Blur it. Or pixelate it. Easy enough, but how do you censor just part of a video in Sony Vegas while leaving the rest of it clear as day? Let’s find out.

The Pixelate FX is a good candidate for this trick, but like the rest of the effects, it doesn’t have an option to only affect one area of the screen. The trick is to add your media twice, one instance above the other, apply the effect to one instance, and then use masking to make sure only part of one those tracks is visible.

For this example, I’m using stock footage of a horse drawn carriage from Stock Footage for Free. If you want to follow along exactly, download the clip from them (registration is required but free). Alternatively, use your own footage and adjust your settings accordingly. I’ll be demonstrating how to censor an object that moves within the frame, so it would be helpful if you have something similar.

Figure 1: Duplicate Tracks

Once you’ve chosen a video to censor, drag it onto a Vegas timeline. If you don’t already have a video track where you drop the video, Vegas will create one for it. If you need to crop it, add any other effects, or adjustments, do so now. Once you have it generally looking the way you want, we’re going to create a copy on the track below. Do this by holding down Ctrl on the keyboard, clicking the event with your video, and dragging it to an empty area below the track you already have. You’ll end up with two duplicate tracks. (In fact, you will get the same result if you right-click the track header and choose Duplicate Track.)

Figure 2: All Pixelated

The first thing I’m going to do is apply the “censoring” effect to the copy on the upper track. Go to the Video FX window, select Pixelate from the list, and drag the Medium preset onto the event. You can see in the Preview window that the entire frame looks blocky. Adjust the settings in the Video Event FX window to make the image as pixelated as you like (scrub through the timeline so you can see how it looks throughout the whole video) and close the Video FX window.

Now we’ll isolate only the area we want censored. There are a few ways to mask out areas in Vegas. The driver’s face is a pretty basic shape, so the quickest way is to use the Cookie Cutter FX. Go to the Video FX window, select Cookie Cutter, and drag the Circle Center preset onto the event on the upper track. This preset cuts away everything from this event (which, remember, has the Pixelate FX applied to it) except for a large circle in the center. For the rest of the frame, this FX reveals our unpixelated event below. This puts on the road to what we really want: a circle that is about the size of the driver’s head and that moves along with his head throughout the video.

I want the difference between my censored and uncensored areas to be more obvious while I work, so I’m going to temporarily add another effect. If you think this will help you as well, select Color Curves in the Video FX window and drag the Night preset onto the event on the upper track. To return to editing the Cookie Cutter FX, click the “Cookie Cutter” button in the FX chain at the top of the Video Event FX window. (Be sure that you don’t deselect its check box, though, or you won’t see the effect any longer.)

Figure 3: First Keyframe

Now, let’s get down to business. As mentioned above, we have a circle where the upper event is pixelated. It’s too big and in the wrong place. On the left of the Video Event FX window is a box with a square inside it. By dragging that square around, you can move the center of the circle around the frame. You can also type the X and Y coordinates for the center in the appropriate textboxes on the right. Try to center the circle around the driver’s head if you’re following along with my example. Then adjust the Size of the circle so that it covers his head but not a whole lot more. After some work, I’ve found that the following settings work well for the first frame of this video:

• Size: 0.010
• Center X: 0.650
• Center Y: 0.470

There, that censors the driver’s face in the very first frame. Of course, if you play the video, that pixelated circle stays the same size and position the whole time — it doesn’t follow the driver, who is going to be very upset that we only hid his face very briefly. Luckily, Vegas makes it relatively easy to change a Video FX’s settings over time through the use of keyframes. Every “animation” requires at least two keyframes — one with one collection of settings and a later one with a different settings. Vegas then interpolates the frames between and “animates” what it can in order to get from one state to the other. You could go through the video frame by frame and add a keyframe for each state you need, but it’s less work if you start out by putting keyframes in the places you are absolutely sure will be different. Then check the frames in between to see where you may need to fine tune.

By changing the size and position above, we’ve edited the first keyframe that Vegas includes by default. Now, below the keyframe timeline at the bottom of the Video Event FX window, click the Last Keyframe button. This puts the cursor at the very end of the keyframe timeline and, in the Preview window, displays the very end of the event. By using the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard or hunting and pecking with your mouse, find the frame just before the driver’s head leaves the screen. Around 00:00:09:04 is good. (That’s nine seconds and four frames into the event.) Below the keyframe timeline, click the Create Keyframe button — it’s a diamond with a plus sign in it. Now, adjust the size and postion of the circle to again cover the driver’s head. These settings should work well for the frame I indicated above:

• Size: 0.045
• Center X: 0.000
• Center Y: 0.210

If you preview the video, you’ll see that Vegas “fills in” between the two keyframes. The pixelated circle moves from one place to the other and increases in size. But the driver must not be moving at an entirely steady pace — because the circle gets ahead of him at first, and then he catches up by the end. We’ll need more keyframes to keep them in sync. When it comes to adjustments like this, I like to divide in conquer. I’ll first find a spot around the middle of the video, create a keyframe, and adjust the size and position of the circle. Notice that when you create a keyframe, it defaults to keeping whatever settings Vegas interpolated for that moment in time, so you should only need to tweak each one a little rather than having to start from scratch. To fine tune this, I’ll preview the video and, for each area where the pixelated circle drifts off of the driver’s head, I’ll put a new keyframe halfway between two adjacent ones and make any adjustments I need to the Size and Position of the circle. I ended up with seven keyframes to follow the driver accurately.

Figure 4: Last Keyframe

One last adjustment to the Pixelate FX needs to be made. You may have noticed that if you play the video, there remains a pixelated circle on the screen even after the driver has gone completely out of frame. This is because in order to follow the driver off screen, we would need to give our circle’s Center X a negative value, and Vegas won’t let us. The lowest value we can use is 0, which puts will always leave half of the circle on screen. To remedy this (and still censor the driver’s face until it’s completely out of frame), find the frame at which the driver’s head has gone completely out of frame. There, create one more keyframe and set the circle’s Size to 0. Beginning with the previous keyframe, Vegas will shrink the circle as the driver leaves the screen, leaving a full and uncensored scene. Lastly, if you added Color Curves or some other FX as a temporary aid, make sure that you click on that FX in the FX chain at the top of the Video Event FX window and hit the Remove Selected Plug-In button to the right.

When you’re all done, you should have something similar to this:

Figure 1: Added Media

Start a new Vegas Project by going to File > New and use the Properties settings appropriate for your video. The clip I’m using is in standard NTSC DV format, so I can leave everything at the default. So can you if you’re using the same clip. Activate the Explorer window, browse for the video you will be altering, and drag it to the timeline. Vegas will create a video track and add an event with your video.

Next, activate the Video FX window, find Color Corrector (Secondary) in the list, and drag it onto the video event you just added. For the least hassle, do not use any of the existing presets. Either drag the FX directly from the main list or use the Reset to None preset. You want to start off with a blank slate here. Vegas will display the Video Event FX window.

Figure 2: The FX, Default

The first thing to do is select the color to adjust. This is done using the tools on the bottom half of the Video Event FX window. You’ll need to be able to see and interact with the video preview, so be sure that the Video Event FX window is fully visible but not covering up the preview window. Now click the eyedropper icon labeled “Select effect range,” and use it to draw a rectangle around an area of your image that contains the color(s) you want to change.

Now comes the cool part. You have a range of colors selected as indicated by all of the sliders in the lower half of the Video Event FX window. You can either tick the Show Mask checkbox to have Vegas display a mask based on your selection — white for the affected colors, black for everything else — and adjust all those sliders until you have a black and white image; or, for instant gratification, you can go ahead and start changing the color now and then fine tune those sliders.

3. The FX, Adjusted

I’m going for instant gratification. I like to see the output and work from there. If you’re with me, grab the Rotate Hue slider and find a color you like. If you left Show Mask unchecked, you will immediately see the change in the Video Preview window. I’m making the grass turn brown, so I’ve set Rotate Hue over to 298. Most of the rest of the image was not affected, but there are some areas that were. Furthemore, some of the grass that extends into the water was not affected. This is where fine tuning comes in. Adjust the sliders back in the lower half of the Video Event FX window until your intended area is affected, and the rest is not. For the fishing clip, I’m using these values:

• Rotate Hue: 298
• Limit Saturation
  • Low: 0
  • High: 162
  • Smooth: 8
• Limit Hue
  • Center: 216
  • Width: 0
  • Smooth: 128
• Limit Luminance
  • Low: 70
  • High: 124
  • Smooth: 8

Lastly, preview your clip to be the appropriate color change is consistent throughout. Since you’ve been making adjustments just based on a single frame so far, other areas of the video may introduce a color variation that wasn’t present in that frame. Fine tune as needed, and you’re done! Below is an example of this technique (with an added visual aid to show the clip before and after the Secondary Color Corrector FX was applied).

Often, Sony Vegas users create their lower thirds in other programs or buy pre-made ones, but we’re going to make one entirely in Sony Vegas. It won’t be the flashiest lower third you’ve ever seen, but it will be attractive and functional. So, here we go.

Start by giving yourself three video tracks to work with by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q three times. The first two tracks will be for text, and the third is for the background. I will be using the standard Text Media Generator and creating two lines of text. If you’re using the new ProType Titler, then feel free to use just one track and create multiple text blocks there. Just note that I’ll be saying “Track #3″ to refer to the background track and “Track #1″ and “Track #2″ to refer to the text tracks.

First we’ll add the lower third’s background. I want this to look a bit three-dimensional, so let’s make something that has highlights and shadows. A quick and effective way to do that is to use gradients. Go to the Media Generators window, select Color Gradient from the list, and drag the Fancy Wooden Board onto Track #3. (Remember, that’s Track #2 for you ProType Titler folks.) We don’t need to make any changes to this, so close the Video Media Generator window.

Figure 1: Color Gradient

At the moment, our lower thirds graphic is looking more like a middle half graphic. If we put this over our video, we’d hardly see any of the main content. Let’s resize it and move it where it belongs using track motion. Click the Track Motion button on Track #3’s header. In the Track Motion window, be sure that Lock Aspect Ratio is not enabled.

For the Height setting, type 125. You can leave Width as is. (If the width changes automatically, you didn’t disable Lock Aspect Ratio like I told you.) Then, within the Track Motion workspace, drag the selection box down where you want your lower third to appear. Ideally, this is at or just above the bottom edge of the title safe zone (the inner dotted-line box in your Video Preview window). (If you don’t see the safe zones in your preview, there is a button at the top of that window for toggling them.)

Figure 2: Track Motion

I like the general look of of this gradient, but I’m not wild about the color scheme. I could have changed each of the colors one by one back in the Video Media Generator window, but let’s try something a bit quicker. Find the Video FX window and select Color Corrector (Secondary) from the list. Grab the Reset to None preset, and drop it onto our event with the Fancy Wooden Board gradient. Vegas will open the Video Event FX window. Start by moving the Rotate Hue slider to find the color you really want for your lower thirds background. I want a blue, so I’m using a value of 200. You also may need to adjust some of the other settings. By default, this blue was a little too blue for my taste, so I dragged the saturation down to .500. I also dragged the Gamma down to 0. When you’re through adjusting the color for your background, close out the Video Event FX window.

Figure 3: Color Corrector (Secondary) FX

Okay, this is starting to shape up. You should now have what kind of looks like a blue tray. But you know what? Our text’s not going that long, so we don’t need this graphic to run all the way across the screen. Let’s show a little more of the screen by way of of Bezier Masking. Right-click the event for the background graphic and choose Pan / Crop. In the Event Pan / Crop window, enable the Mask tool (bottom left, checkbox next to the word Mask). Select the Anchor Creation tool (hit D on the keyboard or click the icon that looks like a pen tip) and create a mask around part of the background graphic. Leave the left half (and a bit more) and make the right edge slanted. Imagine you’re creating a rectangle but with a corner sliced off. Now soften up that edge by changing the Feather Type to Out and give the Feather (%) a value that looks good to you. I’m using 30%. What I want is for the background graphic to fade out on one side. Once you add the fade, you may need to adjust the mask’s points so that the graphic extends as far as you want. Once you’re done, close out the Event Pan / Crop window.

Figure 4: Masking using Pan/Crop

(Note that the Event Pan/Crop window will still show the orange-ish “fancy wooden board” graphic instead of our new cool blue tray. Don’t be concerned — the Event Pan/Crop window just doesn’t know about the Video FX we’ve applied.)

The last thing we’ll with the background graphic is add some texture and motion. Go to the Video FX window, select TV Simulator from the list, and drag the TV Look present onto your background’s event. This effect has animation “built in,” so we don’t need to add any keyframes or adjust any settings. But feel free to play around with the settings if you like. When you’re finished, close out the Video Event FX window.

Figure 5: TV Simulator FX

Finally, we’re getting to the text. Return to the Media Generators window, select Text from the list, and drag the Default Text preset up to Track #2. In the Video Media Generator window, replace “Sample Text” with the text you want on the bottom line of your lower thirds graphic. This could be a company name, or the interviewee’s title, or the name of a website. Adjust the font so that it can be read easily and that you can fit it (and another line of text) over the background graphic. Ariel Black, 16pt, and bold works very well. Now go to the Placement tab and choose “Bottom Left” from the dropdown box. This will place your text just inside the title safe zone. To fine tune the placement, click once on the text’s textbox within the Placement tab’s workspace and use the arrow keys to move it in small increments. Once the bottom line looks right, add another Text event to Track #1 and create the first line of text in the same way. This could your name, the interviewee’s name, or — for example — the name of a tutorial being given. When it comes time for the Placement tab, you can still use the Bottom Left option and then adjust as needed with the arrow keys.

Figure 6: Adding the Text

And with that, you’re essentially done. Go to File > Save, and save this as a Vegas project (VEG) file. Through the magic of nested VEG files (introduced in Sony Vegas 7), you can drop this VEG file into any project, and Vegas will treat it as an event. So when it comes time to add your lower third to a video, just create a new track at the top of that video, locate your lower third VEG, and drag it to that new track. To make the lower third fade in, adjust it’s fade offset as you would any other event — or add a transition to make its entrance a little more interesting.

Your results may look something like this (though with better encoding):

(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?

Well, here’s a quick and easy method for making an attractive slideshow in Sony Vegas Pro or Sony Vegas Movie Studio without those empty gutters. The secret is to create a background from the photos you’re already using in your slideshow.

1. Before you begin, make a couple changes to your Vegas settings. Go to Options > Preferences > Editing tab and make sure that “Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added” is checked. For the “Cut-to-overlap conversion Amount” (next setting under the check box), enter the amount of time you want the crossfade between photos to last. Click OK.
2. Select your images in Vegas’ Explorer or in Windows Explorer and drag them onto the Vegas timeline. Vegas will add them all at once and set up a crossfade between them according to the settings you used above.
3. Right-click the track that has the photos and choose Duplicate Track.
4. Click the Track Motion icon (on the track header, looks like two rectangles with an arrow) for the upper copy and resize the track so that there a good sized “border” around all of your photos. It will help to find the “largest” picture in the slideshow and use that as a guide.
5. Click the Track Motion icon for the lower track and resize this one so that it is larger than the viewing area. Essentially, you’re zooming in on this track so that it acts as a bit of an abstract background, but one with a similar look to our main slideshow. I also like to move this background track a bit off center.
6. Close out the Track Motion dialog and try adding some Video FX to this lower track (drop them onto the track header so the effects are applied to all of the pictures at once). This will take some experimenting to get the look that works best for your slideshow, but a good standby is the combination of the Black and White FX using a setting of between 25% and 50%, and the Gaussian Blur FX. You want to make the background different from the foreground, but you don’t (I assume) want it to overpower the foreground.

And that’s all there is to it. A slideshow that uses photos of different aspect ratios, but doesn’t look tacky or take a lot of time. If your photos blend into their backgrounds too much, you might want to add a subtle (or not so subtle) border to the photos. This can quickly be done using the same methodology as above. Duplicate the top track again and use track motion to either shrink the (new) top track slightly or enlarge the the middle (formerly top) track slightly. Just enough so that there you can see a bit of an edge around your photo. Then add the FX of your choosing to the middle track in order to alter its color or appearance. I used the Brightness and Contrast FX to give this new “border” a bit of a shine.

Here’s an example of a slideshow created using this technique: