need help w/ transparent texts and more plug-ins, scene transitions [other questions, too]

Flexy wrote on 7/8/2003, 5:57 PM
hi, i just got Vegas 4.0, and i have some questions.

* I can not get transparent texts into my videos. When i drag one of the transparent texts on my timeline over a video and i preview the video...the background is always either blue or black...but NOT transparent....i never see the underlying video !

This is such a basic thing and i really wonder what's wrong there...did i miss something ?

* I need more plug-ins! I had quite nice ones already in MovieMaker2, eg. the "Star Wars' 3D scrolling text....and very SIMPLE scene transistions, eg. heart-shape and stars like in MovieMaker2. I did not see anything like that in Vegas ?
Where can i get such plug-ins fre off the net ? (Mainly the star-wars type scroller and the different shapes....)

* why am i unable to preview in fullscreen ?

I mean even in MovieMaker2 i could immediately preview my 640x480 videos FULL SCREEN...and it did not take any time to 'render'.

Why is there no option in Vegas so my preview gets stretched and i can see my preview full screen ???
When i chose the option 'pre-view in player'....THEN it takes a long time to 'render' [why 'render ??? i only want preview !!!] and i have to wait 20mins or so just to preview what i just did.

Besides i dont udnerstand what is there to render, because (in this case) i dont re-compress my video, nor change the resolution....it stays the same. I only want to apply effects..some sound....and then (pre)view it...not 'render' it and wait for 20mins.

Btw my config is an AMD 1900+ under XP SP1

Greetings


Comments

Chienworks wrote on 7/8/2003, 6:23 PM
Are you dragging the text directly onto the same track with the video? This would explain what you are seeing since when you do this you are replacing the video with the text event. Place the text on a separate track above the video (for example, text on track 1 and video on track 2 and they will be composited together and the video will show through the transparent background around the text.
philfort wrote on 7/8/2003, 10:52 PM
-Vegas doesn't come with the gimmicky "toy" transitions you'll get in MovieMaker2 like a heart transition, but it's easy enough to create them yourself.
-star wars scrolling text is possible with the free 3dLE plugin available at debugmode.com
-different shapes... just draw them yourself in photoshop or whatever, import them, and learn about the different compositing modes to use them as masks, pan/crop or track motion to resize them, etc... you can pretty much create *any* kind of transition in Vegas, you're not limited to the canned effects as you are in MovieMaker

-You can preview at full size, but not a full screen... or maybe you can, I don't know. Do you really need to? You can preview on an external monitor though (i.e. your TV), which is even better than full-screen on your computer monitor.

-If you modify the video in any way at all (super impose text, cross-fade, etc...) those sections need to be "rendered" (i.e. uncompressed, modified, recompressed). This is the case with any NLE, not just Vegas.