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In part one of this series on creating custom transitions in Sony Vegas, we used Bezier masking and standard transitions to “close” a still image over one clip and then open it again to reveal a new clip. In part two, we’re going to use Vegas generated media, compositing, and parent/child relationships to create a transition that resembles smoke or fog. Sony Vegas Movie Studio does not have all of the necessary tools for this method, so you will need Sony Vegas Pro.

The transition I want to achieve is similar to a linear wipe. But while a linear wipe in Vegas can have a soft edge, it’s still rather tidy. I want a deeper and more random blend between the two clips — something that resembles fog or smoke. For this, I’m going to combine two types of generated media, a standard Vegas transition, and some parent-child track relationships.

To begin, insert two video tracks by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q twice. The top track will be for a noise texture that will make up the “edge” of the transition. Go to the Media Generators window, select Noise Texture from the list, and drag the Plasma preset onto Track #1. Vegas will open the Video Media Generators window for you to edit the new piece of media.

Make Color A transparent by entering 0 for its Alpha value (beneath Color A’s color picker, textbox labled “A”) and set Color B to white. The “smoke” is a bit too heavy for my taste, so under Noise Parameters, I’m going to raise the Min value to .250. I also want this mask to be much brighter, so I’m rising Amplitude to 2. You can tweak these and other settings if you like, but this is essentially what we need for the edge to look like smoke. Not let’s make it move like smoke, too.

At the bottom of the Video Media Generators window is a keyframe timeline. It takes a minimum of two keyframes to animate something — Vegas has already given you the starting keyframe with the settings you just adjusted. To animate this media, click the Last Keyframe button to move to the end of the keyframe timeline. Now change the the Progress setting to 10. Vegas will add a new keyframe to the end of the timeline (which represents the end of this media’s event) and give it the new setting. If you preview your video, you will now see that Vegas animates the event, making this resemble billowing smoke. You can now close the Video Media Generators window.

Figure 1: Settings for Smoke

We also need the smoke to move across the screen. We’ll do this with a linear wipe. Hover the cursor over the top left corner of the smoke event until you see the Fade Offset indicator (a quarter circle) and click and drag all the way to the end of the event. Then go to the Transitions window, select Linear Wipe from the list, and drag the Left-Right Soft Edge preset onto the smoke event.

So now we have a mask made of “smoke” that gradually fills the screen. If we applied this to our clips, we’d be left with relatively equal parts of them. That’s not exactly a transition, is it? No, what we’re trying to achieve is a wipe where only the edge of the wipe is smokey. Let’s fill in the rest of this moving mask.

Figure 2: The Completed Mask

On the second track of your Vegas project, add a Solid Color from the Media Generators tab. Use white to match the white for the smoke. Using the same method as before, apply a linear wipe transition to the entire event. If you preview your moving mask now, you may notice that the “edge” of the wipe is still awfully clean. That’s because the wipe for the solid color on Track #2 is filling in quite a bit of our nice smoke on Track #1. This is because they start and finish at the same time. But if we shorten the solid color’s event, the smoke event will have a chance to “pass” it up, therby giving the edge a smokier look. Grab the left edge of the solid color event and drag it further in. With both events originally being 10 seconds, I shaved two seconds off the solid color’s event. This completes the mask.

To apply a mask, we need to use parent-child track relationships and compositing modes, which can get a bit tricky when your mask uses more than one track itself. Luckily, current versions of Vegas Pro have the ability to nest projects. Save this file as smokemask.veg. Then create or open the project with your two clips. Put the two clips on separate tracks with the incoming event on the upper track. Also line up the incoming clip where you want it to first start coming in.

Now let’s get that mask in here. Insert a track above your incoming event and add smokemask.veg to it. Line the nested mask up with the incoming clip. This puts a white mask above your incoming clip, with your outgoing clip completely hidden during the “transition.” To use this properly, click the Compositing Mode button on the mask’s track header and choose Multiply (Mask). Then on the incoming clip’s track header, click its Make Compositing Child button. Now if you place the cursor on the timeline between the start and end of the mask event, your preview should show the incoming clip where the mask was white and the outgoing clip where the mask was transparent. Play your project, and you should see one the smoke transition we’ve been trying for.

Figure 3: The Mask Applied

Unfortunately, what you will probably also notice is that when the mask event ends, so does the incoming clip. This is because the track with the Compositing Mode determines which of the lower content is visible. In the case of Multiply (Mask), white will completely reveal its child track(s). The catch here is that when the mask event ends, the track is no longer white. No white, no child track(s). You have a few options to fix this, each of which essentially adds a solid white to this track following the end of the mask event. The options are:

1. From the Media Generators tab, insert a Solid Color of white. Make it as long as you need in order to reveal the child track.
2. Grab the right edge of the mask event and drag it out for as long as you need to reveal the child track. Then right-click the mask event, choose Properties, and uncheck Loop. What this does is extend the last frame of the event, which was solid white.
3. Right-click the track with the mask event and go to Insert/Remove Envelope > Fade to Color. By default, the colors for this envelope are black (lower) and white (upper). Add one point to the envelope exactly at the end of the mask event and add another to the envelope soon after. Grab the second point, drag it all the way to the top of the track and then shift it over so that it’s above the first point. If, for some reason, you need to return this track back to normal (but remember, it’s only masking its child track — it has no effect on any other tracks), then add two more points where necessary and drag the line back to the vertical center.

Using these techniques, you can build your own aresenal of transitions to use in Vegas.  Combine noise textures, text, gradients, any kind of generated media. Apply transitions and add video FX to twist that media into a mask that works for your content. Lastly, use compositing modes (usually Multiply, but go ahead and experiment with the others) to use this mask to combine multiple tracks in interesting ways. As interesting or, quite possibly, even more interesting, than this:

Tags: generated media, mask, transition