How do I remove the background from a Vegas Effects project? Whenever I make a composite shot in Vegas Effects it has a black background, but I do not have any options to make it an empty alpha background and whenever I pull the project into Vegas Pro or render it out, the black background persists.
The two render formats in Vegas Pro that can provide an alpha channel are AppleProRes or Video for Windows (.avi). With the latter, the custom settings window needs to be opened and the Video Format changed to 'Uncompressed' and the 'Render alpha channel' option checked on. The frame size can be changed if necessary to 'Custom frame size' and the W & H settings can then be changed manually.
With an alpha channel included, the blacks in the image/video should become transparent.
With either render format, the rendered file will be very large.
@SnarfConsortium Hi, In Vegas Effects (VE) choose 'Uncompressed AVI with Alpha' but in VE there's no ProRes, so I think @Dexcon misread your comment.
After Export - Add to Queue, in the Export window there's a Presets tab at the bottom where you can right click on the preset & change it, but it should already be set to RGBA & render out at the project size of your Composite Shot,
RGB is red, green, blue. RGBA is red, green, blue + Alpha.
When dragged into Vegas right click on the event on the timeline - Properties & change the Alpha Channel to Straight
This is very odd ... I did make a second edit to my comment that highlighted the export render formats within Vegas Effects which worked after hitting the Comment button and the "number of times changed' updated to 'two' - but that 2nd edit is no longer there. Cue Twilight Zone theme music.
EDIT: And I also mentioned that VE had a 'PNG Sequence with Alpha' render format option.
@Dexcon Yep bizarre, your comment is still relevant tho reg Alpha & file size, the short 4sec UHD clip I used for my pics above exported out from VE is 4.07GB 😂
I've been replying to comments on my YT vids & some of those replies have duplicated themselves 🤷♂️ I'll leave them & maybe YT will sort itself out.
EDIT: And I also mentioned that VE had a 'PNG Sequence with Alpha' render format option.
@Dexcon You edited while I was writing, Yeah I didn't want to confuse things by getting into Image sequences, but talking of confusion @SnarfConsortium says "but I do not have any options to make it an empty alpha background", which implies that they understand the need for an Alpha channel, In my pics it shows there's several 'with Alpha' options, So maybe it's just the need to change the Properties in Vegas to Straight that is the problem. ?
If you roundtrip it from Vegas Pro - right-clicking a clip and selecting Edit in Vegas Effects from the menu - then the alpha is honoured.
@MikeS I opened VE as the standalone for the pics above, If I right click 'Edit in VE' I get this msg, I have 'close media files when Vegas is not the active application' unticked because it helps to stop crashing with nesting & switching to other apps such as Google etc., & in this new version (315) I think it is unticked by default now, Vegas's attempt at a 'fix' for this type of crashing. I wonder if VP21 Post now also get this msg..
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Interestingly if I use HOS's option 'OpenPhotoEditor' (I use GIMP) to edit a photo I don't get that msg, so when it says media files it must just be ref to video not pictures 🤔🤷♂️
Yep, that happens here as well - but I've not suffered any instability issues as a result. Maybe I'm just lucky.
But the inconvenience of reticking the box if you are one of the people that suffers is, I think, more than outweighed by the convenience and utility of the roundtrip.
The "close media files ..." checkbox also needs to be active when going to the preferred audio editor (e.g. Sound Forge, RX, Audacity) and the same message will also pop-up if it isn't checked; whereas the checkbox being checked isn't necessary when using HOS's 'OpenAudioEditor' which also enables your own choice of audio editor.
With the "close media files ..." checkbox, the good news is that enabling or disabling it doesn't require Vegas Pro to be closed down and reopened in order for the change of setting to take effect.
@SnarfConsortium Thanks for letting me know & yep, I only use VE for 3D OBJ CAD files & as before I open the standalone, so I'm happy to leave 'close media files when Vegas .......' unticked. (unticking it did help with nesting but I still got crashes, not as many as before but enough for me to not use that feature)
I have Hitfilm Pro, the version just before it went subscription I think, that did my OBJ files & as Hitfilm was dying I bought VP19 Post out of curiousity, I had problems transferring BCC effects back to Vegas from VE so that's as far as i went & didn't update it.