Link: A Ray of Light with Motion Designer’s Toolkit in Sony Vegas

I’ll start out by showing the end result so you know what you’re aiming for.

Setting Up the Footage

For this example, I’ll be using some footage of the Washington Monument from StockFootageForFree.com. Registering with them is free and allows you to download all the sample clips you want.

Create a new project and insert two video tracks by going to Insert > Video Track or hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q twice. Using the Explorer window or other method to add media, bring in the video you want to work with and put it onto Track #1. Vegas will create an event to hold your video. We need two copies, so hold down Ctrl on the keyboard while you click and drag the event down to Track #2. Per Windows conventions, clicking and dragging an event in Vegas moves it; Holding down Ctrl while clicking and dragging an event makes a copy.

So now we have two events with exactly the same content. And if that didn’t have enough potential for confusion, I want you to select the event on Track #2, place the cursor somewhere in the middle of it, and hit “S” on the keyboard to split it. (If Vegas splits the event on Track #1 as well, then you didn’t select the other event first. Hit Ctrl+Z to undo and try again.) This gives us three events with exactly the same content.

“But, Rob,” you say, “the two events on Track #2 have different content — one has the first half of the video, the other has the second half of the video.” To which I reply, “Back to Vegas 101 with you! Both events have the entire video within them since an event is just a window into the video file. We just happen to have each window small enough so that you can only see part of what’s inside. If you drag an edge of an event to lengthen that event, more of that video will be revealed.”

I know that sounds nit-picky, but it will be important a little later. For now, just understand that we now have three events that point to the same video. Before we start working with these events, let’s do a couple things that will make the following instructions more clear:

1. Let’s give ourselves an easy way to refer to each event on the timeline. Go to View > Active Take Information and make sure that it’s enabled. Once it is, you will see a label at the head of each event. Now instead of saying, “Select the second event on Track #2, I can simply tell you the name of the event to select. Hm, but wait. The default take name for an event from a video file is the name of that file. And since all three events are based on the same file, they all get the same take name. That’s not very helpful, is it? Which leads to workflow tip #2.

2. Luckily, you can change the take name for an event in your project, and it will have no effect on the file from which it comes. Right-click the event on Track #1 and choose Properties. In the Properties window, type the words “Swipe” into the box labeled “Active Take Information,” and click OK. Using the same method, name the first event on Track #2 “B&W” and the second event on Track #2 “Color”.

Figure 1: Editing Take Names

There. Those two steps alone will make the rest of this simple for you to follow (and for me to write!).

Presets

Using the Preset dropdown list for most Vegas tools, you can quickly choose predefined settings. In fact, the windows for choosing some of these tools display thumbnails that represent the effect they will have on your video. But an underused capability available to Vegas editors is to create and use their own presets.

After adjusting the settings for any of these tools, if you think you’ll need those settings again later, type a new name into the Preset dropdown and click the Save Preset button to the right. Not only will it be added to the Preset list, but if it’s for a transition, media generator, or video FX, it will also get its very own thumbnail.

Render Templates

When it’s time to render / encode your project to a file, each file type has several render templates available. Render templates tell Vegas in one click what video and / or audio settings to use for your rendered file.  If none of the installed templates are quite what you need,  you can click the Custom button on the Render As dialog and adjust the settings as needed.

But if you expect that you’ll need those custom settings again, don’t just click OK to accept the settings this one time. First, save those settings to your own render Template by typing a new name into the Template dropdown and clicking the Save Template button. Vegas will add it to the list of Templates for that file type so you can select again anytime you want.

Plug-In / Filter Packages

When you add an FX to anything — a piece of media, an event, a track, or the project itself — Vegas creates a plug-in chain for that object. Every FX that’s added to that same object gets added to the chain. If the chain you come up with is something you think you’ll need again, you can save it as a package.

To do this, start by clicking the Plug-In Chain button. Vegas will open the Plug-In Chooser dialog. There, click Save As, type in a name for your Plug-In Package, and click OK. From then on, your Plug-In Package will be availble in the Filter Packages folder of the Plug-In Chooser. (I don’t know why Sony named it “Filter Packages” instead of “FX Packages” or “Plug-In. Packages”). The package won’t appear in the dockable Video FX window since it’s not a preset, but you can click the Plug-In Chain button or a standard FX button to get the Plug-In Chooser dialog again and Add it from there.

Replace Plug-In

The Vegas interface uses the term “Plug-In” for several elements, but obviously they can’t all have the same options. Video FX are considered “plug-ins,” as are Transitions and Media Generators. But there’s no such thing as a Transition Chain or a Media Generator Chain — for them, it’s strictly one item per customer. And yet, they both have that familiar green button. Why?

Well, if you open up an existing transition or generated media and hover over that little green button, you’ll get a hint. In this context, it’s labeled “Replace Plug-In.” Click it, and you will be presented with the Plug-In Chooser dialog where you can a plug-in (of the same type) to replace the one you already have. You won’t be able to carry over any of the settings from the previous plug-in, but any cuts you’ve made, FX you’ve applied, track motion you’ve done… all these and other changes will remain.

Reuse Your VEG Files

Many programs have wizards or templates with predefined objects. For example, a video template might already have an audio tracks, four video tracks, a common background, a logo graphic, and a title overlay already set up. Vegas doesn’t have such templates or even an automated way to create them, but it’s simple enough to create your own. Create a boilerplate project with the most essential tracks, media, FX, transitions, and all the settings that you need, and save that to a Vegas project (VEG) file.

When you need to create a project using that template, open it, save it as a new file, and customize it for your current project. Your template project can even include temporary content in the form of generated media. When you’re working on the “real” project, go to the Project Media, select that piece of generated media, and choose Replace. Vegas will let you browse for the video or image that you want to use instead.

In fact, you can reuse such templates — as well as completed projects — within other projects if you are using Sony Vegas 7 or higher. In that version, Sony introduced the ability to nest VEG files. Dragging an existing VEG onto a Vegas timeline adds it as an event just as though you had rendered it to a file. And any changes you make to the original VEG will be reflected in the projects in which it’s been nested. (Sorry, nesting is not available in Vegas Movie Studio at this time.)

Do you have any suggestions on reusing work you’ve already done in Sony Vegas?

What is a Keyframe?

Simply put, a keyframe is a point in time where you define one or more settings. When you create multiple keyframes, Vegas interpolates what needs to happen to get from one keyframe to the next. Not only that, but you can define the speed in which the transition from one state to the next takes place. You do all this using the Keyframe Controller, which you will find at the bottom of the window for several Vegas functions. We’ll examine each of those windows in detail later. But first, let’s have a look at the Keyframe Controller.

One point to make before we move forward: Much of this information is not relevant to the ProType Titler that was added in Vegas Pro 8. The ProType Titler interface is very different from that of, well, most of the rest of Vegas. Do not attempt to apply the instructions here to the ProType Titler. While it does use keyframes, their usage is very, very different from anything you’ll read here.