I am using Vegas 5.0 and I have a few minuets of footage where I need to add a small rectangle box over a girl who flashed herself. I want to keep the shot in there, but I need to cover her topside!
Thanks!
Use the Cookie Cutter effect. You can specify a shape, size, and position to "punch a hole" in the video. The hole will show what's on tracks below the event, which will probably be black if you only have a single video track. If you want to get fancy you could copy the video event to the track below it, add some effect like blur or pixelize, and then the Cookie Cutter would replace the "naughty bits" with a blurred version, just like the license plates and faces on "Cops".
If you're in a hurry and you just want to black it out, use the 'video media generator' and then use a hyphen (actually, in any color) and write in the size in the window. Make it somewhere between 700 and 999 to get the size you want. Then use the 'Placement' tab and put the hyphen where you want it. Why do I suggest this? Because for some reason, the 'Text' renders a lot faster than the 'cookie cutter'. But the cookie cutter is excellent for using the pixelating and blur effects, it's just that you have to duplicate the track at that part and they're a lot longer to render. If it's a short 'cover-up', the pixelated cookie cutter effect will look more professional, without adding much render time.