Very nice!

A few comments:

... repair technique here is to then select the Track 3 media and cut a Bezier Mask in the media Pan/Crop tool around the problem areas of the image.

When I tried this on the mask track, it over-rode the automatic mask and all I had was the Bezier mask area showing. I therefore had to create a new track above all the other tracks, with yet another duplicate of the media, and put my Bezier mask on that track. I also create yet another track with a duplicate of the background media (the gradient fill in your tutorial). I use a Bezier mask on that track to subtract from the mask. Thus, I use one track to fix places where the original background is poking through, and the other track to fix places where the new background is poking through.

Another thing you might want to add (and maybe it's there and I missed it) is that you can keyframe the various track fX filters in order to improve the result as people move around in the scene. I found that if I set the levels too aggressively, I started to lose the edges of the key. So, I created settings that gave me a nice edge. However, depending on the lighting and background, as people moved around, sometimes the original background would show through, and other times, body parts -- especially hands -- would start to look translucent. While I could use the Bezier masks to override these problems, drawing and keyframing those, when they have to exactly match the edges of the key, gets tedious very quickly. These garbage masks are much more useful to fix problems in the center of a person (like the background punching through light-colored bits of clothing). Instead, I found that I could slightly alter the levels and other settings in the problem areas and get good results, and then let the setting revert back to my defaults in most of the other areas.

Hmmm..
"When I tried this on the mask track, it over-rode the automatic mask and all I had was the Bezier mask area showing. I therefore had to create a new track above all the other tracks, with yet another duplicate of the media, and put my Bezier mask on that track. I also create yet another track with a duplicate of the background media (the gradient fill in your tutorial). I use a Bezier mask on that track to subtract from the mask. Thus, I use one track to fix places where the original background is poking through, and the other track to fix places where the new background is poking through."
I'd say you're right, but it seemed to me that I didn't have to do that before - I may have been mistaken (as it would seem).

Excellent tut!

Is it just on my PC but I always have to print landscape because the VASST tuts are formatted about .5 inches wider than I can fit to 8.5 in paper, even when I put paper margins at the smallest available (.25 in)?

-jerry

I'd say you're right, but it seemed to me that I didn't have to do that before ...

Yeah, it surprised me as well when the difference mask completely disappeared and I was left with just the Bezier. I thought they would add. It wasn't a huge deal to add another track. Also, maybe there is one of those right/left arrow settings I forgot to enable when I added the Bezier mask ...

did you set the mask to negative or positive?

Dave

You can set any image or video as the backround, correct?
I watched a really cool tutorial on after effects, it was about how to replace the sky with more appealing video, nice clouds ect.'

This Vegas tutorial seems to be exactly what I was going to ask about "how to do this in Vegas?"

Thanks for sharing.

Quote:

I used to have this problem in IE6 until I installed the program that came with my Canon printer. But if you use Firefox (haven't tried IE7 beta) you can specify the print seetings and fit the page to the width of your paper - I've just printed the tutorial (comes to 8 pages) and it worked perfectly.

This came just in time for a project I need to shoot. It would be kind of awkward and impractical to use green screen for what I'm trying to do.

"It would be kind of awkward and impractical to use green screen for what I'm trying to do."

Based on your name, I'd say that, that's an understatement :)

Dave

in regards to the masking cutting, I just double checked and if you leave it as positive then the BG goes away, but if you switch it to negative so that you just cut out that little section it seems to work.

maybe you left it as positive? Just shooting out a thought here.

Dave

did anyone else try this masking making sure to set the masking to negative?

Dave