Track Motion and Lower Third

aquaholik wrote on 6/25/2010, 9:47 AM

Vegas newbie here. I bought the Vegas Studio Platinum HD 10 and was watching the free tutorial DVD that comes with it. I then played around and try to duplicate the tutorial by creating a lower third.

I added two tracks, and generated two medias. One is a Sony color gradient and the other is just plain text. I then use the Sony color gradient to create an almost transparent light gray text box and used track motion to position and size the text box. I then use track motion to position the generated text into the transparent gray box.

My question is: When I added a different generated text 5 minutes later into the video and another transparent gray box, the track motion is the same for both events along the track. Is there anyway to make the track motion independent for different event or does it apply to ALL video on that track?

If it does, I guess the only work around is to add more video tracks.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/25/2010, 10:13 AM

Use keyframes. In the bottom of the track motion window you'll see some miniature timelines. You can add "nodes" to these timelines and assign different settings to each node. The parameters will changes smoothly from one node to the next. Probably you won't want the smooth change but would rather the settings stay constant until the next node. Right-mouse-button click on a node and change it to "hold" to achieve that.

For the text items themselves i would use the Positioning tab rather than track motion. That way you easily get individual control of each one rather than having to futz with keyframes. Also, track motion resamples the image after it's been created, which can lead to the text having rough edges and distortion rather than being smooth.

aquaholik wrote on 6/25/2010, 2:08 PM

Thanks for the tip. I have to experiment a lot more. I played around with keyframes and it is quite fun. So far VMS 10 is very stable and a lot more user friendly than Adobe Premier Elements 8. That software was a nightmare.

VMS10 is working as expected, powerful but not very difficult to use. It has rendered 5 minutes of footage 1080i footage from my Canon Vixia HFS10 with out any hiccups.

richard-amirault wrote on 6/25/2010, 3:39 PM

I added two tracks, and generated two medias. One is a Sony color gradient and the other is just plain text. I then use the Sony color gradient to create an almost transparent light gray text box and used track motion to position and size the text box. I then use track motion to position the generated text into the transparent gray box.

How about instead of Track Motion use (for the grey box) Event Pan and Crop instead. As for the text .. position it using the control inside the text generator.

For the grey box you'll need to unlock Aspect Ratio so that you can squeeze the box down to a (fat) line.

MSmart wrote on 6/25/2010, 11:05 PM

Lower thirds can also be created in your favorite photo editor app. I use Photoshop Elements 8 and create my lower thirds there. You can drop the PSD file right onto the timeline.

aquaholik wrote on 7/6/2010, 1:11 PM

How about instead of Track Motion use (for the grey box) Event Pan and Crop instead. As for the text .. position it using the control inside the text generator. For the grey box you'll need to unlock Aspect Ratio so that you can squeeze the box down to a (fat) line.

Works beautifully and now the lower third are all independent. Thank You!!!