How do you highlight an area of the screen

christine-m wrote on 9/19/2016, 7:01 PM

Hi Vegas Community,

I am making a software training tutorial and would like to highlight, and possibly circle an area of the screen, play a bell and have it illuminate (like white teeth in a toothpaste commercial). Does anybody know how to do that?

Too bad there's no search function on here. I wonder how many posts are being added to the ever-expanding database daily due to the fact that you can't search for the answer. It's surprising this is a SONY site. That isn't very professional.

Comments

DrLumen wrote on 9/19/2016, 8:42 PM

There are a few ways I can think of but it depends on what you have to work with and what you mean by highlight. One way would be to create a circle in a graphics app with either a black background or with an alpha mask. Then overlay it on your video using track level pan/crop and zoom to position and size the circle. This would probably be the easiest but depending on the resizing, the circle may get fuzzy or jaggy..

Another way would be to nest 2 cookie cutter masks with one being slightly smaller and then a media generator track to make the circle whatever color you wanted. Then overlay your video with this nest. Slightly more complicated but would likely give better results.

In VP13 there is a cookie cutter preset that is a circle on the video. Duplicate your video track and then apply the circle preset to the upper video track. There are options to change the color and such within the effect. This would replace the above cookie cutter mask process.

john_dennis wrote on 9/19/2016, 8:55 PM

Here is a brief screen grab of the Cookie Cutter Method.

This is no longer a Sony site. Also, notice the Beta at the top of the screen.

NickHope wrote on 9/19/2016, 9:55 PM

Nice walkthrough John. I particularly enjoyed your hunt for tada.wav. How are you capturing your screen?

(Christine, please excuse brief thread derailment)

john_dennis wrote on 9/19/2016, 11:03 PM

I've been using Open Broadcaster Software. I did this one on my "office" machine which can't keep up with some effects. It works better on my other machine that can use intel Quick Sync in hardware. Overall, I think it is good software. If I find that I haven't thrown some money at the developers, I will.

I should have had the tada.wav in the Media Bin before I started.

Edit: Just because I have a competent video editing application available at my finger tips, I cut my "hunting and pecking" while looking for tada.wav out of the Cookie Cutter tutorial.

Quitter wrote on 9/21/2016, 5:32 AM

thx, i've tried OBS Studio, good stuff👍

christine-m wrote on 1/12/2017, 7:59 AM

Thank you for your feedback. What I did was use the cookie cutter, like John said. It looks great. My intended audience loves it. Thanks.