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!).

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.

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:

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):

1. Start by inserting a new video track above your main video by right-clicking an empty area of the timeline and choosing Insert Video Track or by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Q. You’ll want to have at least some content in your project already so that you can see how the ticker looks in context.
2. Go to the Media Generators window, select the Text from the list, and drag one of the presets onto the new track. Most tickers have white text over a solid background, so I’ll use the Solid Background preset.
3. By default, a pieced of generated media has a length of about 10 seconds. Decide how long you want your ticker — meaning, how long between when the first letter appears and when the last letter scrolls off? — and type that into the Length textbox at the top of the Video Media Generator window. You’ll also need to resize the event on the timeline. Drag the right edge until you reach the notch where it starts to loop.
4. Now we can enter and format the text for our ticker. On the Edit tab, delete the “Sample Text” and type the text for your ticker on a single line. Don’t worry if there’s too much to fit on the screen — that’s why you’re making a ticker instead of a static title. Select your text and choose an appropriate font and size.
5. Next, switch to the Placement tab. This is where we turn a static line of text into a scrolling ticker. Position the cursor at the beginning of the keyframe timeline if it’s not already there. On this tab, you’ll see your text in a mock screen with a red box. (The red box indicates the title safe zone, where text is least likely to be cut off on a television.) Drag the text down to the level you want the ticker to scroll — usually at the bottom of the safe area — and then all the way to right side. Drag it all the way off the “screen” so that the ticker will start with no text showing on screen. Make note of the Y value because you’ll need this in the next step.
6. You’ve just edited the first keyframe. Now you’ll create a second keyframe, thus creating an animation. Below the keyframe timeline, click the Next keyframe button — this moves the cursor to the end of the keyframe timeline. Now click the Add Keyframe button. Finally, drag your text from the right side of the screen over to the left side. Again, move it all the way off the “screen.” With these two keyframes set, Vegas will scroll your text from the right side to the left.
7. You’ve made all necessary changes to your text. Unless you want to change the colors, spacing, or text style, you can close the Video Media Generator window. But wait, we only wanted a thin strip of color behind our ticker — this background covers the whole screen! Let’s use Pan/Crop to fix that.
8. Click the Pan/Crop icon on the text’s event. Before you crop the event, you’ll need to change a few other things. first, make sure that Lock Aspect Ratio and Size About Center are disabled. Then in the Source section of settings, change Stretch to fill frame to “No”.
9. Now, crop around the line of text. Generally, you’ll only need to crop the top and bottom until you wind up with thin strip along the bottom of the screen. When the background is the size and shape you like, close out the Event Pan/Crop window.
10. As a final touch, you might like to have your news ticker fade in as the text starts and fade out as it finishes. Grab the top left corner of the text event and drag it in to create a fade. Do the same with the on the top right corner.

And that’s the gist of creating a news ticker in Sony Vegas. Add your own touches so it’s suitable for your project — change the colors, maybe use a slightly transparent background, maybe a different font. Your imagination is the limit.

(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: