You're right. Track motion makes a world of difference. The generated media's "placement" feature seems ill suited for keyframing motion (at least as far as this particular experience would show).

"The generated media's "placement" feature seems ill suited for keyframing motion (at least as far as this particular experience would show)."


Just used the "Sample Text" default. Used KeyFrames moving from top left to bottom right using the Placement function. Smooth as silk.

I've used Placement to scroll 100 names of authors from right to left. Same success. Also 300 names of participants in a movie. Equal success.

What can I say? I'd like to see your veg?

Just did an experiment in the jerky, gen-media driven text track. My two middle keyframes not only changed text position, they also changed the size using the scaling property. I reset scaling to 1.0 at all keyframes and the text stopped jerking. None of this behavior occurred on the version that used track motion for the same effect.

So I'll revise my earlier statement to this:

The generated media's "placement" and "scaling" features seem ill suited for keyframing text motion while simultaneously growing or shrinking it.

I can email the veg file, just shoot me a note via my profile link.

Thanks for your veg .. interesting . .

I didn't know you were doing SCALING and PLACEMENT at the same time. Now I see your sample, AND compare it to your TM success, I agree.

I have had a "natural" approach to Vegas. If I want to do something "texty": Scaling, Kerning, Leading then I keep things to one LINE of action. Meaning I'll do Kern plus Leading, but not VARIABLE Placement. I'll also do Kern plus Leading plus Scaling ( yes scaling!) but not VARIABLE Placement. But I will use placement to Place and keep a block of text. Now I'll also use a variable on Placement to do Scrolling text but I wont combine this with any, what I'd say as being actual FONT and word variation. I don't know why I had picked-up on this nugget. I just considered that variations on the actual FONT - Kern, Scaling and Leading - is not the same as Placement.

So ... I have now consciously separated Font/Word variables from Placement variables. This has been a good thing for me, and kinda supports your revised comment. The keyframing is good and works when NOT used in combination. Yes, it is not good.

However, within the detail here, there is the presence of Angels!

TM works - but you can't do Leading in TM. Nor can you do Tracking and Leading in TM. You can e-x-p-a-n-d fonts, I've often done this. But not the subtle " s p a c i n g " of characters within a word. So, separately: Font/Word variation THEN Placement variation of a lump of unchanged (Leading/Scaling/Tracking) text works.

Now, here's the thing: Vegas is amazing at many many things. And we are mostly given full scope to experiment with all this functions. This is good. I wouldn't want it any differently. However, it is because we can do a multitude of variations that sometimes, here is a point in case maybe, we are surprised that we don't get what we expect. I'll take some of that, any day, if it means that I have "another" route to doing what I want.

Moral of story? Separate out that which can be done and use another function to complete the process. Maybe I would, like you, do the WHOLE thing with TM. But then again IF I wanted Tracking and then a touch of Leading then I would have combine this with TM? Yes? In fact I have just done an experiment for us where I've combine Font/Word variations - Tracking and Leading - and did a RAM Preview and it is smooth as silk.

Sorry, the moral, don't throw out the kid with the tub of water!

use the zoom instead of keyframing the font size. I find it annoying it doesn't change the size smoothly, but it's understandable.

use the zoom instead of keyframing the font size. I find it annoying it doesn't change the size smoothly, but it's understandable.

Not sure if that's what you meant, but Font size is 36 throughout. It was the scaling property which I had changed.