Thanks Bill,
They are too fast for transitions. I tried it. I can see the pan no matter which transition I try. When I shot it I was hoping to be able to cut them out, but the dialog and music really threw that possibility out the window.

John

You could stylise the pan by introducing motion blur (via Video Master Track) for just the duration of the pan, but that may not be in keeping with the piece.

What about a quick cutaway to B roll then back?

Great idea Rex - if there's no "B roll" as such, find a piece of vision from elsewhere in the piece - you may have a shot of the other character listening or doing something similar to what he/she's doing while your panning away.

...or even re-shoot something, a prop that would "fit in". Hard to tell without seeing. But the inter-cut and the motion blur ideas seem good to me.

YOu might consider running a stutter, or baronize script on just that section, with the motion blur tossed on top of it. Another "effect in the pan that is very cool to do, is to stutter, copy the stutters to a new track, off set the stutters by one frame, and then reduce the opacity of the top track. This gives a "smooth" stutter. Playing with the pan/crop will also give it a nice effect.
Kinda hard to hide this sort of thing, so the alternative is to make it more obvious to the eye. Then it's less noticable.

Thanks for all the responses to my problem. I really appreciate them all.
The pans are quick so the B roll will look out of place sort of like longer flash frame. In terms of the stutter, the same fear I have of leaving the quick pan may be present with a stuuter.......that is the motion artifacts that may be generated when I render to Mpeg 2.
I wonder if blurring the quick pan would reduce that chance? Although they are already blurred by their nature.

In terms of the question of going to black:
Would black restore set to maxium threshold be the best way or would simply lowering the opacity to 0% for the pan duration be the best way?
Or would simply deleting the video be best? Which would be the least likely to cause a glitch?
Or how about a still shot of the last people talking followed by a still of the next person that is going to talk with a crossfade to blend them.

John

Just lower opacity or more technical correct, add a fade to color envelop and pull that down to black or add generated black on a track above and fade the edges.
Bob

Thanks Bob,
If I split the clip at the beginning and end of the pan and then pull down the opacity level to 0%, is that the same as the first part of what you are suggesting?

John

Also, what did you think of my other idea.
People are talking
still shot of them fades out
new still shot of next person talking fades up
new person starts taking.


All in around 1 second.


And in terms of Doug's Pan and Crop suggestion. How about a zoom out followed by a zoom in. Would that invite motion artifacts and or look cheezy in your collective opinions?

John could you post a section of the shot in question on Kellys site (or a link to it somewhere else, say in .wmv) so we can see? sometimes its easier to come up with a new idea when we can visually see the question.
Just a thought.

1- unlink video from audio
2- split trak in middle of pan and pull each section back to usable footage
3- fade out - fade in

That might work -
here's the way I would approach it - I'd stylize the whole video in this way.
Every time you see a "Great" close up or other shot - I'd grab a freeze frame, and cut it in - hold for one or two seconds, and fade it out. I'd transition to the freeze frame with a "fade to white" flash - like a flash in the audience went off.
By doing this (moderately) throughout the video, you'd impart a rythmn to the whole show - and be able to hide your pan mistakes as well.
Believe me, whoever you freeze on will love you - and I'd guess the overall effect will actually improve your video.
The best effects I've ever come up with have generally evolved from the solution to some other mistake - never give up on your footage - it's only the start of a great video.... keep your mind open and don't get tied into preconceived ideas, trends or styles. It will keep your video work fresh anda alive.
v.

Thanks Vic. Actually I was only using one camera and the scene involved two scenes at opposite ends of the stage. I thought I could cut the quick pan out, but the audio prevented that. It is only one scene in the whole production. Two cameras and a second operator is the right way to do this.
I will try your suggestion and see how it looks. I'd leave the quick pan in if I weren't afraid of the motion artifacts in Mpeg 2. It is actually quite smooth.

John

John -
in that case definitely TRY the mpeg first.

I always tell my editors not to "think" out the solution, but to try it out.

It doesn't cost you any money - not even any work, to speak of... just render time.

Thinking limits you to what you already know, or to what you guess will happen. If you have the time (no deadline) - you already have the tools - give it a shot. Quite frankly in a half-hour video that is not for general broadcast, I never sweat small errors - the audience either won't even notice or (definitely) won't care. Don't get too wrapped up in the details of the production.

Re: two cameras - yes that would be better, but you can't always get what you want (R. Stones)
SO -
That's why a good shooter ALWAYS shoots "cut-aways".

A cut-away (because there are many folks reading that don't know the term) is a shot that's related to the movie, but not directly. In this case, I'd always shoot a reverse of the audience reacting - laughing, attentive or simply looking. You could then cover ANY mistake, and even shorten a scene or a goof with a "cutaway to the audience". Can't shoot the audience and the stage with only one camera - no problem - get a friend or a cute kid right after the show - frame them in a tight close-up - have them look at the stage and direct them - "look to the right - look to the left - it's funny - isn't the music great... "
Cutaways 101 - saviour of the video makers butt -
v.

Great tips,
of course it can go wrong. Despite having 9 cameras and cameramen (all volunteers) and asking half of them to just get audience reaction shots, did they, nah. Nine reels all the same, at least a couple of them were from the reverse angle. Did any of them just stay wide, nah. Heck THEIR camera had a zoom and they were going to use it now weren't they.
Bob.

Yes.
One thing to be aware of and it can be a real gotcha with Vegas.
Vegas processes video, it doesn't process nothing.
Sounds like I've lost it but here's the thing. If you pull track opacity down to 0%, even using the fade handles, then there's no video. It ultimately comes out as black however any downstream effect such as one applied at the track level or on the video bus don't do anything to frames of nothing!

Does this matter much, probably not but sometimes you can get a nasty surprise. Say you've used the event handles to create a 'fade to black' and added the Broadcast Colors FX to the video bus. What'll happen is this.
Your levels are heading towards 16 IRE during the fade ( that's post the FX), the second last frame might be say 20 IRE and the last one should be 16 IRE. However Vegas sees the last frame as empty, bypasses the FX and the level does a sudden drop to 0 IRE! I doubt it's overly noticable visually, it's way too quick for us to see, however I've got one TV that gets spun out by this, it looses sync and that's awefully noticable.
This isn't an issue if you're making a DVD as you shouldn't be legalising DVD content anyway. If you render out and then apply the FX you'll also not hit this problem as the rendered file will not contain an 'empty' frame, it'll be black.
Bob.

Ok,
Here is what I ended up doing. I split each pan in three places:
Beginning, Middle , and End and set a marker above each.

I grabbed a still shot of the last clear scene before the pan and a still shot of the first clear scene after the pan and placed them in between the markers.

Then I used a quick fade out at the beginning of the first still and a quick fade in at the beginning of the second still (looked like a V)

I showed it to 4 people and they all liked it. Actor freezes for a split second as the scene quickly fades out followed by a quick fade up to next actor frozen for a quick second before the motion starts. Audio continues uninterrupted. No motion blurs or any motion at all. Very smooth looking. Only issue was a slight jitter in 2 out of the 18 stills, (I used .png) but I just messed with the fades until the jitter disappeared.

Thanks again for all the great ideas.

John