You can do this with Icarus. Some of the fanatics are in the process of getting it archived on some ftp sites, check the other threads and be patient until everything is up.

If you create a still, you can put this into yourt Paint program and use it as a template to create a black and white mask, black for the foreground, the rest white. Feather the edges if necessary.

Now you can have two incidences of the clip, apply the Blur to one, and let the mask control exactly which part of the unaffected, still in focus version, shows through.

with stills its very easy, and it can make for some cool "the kid stay in the picture" effects, keyframe the blur, and ad a little motion.


moviing video is a whole other can of worms, but I guess its possible.

I was referring to VIDEO. It can be done, like with something like Borris Red, otherwise a pain. Of course it depends how complex the mask needs to be to keep up with the changing background. Anything more than a handful of seconds, you'll drive yourself crazy with all the work involved.

I know it can be done, its just a pain in the ass unless you are working on a really short clip(and even then its a pain in the ass) but making a mask for a few thousand frames sucks.

So is making thousands of cells for cartoons but its done all the time.

Thanks as always BillyBoy, also musicvid & PeterWright. (I'm both vitalforces and editor3333). Food for thought. If I come up with something workable, of course I'll share it. But for now, unless the subject fits an exact oval square, circle, etc., in the cookie cutter presets (which work perfectly for setting up a composite on a top layer and blurring everything except what's in the cutout, with featherable edges), it looks like I'm saving up for a hi-priced item like Boris.

Normally I would put on the wish list for a future Vegas version, to add a tool to the FX set, in which you can "paint" or "magic wand" the area to be affected. The problem is, you also would have to incorporate motion tracking into the selection so it can replicate itself at 24 to 60 frames/sec. (which is along the lines of what Boris rakes in the bucks for doing). HOWEVER, Vegas adding a feature like this would be the equivalent of Panasonic inventing a 24p progressive frame camcorder with a film-equivalent gamma setting. In one day, all the competition is suddenly in the back seat.

Nevertheless--keep up the good work, SonyFo.
-- Fred Smith, NYC

Shameless bump just to congratulate the engineers in Mad Wisc. The next version of Vegas did indeed come out (V5), and the string below, passes into history with the bezier masking feature--almost.

Consumer NLEs are starting to pop up, not exactly with motion tracking, but at least image stabilization (to smooth out pans and handheld camera shake), such as Pinnacle Studio 9 and Magix Movie Edit Pro 2004. What a nice idea to add to the ol' wish list...

I'll add mine too. The Vegas boys in cheese land are top rate. Maybe its due to them eating more cheese.

Over at dvxuser.com there was a lot of excitement about a video from a teenager that had some amazing focus racks and the like. Took a while before they figured out that he didn't use 35mm lenses but used very discreet masks and blur. Probably from the few frames I'd seen he been very careful with shot planning so he had hard straight edges to create the mask and had the camera locked down.

I haven't even looked at what Red can do but from I know of motion tracking it still needs defined marks or edges to track, so again it all gets back to planning. I doubt there's any magic bullet than can work with just any footage.

I'll second the bezier masking tools in Vegas for this very thing. Really slick and easy to create masks. Depth of field especially looks really good. You may want to fiddle fart with this tool and see if you get what you want. Nother option is to try to do this as best as you can in camera. Get as far from your talent as possible, zoom in, open your iris, ND it down a bit and you should get a pretty good depth of field.

mike

How about this (until a motion tracking mask is available:)

Shoot the backdrop then key the subject in post. A little gaussian on the subject to smooth the edges should blend nicely with your extreme blur on the backdrop.

That's how I'd do it if I wanted a really good depth of field effect. To heck with thousands of frames by hand. I lack the patience for that.

This approach will work flawlessly because I said so.

You can also smooth out the look of the bezier mask edges if you need to, by using a gradient to smooth out and match the lighting. Lay it over as a top track and parent the tracks below. Works pretty good in some situations.

Just a note in the interests of clarity - the effect being discussed here is better referred to as Restricted Depth of Field, i.e. simulating a shallow depth of field where part of the picture is sharp and the rest blurred. As Cheno said above, this can be achieved in camera by moving the camera back and zooming in.

Maximum depth of field means everything, near and far, is in focus, achieved with a Wide Angle lens, as famously used in "Citizen Kane".

Funny how we turn defects in technology into art. There was a group of still photographers called the F64 club. They went the opposite way to the rest of the mob who were trying to make photos look more like paintings by aiming for maximum dof and highest possible resolution to capture the real image.

I've experimented with some of the "film look" techniques and have enjoyed marginal success. Unfortunately my lower-end camera lacks much manual control so it's difficult to reduce the dov. To overcome this, I've incorporated bullhorns into all of my shots. I shoot the actors from about one hundred yards away and they recite their lines via bullhorn. I'm also considering a REALLY long, plutonium-shielded mic cable.

On a more serious note, you really can achieve some great results in production that negate the need for excessive effects in post. In addition to the many links I've found here, there was a pretty good article in Videomaker but the issue number escapes me at this time.

Ah, a man after my own heart. I agree make it happen in or in front of the camera. To get really good dof though you do need a decent monitor and a better than consummer camera. If you want to rack focus then nothing would beat a focus follow unit but all this can add dollars big time.
The alternative is to work within the limitation of what you've got, well shot video, shot as video, is going to look way better than a half baked attempt to make it look like something else.