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A common question from new users of Sony Vegas Pro is how to create a “news ticker” — simply a line of text that scrolls across the bottom of the screen, usually over a black background. It’s very easy to do using Vegas’ text generated media, and this tutorial will show you how.

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Tags: pan/crop, text, track motion

The latest version of Sony DVD Architect comes installed with over 50 themes, giving you many options for menu designs. But suppose none of them suit the project you’re working on? Fortunately, DVD Architect also gives you a few options for creating your own menu designs. Since v2.0, one of those options has been custom highlight masks.

A menu designed in this way only needs two files: a background video or image, which contains everything your menu will show, and a mask indicating all highlights. This tutorial will walk you through creating these files in a graphics application and using them in Sony DVD Architect.

Ready? Then let’s get started!

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Tags: DVD Architect, highlight, mask, menu

There is one problem that people often run into when turning a collection of photos into a slideshow: Not all of them are quite the right aspect ratio. In particular, when portrait (taller than they are wide) photos are placed into a landscape video (wider than it is tall, and the standard for just about any video), you end up with black gutters on two sides. And that’s just kind of tacky.

(Vocabulary bonus: When the gutters are on the top and bottom, the image is “letterboxed.” When the gutters are on the left and right, the image is “pillorboxed.”)

But what are your options? Crop the photos so that they fill the screen entirely? But then you may end up losing important parts of those photos. Add in a colored background or matte of some kind? Maybe, but how do you find something that looks good with all of the photos in your slideshow?

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Tags: effects, pan/crop, track motion