Virtual Tracks

rohde wrote on 3/18/2003, 10:02 AM

Does Vegas have the ability to do something similar to Premiere's virtual tracks?

In particular, I like to composite together several animated images (moving stripes over a slowly shrinking circular gradient for example) and then to use these as a track matte.

In Premiere, this is easily done, but I'm seriously considering moving to Vegas Video instead.

I'm compositing several layers together to attempt this in the VV4 demo, but once I composite together more than 2 tracks, things get strange - like just a black screen.

Thanks.

-Rohde

Comments

ibliss wrote on 3/18/2003, 1:18 PM

I'm not entirely sure what you are aiming for here, but I THINK the following might work:

Insert a blank video track. Move it to the top of the track view, so that it is video track 1.

Right click on the new track and choose 'Insert Generated Media'. Choose 'Sonic Foundry Solid Color' from the box that comes up.

Add your other video media to tracks below the first track.

On the very left hand edge of the track controls there is an arrow pointing upwards, which will say 'make compositing child' when you hover over it. Click this on all of the media tracks to want to control, so that they are all linked to the top track with the Generated Media event (the Parent Track).

Now you can use the Parent track to Track Motion controls to alter the tracks below.
You can also insert FX onto the Parent track which will work on all of the Child tracks. Fades on the Parent track will fade the Child tracks together.

You can drag the right-hand edge of the Generated Media to make it as long as it needs to be to match the other media.

Hope this helps to do whatever it is you were trying to do! :)

rohde wrote on 3/20/2003, 1:32 PM

Thanks ibliss.

I've been playing around with this for a couple of hours and can duplicate the effect I'm after pretty easily using the compositing. Putting a white fill into the parent track wasn't necessary, but I can see how it provides the ability to do some of the other effects of virtual tracks, like picture-in-picture with transition in the smaller shot.

I'm loving a lot about Vegas - keyframing, velocity curve, keyframable generated sources (made the moving stripes a cinch - took 2 hours of futzing in Premiere and Illustrator to do this).

And, I can Zoom/rotate stills extensively without paying a penalty of the still being pre-rendered to the video's resolution. Big time bonus for photo montages!

Anyway, thanks for your assistance. Its been a big help in evaluating VV4.

-Rohde