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So, you’re tired of the standard Vegas transitions. Linear wipe, push, clock wipe — too boring. Page peel, barn door, swap — too cheesy. 3D blinds, 3D cascade, 3D shuffle — too 3D. And yet, a straight cut just doesn’t suit your piece? Then make your own transition.

This is the beginning of a series on creating your own custom transitions in Vegas. In part one, we’re going to use a still image to cover up our cut and animate that still using Bezier masking and Vegas’ native transitions.

Figure 1: The Media

If you haven’t already, insert the two pieces of media you want to transition between. Butt them up against one another on the timeline. We won’t be applying any fades or native transitions between them, so they don’t need to overlap. I will be using clips from Stock Footage For Free — video of a trolley and video of someone jet skiing. Feel free to use your own footage, still images, or even Vegas generated media.

Insert a video track above your existing events by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q or going to Insert > Video Track. Directly above the two events, insert a still image. I’m using a texture from stock.xchng. Again, feel free to use another image. After adding your image, size it to the length you want your custom transition to last. This includes not only the amount of time for the image to enter and exit, but also the amount of time for the image to stay on screen. My image will take half a second to enter, half a second to exit, and will be still for 1 second — for a total of two seconds.

Figure 2: Top Mask

Click the Pan / Crop button for the image’s event. First, we want to make sure this image fills the screen. Right-click inside the Pan / Crop window and choose Match Output Aspect. Now, on the bottom left, enable Bezier masking by checking the box labeled “Mask”. Enable the Anchor Creation Tool by hitting “D” on the keyboard or clicking the tool’s icon on the left side of the Pan / Crop window — and mark points in the Pan / Crop window to create your mask. I’m dividing my image into a top and bottom, so I’m going to follow along some of the diagonal lines and then finish around the top edge.

Figure 3: Bottom Mask

When you’re done creating the mask, close out of the Pan / Crop window. Now we need a copy of this image to act as the other half — in my case, the bottom half. Insert another track, then copy and paste the image’s event onto the new track. (The quick way is to hold down Ctrl while clicking and dragging the original event up to the new track.) Click the Pan / Crop icon for this new image. Under the Path heading, if the Mode is set to Positive, set it to Negative. If it’s Negative, set it to Positive. You have now cut your image in two. One half is displayed on one track and the other half on another track. You can close out the Pan / Crop window.

The last step is making the two halves move. For this, we’ll use Vegas’ transitions. Add fades to the beginning and ends of both of the images’ events. To do this, hover the mouse over the top corner of an event until the cursor becomes a quarter circle and click and drag towards the center of the event. Make this fade as long as you want the entrance and exist to last.

Figure 4: Transitions

Next go to the Transition window and choose transitions appropriate each piece of your image. The texture I’m using has been split into a top half and a bottom half, so I’m using the “Slide In, Top-Down” transition for the top half to enter, “Slide In, Bottom-Up” to bring in the bottom half, and the opposites of these two for the exits. Drag and drop the transitions you want onto the fades for both images’ events.

And that’s one way to create a custom transion in Vegas using a still image. Start there and experiment with different images, more complex Bezier masking, and other Vegas transitions. If you were following along, you should have something like this:

Tags: bezier mask, pan/crop, transitions