Getting masking to work correctly in Vegas Pro Event Pan/Crop

Caleb-Begly wrote on 3/21/2020, 3:33 PM

In a recent project, I've been trying to use the Pan/Crop tool to carefully mask out some larger supports from a clip (small ones I get rid of using the Ignite Remove Wires plugin).

The issue I'm running into is, even when I go into the even frame by frame, create a negative mask, and mask out the area of interest, when it renders in the preview window (and the final render) the mask doesn't line up. It is used, but it's off by a small amount.
 

Any reason why the alignment of the preview inside the Pan/Crop tool doesn't match the alignment of the actual mask? I have no pan effect applied to the clip, and any scaling/translation is done using track motion.

Here is an example where the mask is correctly positioned in the Pan/Crop window, but the preview clearly shows that the fingers were not cropped.

And to make it more obvious, here is a mask placed conspicuously over the head of the character. The final masked product isn't correct at all.



I'm using Vegas Pro 14 on Windows 10.

Comments

fred-w wrote on 3/21/2020, 4:34 PM

The first hack I would try is to do your very basic composite first, (pan crop figure) independent of any track motion, (and maybe green screen later as well) and isolated to only the basic element, then render that, then add the other components to whatever compositing mix that your going for. No guarantees here, but this is the nature of the beast, and you must use, at times, workarounds and hacks to make it work, and don't hope for perfect Vegas solutions.

There may be some other triggers here, that you're not considering or seeing, perhaps. Try turning "off" the feathering (though I see you have it set to "0" percent)... Little things like that.

Also, pay attention to frame rate and corresponding Key diamonds inside the pan/crop workspace, are they falling EXACTLY on the frame? That can be a factor, especially if your footage frame rate and project frame rate might be different, or your card playback frame rate.

Grazie wrote on 3/22/2020, 1:32 AM

@Caleb-Begly - Have you got the SYNC Cursor and MASK option checked?

 

Caleb-Begly wrote on 3/22/2020, 9:31 AM

@Grazie  yes it is checked. You can see it in the screenshot.
@fred-w  I stripped it down to just the pan/crop and the same issue shows up for that clip. I tried with a few other clips, and it looks like it's a bug that only shows up when using 4k footage. I also loaded the project into a trial version of Vegas Pro 17 and it works, so I'm almost certain it's a bug. Pretty frustrating, but I guess it might be time for an upgrade.

fred-w wrote on 3/23/2020, 3:12 AM

@Grazie  yes it is checked. You can see it in the screenshot.
@fred-w  I stripped it down to just the pan/crop and the same issue shows up for that clip. I tried with a few other clips, and it looks like it's a bug that only shows up when using 4k footage. I also loaded the project into a trial version of Vegas Pro 17 and it works, so I'm almost certain it's a bug. Pretty frustrating, but I guess it might be time for an upgrade.

Well, good, there is your answer: Ver 14 hadn't stepped up to accommodate 4k footage and 17 has that more in focus. Not surprising - it is about the state of the art at that time. Easy fix.

Grazie wrote on 3/23/2020, 4:39 AM

@Grazie  yes it is checked. You can see it in the screenshot.
 

@Caleb-Begly - Nope, I didn’t see it in your Second ScreenGrab, hence my comment 😉.