That was what got me started to think about it. That could be a pretty good effect...I wonder if that will be included in the NewBlue FX bundle that SVMS Plat. has come with the last few times...Perhaps for V10?

Either way, is there a combination of effects such as blur/cookie cutter or similar that I could play to give a similar effect?

I've simulated some After Effects stuff using two videos, one shot on green screen, the other a background and then "softened" the background to knock it out of focus.

I think you could do the same thing using a cookie cutter, alpha channels and filters. It would be time consuming, but it should work.

That's a lot of work...Looks like NewBlue may have done it again! That effect could be very useful, especially if it is easy to use.

Double up the clip track 2 and 3
On the bottom track 3 add radial blur … only a fraction…. place the centre of zoom on the focal point
On track 2 normal clip
On track 1 place elliptical media gen and make the black transparent use the white as a mask…then multiply mask
Make track 2 child of track 1

Play around the unsharp mask extreme neg and and lines options this will give you an idea how you can use masks

In Vegas pro you can make the mask into shapes in the track panel and animate the mask along the clip this will give you the exact fx

Of course, stuff that IS nearer, and covering the more distant IN FOCUS target will also be in focus too. But this is NOT the case for real rack focus. Meaning, if you take a "sandwich" of farthest<>TARGET<>nearest, where the nearest IS partially covering the TARGET - leaves, wire-fence etc, - then this too would be sharp. And THAT wouldn't be the case with shallow optical DoF - nuh-uh!

The ONLY thing real about fake, is that it IS fake! And THAT is REAL!

Grazie

As real as clouds Grazie?