Tried the film effect, but I couldn't get the grain large enough and I'm looking for static grain/noise versus the variable grain that film effect gives. Maybe there's some way to overcome this.

Hmmm ... can't say I followed you on the "scanner" part of your reply. I'm guessing, though, that I could make a decent mask in Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro with textures or something.

Would be nice to have a method of doing the same thing completely internal to Vegas, though.

Have you tried looking for the appropriate font?

You can make it static by simply grabbing a still and using that.
To just affect the edges use an edge FX to create a mask so you can composite just the affected edge over the intact original.
What I think Grazie was saying is that perhpas the best way to do this is to do it for real. Attack a printed page and then scan it. I think from memory things like tincture of iodine or a few dops of copper sulphate solution and a LITTLE heat can make paper looked aged. You'd probably find arts suppliers who stock 'old' paper.
Bob.

Try the newsprint fx which will make it raggedy and then the chromakey to eliminate a bit more (use the sliders). That's if you want to do it all within Vegas.

Oops, see, I knew I wasn't communicating well. By "aged" I simply meant that the text itself looked like it had been around the block and back, not the "paper" or background that it was on. As if the letters were painted on something, and chips of paint were missing. Kinda reminds me of the old ads painted on barn sides, which is probably why I used "aged."

I'm talking about where the text (usually a larger, thicker font) has fairly large particles (up to around 10% of the letter) missing from it. Some times there are extra particles just hanging around the text (not attached).

Hmm ... edge effect. I assume that's one of the million things in Vegas I haven't learned yet. Got a long way to go.

zcheema - I'd rather use an effect than a special font, because 1) it's free! and 2) it's more flexible in that I can use *any* font, and the particles will be in different locations on the same letter (i.e. won't be the same particle missing from the same location of every "o," or whatever). However, a special font was my first thought, too.

At work (my 9-6), I have a few free font pages book marked. Here at home, I only seem to have one;
http://www.fontazm.com/msie/opening.htm
If you find other font sources, you'll likely find the one you're looking for. There are all kinds of "dirty" fonts out there. It's just a trick to find them sometimes.

If you want that kind of look the using a font is out as the same letter will look the same each time it's used and that's not how anything hand done looks.
Probably best done in PS, you could start off with a big chunky font, convert to bitmap and then use the various PS tool to scrape, airbrush etc bits of it away.
One other thing you could try in Vegas is displacement maps using a noise generator to create the displacement, the only problem there is that Vegas doesn't do lighting so again you're back to PS or even a 3D app.
Of course I don't know if you want it photo realistic or not.
One project I did a little while ago they wanted just that look for the DVD menu so they found an already well graffitied wall and added a bit and shot that.
Bob.

Bob

If you want some neat lighting effects try this

Sample text white on a black background.

Bump Map

omnidirectional
intensity .166
ambience .077
shineness .311
bump height .666
z slider near bottom

Then apply the convolution Kernel with rotation plus or minus 250 and play with some of the other adjusters.

Tattoo

Try this then

EDIT White sample text on black background

Film grain

amount 1.000
granularity .4 or play with it
chromacity .0

Then

Threshold at .60 or so.

Looks like chips of text missing.

Even if you have Photoshop Elements, you can type in any text, simplify it, use the eraser tool combined with a splatter-type brush setting and go around the edges to give it an aged look. Save it as a png file, and bring it into Vegas.

Here's a sample:

http://www.videouniversity.com/forums/gforum.cgi?forum=17

Tattoo, there is a tutorial on how to achieve this on the VASST site.
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/ragged_text_in_Sony_Vegas.htm
I hope it helps.

DGates- Very cool look, thanks for the demo. Even more aged than I was thinking of. Looks pretty easy to do, and I do have Elements. Your example wasn' t the exact look I'm thinking of, but I can get there from here. Still like to have it internal to Vegas, but that may not be possible.

nickle - Cool effect, surprisingly close to what I was looking for with the chunks missing. My preview is showing some horizontal lines on the "aged" but not missing parts, though. Very cool how you can achieve different looks by combining different "ingrediants." Unrelated, but cool effect of keyframing the Threshold starting at 1 and ending at 0, as your text appears to beam-in like the old Star Trek.

<Wow, I just did a Google search for Star Trek beam-in effect to see how they did that back in 1968. No luck, but I did find a long argument about whether a Star Wars jedi lightsaber could deflect a Star Trek phaser set on wide-beam. And I thought *I* had no life!>

Spot on, as usual. "Ragged" text, yes. The tutorial showed the exact effect I wanted, just more extreme. Just had to figure out how to back it off a little.

nickle - you were right, too, just different parameters. For the effect I'm thinking of, I set the Film Grain granularity to 1, and the amount to around .7. Never hit on that combo when I was attempting your previous suggestion.

Bing-badda-boom! There ya go. Vegas forum knows all! And picked up several other great tips along the way ...
Thanks all.
Brian