! :D

Wow, hey thanks guys for the kind words. :-)

Friar - I was kind of "Petering- out" towards the end there (pun intended) so I got a little sloppy with my masks.

Grazie - you offering me a job? (I could be in the UK by Wed. ;-) )

I'm not 100% sure, but isn't there a way to have vegas mask out something if it's the same as another track? Some kind of composite? I remember being told by one of the Sony guys it could be done. In the forums.

THF if you're thinking about the same thing as me, it's called Difference Masking. The one that I've seen a couple of times was of three (actually two) cats on a sofa.

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/dayvids/difference_masking_in_sony_vegas.htm
isn't it! But describes the technique

http://www.jetdv.com/vegas/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2394&highlight=difference+mask
isn't it either. but has more info.

From Matthew Chaboud's site:
Two cats from one.

Mike