Hi,

Lens flare is a good idea.
I would produce a star graphic and create a movement combining fade in and out, zoom in and out and rotation, all of this in 15 frames or so.
I've done this to add "sparcles" to a logo. It does the job.

Gilles

The lens flare was the first thing I tried, but I couldn't figure out how to manipulate the controls to get just a single flare point. It seems to insist on giving me a whole line of flares. I can get it down to a single point if I set X and Y both to zero, but that point is then dead center in the picture. The effect is exactly what I want, but if I change the light position, the effect insists on giving me the other lens flares elsewhere in the frame.

Get the effect you want and then use Track Motion to move it?

Try setting Perspective to 1.000 in Lens Flare. That seems to collapse the effect to a single point. Probably what it is actually doing is collapsing it to a straight line aimed directly at the camera lens, but a line viewed on-end is a point, and that's good enough.

If you do a search somebody did this about six months ago and provided a link to the media file.

It was a picuture of their daughter, try searching for tooth, colgate etc.

PAW

I have used an external program - Autodesk Animator Pro. This application allows me to open the AVI file and paint, frame by frame. I use the star burst, set the number of points, add a blur so it looks like a real star, and then paste at each point, varying the size so it flares up to a sparkle and then disappears.

I also use AA Pro to add stars to a spinning glass logo.

It is an old program and should be cheap to pick up.

That's how Ive done it, but not within Vegas.

I posted that little clip from my daughter's teethbrushing.

Here's the thread:
starlight

Tor

Not playing with the scissors anymore I hope :-)

Thanks for all the input. I kept trying to make the lens flare work because it can generate the "star" quality I wanted. However, the only way to make the effect I wanted was to set X and Y to zero, which collapses all the flares into one. Problem is, the flare is then dead center in the frame, and there are no other controls to move it around. Track motion, which was suggested above, merely moves the whole frame around, effect and all, so the flare stays right where it was. It is even more complicated because the guy is moving through the frame, so the effect has to be keyframed to track his tooth.

I got most of what I wanted using the spotlight effect in the bump map. It's only on screen for about 1.5 seconds, so the fact that it doesn't have a nice "star" effect isn't the end of the world, although it would have been a LOT better with the star.

Thanks for all the help.

Maybe Chienworks was thinking to put the Star thingy on its own Track - and then track motion that track - independantly of your Video track - yeah?

Think separate tracks -Separate Effects. This is where V4 Flys!! This is what SoFO gets right - Lots 'n Lots of Tracks, providing us with many many options....

Grazie

PAW,
No, not playing with scissors anymore. Got long hair now, as you can see on this shot, made with the help of my recently invented two wheeled dolly :-)

Two wheel dolly

Anyway, I'm not sure if johnmeyer looked up that thread or not. He didn't say. But here's what I did:
Created a star. I used something I found in the font Wingdings 2. I could have done that directly in Vegas' Text generator, but I didn't know that then.
I used pan/crop to get the star in place.
Then I added Light Rays (Intense White preset) and used keyframes to move the centre quickly from one side of the star to the other. The effect is like when you're suddenly hit by a passing light, like a torchlight or the sun being reflected from someone's watch.

There's plenty of possibilities for adjusting things here. Like how long the star is in place, if or if not the person freezes for the effect or moves on - the effect following etc.

This experiment made me realize how much I could do with the text generator and a few simple FXs, when it's used for non-text fonts or elements. It's marvellous.
Tor

TorS, both you and Grazie are right. If I take your two suggestions and combine them together, what I should have done was create the shape/effect I wanted in my photo editing package, put it on a transparent background, save it as PNG, import it into the track above, and move it into place with pan/crop.

Anyway, I had to get this fiished before the wedding this weekend. It is a tribute to the bride/groom. If you have nothing else to do for a few minutes, click here to see the results. It will be on my server for a few more weeks.

Tribute video