Subscribe Feed (RSS)Introduction to Keyframes
January 27th, 2009 by Rob Strobbe | Filed under Tutorials.Some Tips for Working with Keyframes
At first glance, working with keyframes in Vegas, especially for complex animations, can seem tedious. But there are a few things you can do to simply things.
For starters, like just about any Windows object, keyframes can be copied and pasted. Simply select the keyframe by clicking on it and either right-click it and choose Copy or hit Ctrl+C on the keyboard. Then position the cursor on the keyframe timeline where you’d like a duplicate keyframe, right-click, and chose Paste. This new keyframe will have all of the relevant settings from the keyframe you copied. You also could have selected an existing keyframe and pasted. Remember, though, that all of the settings previously held by that keyframe will be overwritten.
Even better, you can select and paste multiple keyframes using standard Windows shortcuts. To select a range of keyframes, click the first one in the series and then, while holding Shift on the keybard, click the last in the series. Then copy using and paste as before. The pasted keyframes will be spaced apart just the same as those you copied. Now, if any of the new keyframes’ positions are the same as any other existing keyframes, the old ones (that conflict) will be overwritten. So watch where you’re pasting those. For selecting multiple keyframes that are not in a “series” (meaning, say you want to select keyframes #1, 2, 4, and 7), then hold down Ctrl on the keyboard and click each keyframe. Then do what you like with the selected keyframes.
Figure 3 shows several keyframe selected at the same time. Notice how each selected keyframe has a white diamond within it. A white diamond is how Vegas indicates the currently selected keyframe(s).
Figure 3: Multiple Selected Keyframes
When multiple keyframes are selected, they can also be moved as a group. So if you’ve created a series of changes that you later decide are time correctly with respect to one another but not the event (or track) as a whole, just select them all and then click and drag one of them along the keyframe timeline. The rest will of the selected keyframes will follow. And finally, with multiple keyframes selected, you can right-click one and change the transition style for all of those selected keyframes. If you have any tips or questions on using keyframes, please comment and share!
Tags: basics, fx, generated media, keyframes, pan/crop
Excellent path, logic and very easy to understand and it was successful in helping me…
Thanks, Mike! I’m always glad to hear that these little articles of mine are helping someone.