Crop Image, Remove Excess to Allow for Tiling?

Spectator6 wrote on 9/9/2014, 11:46 PM
Hi all,
I'm trying to crop individual parts of video frames into small squares and then stitch those pieces back together in a tile layout. But it's giving me problems. I can crop the view area just fine, but whenever I try to "overlap" these portions together so they're all on screen at the same time, the portions outside of the crops are retained, so it doesn't quite work out like I want. Is there any way to truly crop the video to the outlined area so only those cropped portions can be placed in the shot?

Here's a rough example of what happens (quickly threw it together in Paint):
http://imgur.com/a/o28Zh

Images 1 and 2 show how I crop it with the pan/crop tool.
Image 3 shows how the "full" frame areas are brought into the shot, rather than just the cropped portion of the frame.
Image 4 shows what I'm trying to achieve.

Where am I going wrong? Is there a feature I'm missing? Thank you for the help!

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 9/10/2014, 7:23 AM
Many tutorials on Youtube about using transparent backgrounds and compositing layers.
Chienworks wrote on 9/10/2014, 9:00 AM
Are these still images? If so are they already cropped before bringing them in to Vegas? If so, don't bother cropping them in Vegas at all. Just use the X & Y coordinates to move them where you want them and use the size to shrink them. You can also do this with Pan/Crop.

Another possibility is to use the "lighten" compositing mode, if your version of Vegas supports it.
Spectator6 wrote on 9/14/2014, 9:54 PM
@musicvid10:
Okay, maybe that's what I'm not using properly... However, I can find plenty of videos for adding a transparent background for text or images, but I'm having a hard time finding anything for video. If there was a way to make the black portion of the frame outside of the cropped video footage transparent, that'd do the trick right there!

@Chienworks:
This is for video footage, the example I included was just something quick and dirty using images.

I have a single 45 min stream of video footage. I'm trying to shorten it by making kind of a mosaic/montage of 4 separate cropped clips all on screen at the same time, cut it down to 10-15 mins or so.

musicvid10 wrote on 9/14/2014, 10:04 PM
If the black border is not part of the original video, but is part the screen area, it is already transparent. You just need the tutorials to learn how to use basic masking and compositing. There is no intrinsic difference between handling stills and video when using the techniques.
Chienworks wrote on 9/15/2014, 9:12 AM
Spectator, is your project frame the same size/shape as the original video? If so, just use Track Motion to reduce the four tracks to 1/2 size and position them in the four corners. Very simple and easy. No need for Pan/Crop at all.

This will also work if the size/shape doesn't match, but be prepared for the four images to not completely fill the frame. You'll have to decide if you want to leave some black areas, and where, or enlarge the images so they fill the frame while losing some of their edges.
Spectator6 wrote on 9/15/2014, 10:50 AM
@musicvid10, and @Chienworks:
Aha, I got it! Thanks for the tips on the compositing and track motion! Those let me set up the frame perfectly. I'm really impressed by what Sony's software can do, really cool

Thank you both for your help!
musicvid10 wrote on 9/15/2014, 6:15 PM
The compositing abilities are really one of Vegas' strong suits. Now play with the layering options and see what you get