Thanks Terry. I'll try that.

Another question: when I took a snapshot of the image & placed that on the overlay timeline, then after selecting this image (pan/crop), I wasn't able to adjust the opacity, any other suggestions?

Now, I'm thinking of upgrading to Vegas 8 Pro....doh! I need to find a second job to support my software habits...LOL

You don't adjust the opacity in Pan/Crop. You do that right on the timeline. If you place the mouse pointer at the top edge of the event it will change to a little pointing finger. Click and drag down. A blue horizontal line appears. The farther you drag it down the more transparent the image becomes. You can also adjust opacity for the entire track by moving the slider in the track header.

I think what sinandcindy28 is wanting to do is a visual effect where you freeze some action clip, then have live action going on from another clip (made popular by the Heroes TV show).

For example, you have a locked down (tripod) shot of somebody jumping in the air, and then another clip (same exact tripod shot) of somebody walking across the street or whatever. You put the action shot on an upper track, and freeze-frame it while the guy is in mid-air. Then you use a bezier mask to outline (keep) the guy in mid-air, and put the "walking across the street" clip on a lower track. Now you have a guy frozen in time while the second guy walks behind and around him.

The bad news, sinandcindy28, is that the bezier mask feature is available only in the full (pro) version of Vegas -- not in Vegas Movie Studio or Platinum.

However, if you want to do this effect without upgrading, you may be able to export your freeze frame and open it in some other drawing or paint program, outline what you want to "keep" and make everything else transparent (checkerboard). Now bring this edited freeze frame into VMS, stick it at the end of your freeze frame video, and put your live action video on the track below.

If you don't have a photo editing program that can save transparent background, just fill the background with a solid color (pure blue, for example) and use the chromakey effect in VMS when you bring the freeze frame back in. Everything blue will become transparent and will let your live action footage show through.

Tim L

The effect sounds interesting, but I'm having trouble visualizing it. Can someone give me a link or two to somewhere that I can see? Thanks. Cin

Thanks Tim L.!!!!

I tried the chroma key effect. Works great. I will test this when I'm shooting tomorrow.

Once everything is edited. I'll post some videos on youtube. Thanks again everyone.

Here are some examples of the "time freeze" effect we're talking about

Below is a clip of footage from the TV show Heroes. The time freeze scene starts around 2:00. An interesting point though is that I saw somewhere that *most* of the time-freeze effect is done as a "practical" effect rather than with CGI (computer generated imagery). They have special props, and actors standing very, very still during the shoot, with just a few CGI elements added later.


Here are some "home made" examples.





And here is a tutorial on VideoCopilot.net that many of the YouTube videos refer to: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=23

Tim L

Big Props Tim L!!!

I've just downloaded a freeware & have been testing it all weekend. Its great. I'm currently rendering the clip & will be finishing these shortly to create a short movie to load on youtube and once its done, I'll be including a link for everyone. Thanks again.

Too bad sony didn't include "bezier masking" in movie studio...well, looks like I'll have to save some money up & upgrade later.

FYI...if anyone who can't afford an expensive paint program, which I won't mention their names,...check out the link below. Its called paint.net. This is a freeware software and theirs always someone writing plugins for them. Thought I'd share that with everyone. They even have tutorials. Yeah!

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

Thanks again Tim