VEGAS also has the smart mask AI masking, though it is currently in beta form, so it will continue to improve with each new update.

Here's an example of a video I made of me standing behind myself which truly took me no more than 4 minutes to make and this included doing the tracking of my hand. I know Boris would be much more sophisticated but it also has a steep learning curve at least for me it does. Runway costs $12 a month and Mocha is $75 a month and silhouette is $150 a month. Runway also has an Inpaint feature that works pretty darn good. This AI version of rotoscoping and tracking is honestly done with a few clicks of the mouse.

@Roger Bansemer I completely agree with you.

@Roger Bansemer Interesting. I downloaded the "free" version to play with .. Can you explain how you assembled you standing behind you in Runway?

I just used the green screen feature to rotoscope me sitting in the chair which isolated me sitting there. That isolated me and left nothing else on the clip. Then I used another clip with me walking behind that "empty" chair. I took those two clips and put the rotoscope one on the top track and the other one with me standing which had all the background etc. on it on the bottom track. Here's a short video on it I made for you. Took me under 2 minutes to create the video. I think the trial free version only lets you "green screen" a few times before it asks to upgrade for $12 a month.

Amazing. Huge thanks to you Roger for the excellent tutorial on how to do this with Runway.

I would think Magix will be paying attention to stuff like this. I notice that the Free version is also limited to 720p.

@Roger Bansemer That seems amazing. it seems to work exactly like a chromakey, in that (apparently) the video doesn't even need to be processed first as is the case for Vegas and Resolve. it's working more like Zoom, Nvidia Broadcast, Tiktok etc working in real time but doing a much better job.

There has to be more to this. If it's an online editor, maybe processing is gong on in the cloud

The Paid version of DaVinci resolve has a similar feature called "magic mask" that masks and tracks with little effort, essentially replacing a need for "rotoscoping". I've never used "Resolve" so I don't know how good it is.

.. Hopefully the next version of Vegas will include something similar to what "runway" and "Resolve" are doing.

Here's what the free TikTok editor capcut can do. It's fully automatic, no options, no ability to include or exclude, and only works on people

VP9 1080P, clip duration processed is 17seconds

Look at where the shoulders and arms overlap for where it fails most obviously. If it was just a single gentleman most likely would have done a usable job

So glad you posted this. I don't have tictoc on any device but I do have the capcut editor which I haven't played with for some time. Didn't know it did rotoscoping. Sure wish Vegas would implement it. One thing Runway does which capcut does not do is that in Runway I can "exclude" a portion if the rotoscope is picking up something it shouldn't. After Effects has a great rotoscope which has many more features for tweeking but Runway and Capcut seem to do all I would ever need.

I think that Vegas is working on a "magic mask" feature. But that takes time, and a lot of programming. While it isn't something I would use, I understand how people would love to be able to do this. But, for me, when shown on a large screen, it has to be, at least for me, really really good.

I'm sure it does take a lot of time and I'm quite a big fan of Vegas with the exception of constant crashes.

I did give Runway a try the other day and was actually rather disappointed. I uploaded a real greenscreen clip to have it rendered back with alpha using their "greenscreen" algo. The "keying" ( using quotes here as I presume it's technically not real keying) was worse than inside Vegas with the keying FX I usually use and struggle with. Same issues on hair, and aliasing on the edges of clothes etc.

All those Zoom and TikTok FX might look OK on a mobile, but as soon as you see them on a large screen in HD or 4k, they quickly reveal pretty bad contours when not heavily feathered IMO.

Having said that, I opened a thread last year about my Vegas green screen issues, mainly occasional heavy aliasing and strange artifacts, that seemed to not appear in Resolve or other NLEs. To this day, those remain more or less unsolved.

Runway does have a feature that is easy to miss. After selecting an object you can use a paint brush to add or remove an area however small. The paint brush can be adjusted as to size so even a very tiny area can be included. I know it's not After Effects but then again it's not nearly as complicated or expensive. It's also pretty good at recognizing any object as opposed to CapCut which only recognizes people.