Sorry farss .. hi . .

Yeah, you are correct, I was asking where a person WOULD use these FXs and to what . . . er .. effect? - Simple question .. .

Grazie

I guess you could do some wierd stuff if you can make a range of levels transparent. Haven't had much call for that myself, machine too busy doing hack stuff for me to ever get time to play around much.
One day, one day, I'll actaully get the creative juices going, probably around Vegas 8 or 9! Damn it, this stuff was supposed to be a hobby but people keep offering me money to do things. I decided 30 years ago not to persue a career in this business and I still can't escape some sort of karma. Odd thing is most of my schoolmates went into it, one become a well known director, the other gave up at 40 and became a lawyer.

I think this is what you are asking...

If you build an image in some photo app, like Photoshop, you could make the background transparent by putting it in the alpha channel. Its a form of masking that is built into the image.

Is that the idea, or did I miss your point?

Rexie! Spot on!

Is it a type of Chroma keying .. BUT one produce one's own trannie background . . ? . .It just seems so valuable to use this .. I've been using chromakeying to get back the trannie background of a rendered rolling text sequence - you know the thing, render out black background, need to have it trannied - So what would be the advantqge of this Sony Levels .. .as opposed to Chromakeying out the black?

Rexie, you are well inside the Ball Park!

Thanks farss .. .

Grazie

farss, as to carreer development mine's been all over the place .. What am I doing now? I have a tiny itsybitsy business filming and editing community work .. I LOVE IT! . .Especuially when I give them back somthing that has CK and some rolling text WITH a bit of pazzazz . . something with a wee bit of design in it .. I like to think! It is as if I'm saying, "Yes, your project is BRILLIANT .. you deserve the best I can do to make it LOOK as good as possible . .pli=us not a little HEART too" . . well I like to think so ..

That is why I love V5, SF, Acid Pro, DVDA2 and trhe other stuff .. They are the way into my ideas . .THEY aren't the end in themselves ..

So, getting to grips with the IT bit .. understanding what and how something can give me - viz the latest thread on 2-Pass encoding GREAT stuff - is why I'm here and ask these sometimes open ended questiosn ..

Hey Guys what I'm really saying TOO is that without your support, patience and downright generosity of Spirit you've shown towards me, I would NOT have got so far in my late arrival to this amazing "Craft" . . . .I just hope that some of my "assisting" ramblings have balanecd the books .. as it were -YEAH?

. . back to levels and finding out new stuff!

Grazie . ... ;-)

It is exactly like chroma keying but less work.

I did a DVD for my Vietnam vet comrads. For the menu I used PhotoImpact to build a sandbag wall that I constructed by merging and blending parts of a photograph. I then opened up a window in the upper left corner of this sandbag background. I made that area transparent with the alpha channel and saved it as a png.

In Vegas I used this image as my main menu image. I put two images of day and night Vietnam scenes on the track above and faded them - one to another - several times. Oh yeah, I cropped them up into the upper left quarter where the window was.

Now when you play it, there is a sandbag wall with a window in the upper left quarter and through that window fades day and night scenes of Vietnam.

Add an eerie Acid track with assorted gunfire sound captures synced to the music rythm.

I was happy with it.

Thanks Rexie!

The VV thing sounded really moving . . like it .. I'm doing something similar with a "stark" looking building and making slo-mo dancers appear . .as if by magic .. on the walls .. like a moving tapestry - yeah?

Once again thanks for the reasssuarance i was not "missing" the plot on this.

Grazie