Way OT for the forum but... I finally had to pop up and say...

BB has acknowledged that he is crusty and does not get offended when there is a reaction to his, at times, way out there posts (to put it politely). No surprise there and I do not fault him for that.

But being in a FREE land does not mean (in my book) that you can be rude and abusive to other people with impunity. I don't think bad behaviour should be so easily washed over and tolerated.

Personally I think that "ladyblade" hit it spot on. I do find it difficult to connect the generosity displayed by BB in creating some wonderful Vegas tutorials for all of us to benefit from with the raving person that he potrays all to often in this forum.

Strange world.

I could just say what NIxon said... You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore and simply not post. But... that's not me.

Strange world indeed.

On one hand it seems almost unanimously everyone likes my tutorials, and I try to help in the forum, but if I express an opinion some don't agree with some try to paint me as some wild eyed crazy.

Funny... all my critics have lost it... more than once. NOT ONCE have they said their sorry. I have multiple times. Like I said strange world.

Billyboy,

Just to be clear... I am not refering to issues of strong opinion about vegas and the way we use it. Those sorts of debates of opinion regarding how we do things or how to best get something to work are great and beneficial to the community.

The issue I am talking about is where opinions are taken too far (often in the form of personal attack) that is entirely unrelated even to the issue being discussed.

My post is not about apologies... or even the need to apologize.

I recognize this post is of itself very personal in nature... and walks the line of being a personal attack. It is not intended to be so.

it IS about the need (my need only if you like) to not stand by and through my silence I end up effectively supporting the continuing rantings and ravings. I simply do not think it is acceptable behavior.

Consider this. Someone who has just joined the forum got a certain impression (a negative one) of you through viewing what you had written. I think that says a lot. Does it matter to you? Probably not. Does it matter to this community? I would say yes.

Keep the good stuff coming... keep the bad stuff somewhere else.

The hologram can be done as a separate file with the transparency, it just needs to be rendered as a 32 bit uncompressed file. Only uncompressed files can be 32 bit, as compression requires 24bit file format.

SPOT,
not to labor the point!
I have rendered to uncompressed with alpha. I do get alpha channel data. Except what I get is semi transparent hologram with the rest of the frame black. I started with exactly the same .veg as the tutorial and deleted the lower track (the 'room')
If I now take that uncompressed AVI into a new project and put it on top of another track then the lower track shows through the hologram but not the rest of the frame, it's still black.

Maybe what I need to do is have all the tracks in the original project as 32 bit uncompressed AVIs? What I don't understand is this:
In the .veg from the tutorial the 'head' is set to 75% opacity, the garbage matte sets the rest of the frame to 100% transparency causing the lower track to show through. Fine, except when there's no lower track Vegas will it seems still pickup a black background even when rendering to a 32 bit AVI.
To look at it another way, the mask generator for the composite parent/child tracks is feeding alpha data into the child track just fine causing all but the head to be 100% transparent but that data isn't getting output to the 32 bit AVI, the transparency fom the track header is.

OK, I just ran some tests. Drop white text on transparent background onto TL, render out to 32 bit AVI. No transparency in resulting AVI.
Put that AVI onto TL. Set track header to 50%, render out.
Result 50% transparency in AVI

Go back, put 32 bit AVI on time line, use track composite envelope to fade down to 100% transparent. Render to 32 bit AVI. Resulting AVI has no transparency, just fades to black.
It seems that no alpha data generated on the T/L can be rendered out.

H,mmm......
I just did this, but I rendered with the file at 100% opacity, and got all alpha information. You might be needing to go to the properties of the 32 bit file and tell Vegas that it has an alpha. It should recognize automatically, but sometimes you need to help it. by going to Properties>Media>Alpha