How do you...?

Dave wrote on 11/29/2007, 6:44 PM

I'm working on a silly music video that has cats and dogs in it.

In one shot, I would like to make a hat suddenly appear on the head of one of the animals.

In another shot I would like to have cartoon-like bubbles appear with text in them (indicating what the animals are thinking).

Is it possible to do these kinds of things with VMS 7?

If so, can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

Comments

Bonhopwil wrote on 11/29/2007, 7:00 PM

You need to create the hat and the balloon pictures on a separate program and then import them into Vegas. I use Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor. On this program you can take a picture of a hat and mask the background to make it transparent...then all you have is the hat and a see-through background...save it as a PNG file so the background stays transparent. Import that into Vegas and it will appear on your puppy's head. Or you can get a picture of a dog wearing a hat. Take the same picture, Save As, and erase the hat with an editing tool on Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor, then when you put the picture in Vegas of the dog with no hat...followed by the picture with the dog in his hat...the hat will seem to appear when you play it.

Eugenia wrote on 11/29/2007, 7:06 PM

>In one shot, I would like to make a hat suddenly appear on the head of one of the animals.

This is difficult, because animals just don't stay still so you can't have exact looking scenes. Except if you want to fake it, using a non-real hat/scene.

> cartoon-like bubbles

Use the "Video overlay" track with transparent images of the bubbles/text.

>Is it possible to do these kinds of things with VMS 7?

yes

Dave wrote on 11/29/2007, 8:27 PM

Thanks!

I use Paint Shop Pro for my imaging program. I'm guessing it will allow me to do what you have suggested. I have some shots that are very static, so I think I can make it work.

Thanks, again.

Dave wrote on 11/29/2007, 8:28 PM

Thanks!

Ii think my imaging program, Paint Shop Pro has a function that creates text bubbles, so I will give it a try.

Thanks. again.

Dave wrote on 11/30/2007, 7:50 PM

Okay...

So I created a PNG file containing the image I want to appear on top of my video. I made the background of the PNG file transparent using Paint Sjop Pro. I copied it and dragged it onto the timeline in VMS. Now that it is in the timeline, it has a solid yellow background. It is no longer transparent. Do I have to tell VMS to make the yellow background transparent somehow? Any ideas?

Thanks!

Eugenia wrote on 11/30/2007, 8:14 PM

Make sure the bubble picture is the track above the video track you want it to. It seems that you either did not exported the PNG correctly, or Vegas does not like the kind of pngs PSP creates regarding transparency. Try as GIF with transparency.

Dave wrote on 11/30/2007, 8:55 PM

Hmmm.... I got it to work, but I'm a little confused.

I wound up applying the Chroma Keyer effect and keyed out the yellow background. Is this the way it's supposed to work or is my PNG file not behaving properly?

Thanks.

Eugenia wrote on 11/30/2007, 9:31 PM

I think your PNG is simply not properly transparent. Either you didn't export correctly, or as I said, Vegas doesn't support the kind of PNG transparent files PSP produces. I would suggest you retry exporting the transparent PNG.

Dave wrote on 11/30/2007, 9:45 PM

Ah... I see in PSP I can choose whether I want the transparency to be "single color" or "alpha channel" . Previously, I had "single color" selected. I'll try "alpha channel" and see what happens.

Thanks.

OhMyGosh wrote on 11/30/2007, 9:55 PM

Hi Dave,
I have done some similar projects that seemed to work ok. As for yours, where does the yellow come into play? What color did you make your thought bubbles and text? When you look at the thought bubbles outside of Vegas, say in Windows Viewer or something, does it look like what you are trying to do? I make my bubbles and such in PhotoShop by creating a new document with a transparent background, draw a bubble, and save as .png Once you get that to work, make sure that you understand 'track motion' and 'pan/crop' functions so that you can easily resize your bubbles and have them follow the animals where ever they may go :) Let us know. Cin

Dave wrote on 12/1/2007, 7:50 PM

Hi Folks,

After some more experimentation today, I got PSP to create a PNG file with a transparent background that stays transparent when imported into VMS.

I'm glad I was able to figure this out (with your help) because it looks better than it did when I was superimposing the image using the Chroma Key filter. It slightly colorized the background image when the key was active.

Thanks!