We’ve all seen it at least once. You watch a music video and one of the effects you see is a strobe like frame by frame flash that goes to the beat. As requested, we’ll be taking a look at how to do just that in Vegas Pro 12. We’ll be using general features not bound to just Vegas Pro so feel free to apply these techniques to your favorite editing platform.

Inspiration

Eminem – No Love ft. Lil Wayne @ 1:25 http://j.mp/11lVScL

Harlem Shake Times Square NYC feat. NYPD @ 0:20 http://j.mp/11lVZ8f

If you used this effect in any of your videos, share them in the comments below or on our Facebook page!

Resources:
Royalty Free Music by http://audiomicro.com/royalty-free-music
Flickr Car Image by Axion23
Optical Flares: RodyPolis (http://j.mp/LXkT60)

The post Music Video Flicker Effect appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

FINAL OUTCOME

The post Sony Vegas: Walk-By Transition appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

Lets take a look at how simple it is to add these lens flare transitions in Sony Vegas Pro 11.

Examples

Rody’s Lens FX

Lens FX Fantasy

Check out RodyPolis.com Products

It’s easy to find free alternatives. Just do a simple YouTube or Google search for free lens flare downloads. You should be able to find some usable stuff.

Do you have a favorite place where you get your stock footage? Share it with us in the comments below!

The post Sony Vegas: Lens Flare Transitions appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

In this fourth episode of the Vegas Pro 11 Getting Started series, We’ll take a look at the using the Trimmer. The Trimmer windows allows you to cut and select portions of a clip to be placed into events on tracks. More features will be shown in the next episode so be sure to stay tuned!

Get Vegas Pro 11: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro
GPU Acceleration Info: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

If you come across any questions, feel free to ask by using the contact using the contact form on this site or in the comments below.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/robsproductions | Facebook: http://fb.me/robertsproductions

Music: ” Klaypex”

If you have any suggestions for Sony Vegas tips or tutorials, go ahead and leave those in the comments below.

The post Vegas Pro 11: Getting Started 4 – Using the Trimmer appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

In this third episode of the Vegas Pro 11 Getting Started series, We’ll take a look at the Project Media Window. More features will be shown in the next episode so be sure to stay tuned!

Get Vegas Pro 11: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro
GPU Acceleration Info: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

If you come across any questions, feel free to ask! ask@robertsproductions.net or use the contact form at the site (link below).

Facebook: http://fb.me/robertsproductions
Twitter: http://twitter.com/robsproductions
Site: https://www.robertsproductions.net/
Request: https://www.robertsproductions.net/contact/request
Contact: https://www.robertsproductions.net/contact (Questions)

Music: ” Klaypex”

If you have any suggestions for Sony Vegas tips or tutorials, go ahead and leave those in the comments below.

The post Vegas Pro 11: Getting Started 3 – Project Media Window appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

What better to celebrate New Years than a fireworks show! In today’s tutorial, I’ll show you how to create some abstract fireworks in Adobe After Effects for use in your video projects. You can even refer to my AE Snow tutorial here to save this pre-keyed for use in any of your preferred video editors. Heck, I’ll even include the project files which you can download below! Lets get started!

Preview:

VIDEO TUTORIAL:

WRITTEN TUTORIAL:

Assuming you already have After Effects open, lets create a new Composition. Composition > New Composition or Ctrl-N. In the Composition Settings, lets set the preset to HDTV 1080 29.97. This way our fireworks will be in 1920x1080px aspect ratio with a frame rate of 29.97. I’m going to make the duration 5 seconds (0;00;05;00) but of course you use whatever you need for you particular project. Click OK.

With our new composition, lets create a new Solid. Go to Layer > New > Solid. In the Solid Settings dialogue window, lets click on Make Comp Size just to make sure it’s the same size as our composition. We can name it, “Fireworks” and Click OK.

In this method, we’ll be making the fireworks with one of After Effects’ built in Effects & Presets. So, with your Fireworks solid selected choose Effect > Simulation > CC Particle Systems II.

If you scrub through the timeline, you’ll see the particles showering down kind of like welding sparks. We’re going to need to adjust some settings to turn this into fireworks.

Lets go ahead and dive right into the Physics settings for the CC Particle Systems II effect. Turn off the gravity somewhat, around 0.2 works here.

Now to add some Resistance to our fireworks, turn it up to 10.0.

Now if you scrub through, it’ll look more like fireworks but is non stop. We’re actually going to have to animate the Birth Rate. Make sure you’re positioned at the beginning of the timeline at 0;00;00;00.

Click the stopwatch next to Birth Rate to turn on keyframes and activate the animation.

In this position, set the Birth Rate to 30.0 or 40.0.

Move up about 2 to 3 frames in your timeline and set the birth rate to 0.0.

Scrub through and look at that! A Firework!

Well, if you want the firework to be yellow, you’re done. If you want to change the color. Go to Particle in the settings and change the Birth Color and Death Color to whatever you want.

You can then duplicate the “Fireworks” layer (Ctrl-D), and change the color and position in the Producer as well as move it around in the sequence you want in the timeline.

Render it out and use it in your video! Again, if you want to render this out pre-keyed, I recommend watching near the end of this video here.

Of course, if you have or ever used Trapcode Particular, you can get these to look pretty realistic! But since I love effects that can be done in AE alone, I thought I would share this.

Download Project Files, .ZIP 31.6MB

What’s your new years resolution? Leave a comment below!

The post After Effects: Basic Fireworks appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

Well it’s winter, or at least supposed to be. Doesn’t feel like it here in Texas but we can pretend it is. How you ask? By adding snow to our videos digitally in Sony Vegas! P.S. You can download the project file below!

Written Tutorial:

In Sony Vegas, go ahead and put together the footage you’d like to add snow to. In this case, I’ve added one of the lower thirds you can get from here. I then added a Christmas tree background behind that third to make it into a nice little scene just like you see below.

Now all we need is snow!

To add snow, simply go to Media Generators > Noise Texture > Standard Noise. Click and drag the Standard Noise texture in on top of the other tracks on its own video track.

Now in the Standard Noise Texture settings, you need to set how long you want it to be. By default, it’s set to 10 seconds. This can be whatever duration you need for your particular project. I do want to mention that if you need the clip to be longer than a minute, the snow may move very slow. You may have to duplicate the track and cross fade them together. The cross fade won’t be too noticeable.

Now, set Color 1 to white and Color 2 to transparent.

Go to, “Frequency” and change the X and Y frequency settings both all the way up to 30.000.

We’ll go ahead and leave the Offset alone for now and skip to the Noise Parameters.

In the Noise Parameters, I got some decent snow with the following settings.

• Min: 0.000
• Max: 0.335
• Bias: 0.160
• Amplitude: 1.370
• Grain (amplitude falloff): 0.500

Now, these settings can be different depending on how you want the snow to look. These settings will mainly adjust the thickness of the snow so it’s really user preference.

Now that we’re done adjusting the thickness of the snow, lets animate it!

Remember the Offset we skipped a few lines ago? Lets go back to that. We’re going to be animating all three of these parameters, starting with Y. Y is going to be the up and down position of our snow. Click the little animate button to the right of Y().

Position the cursor all the way to the end. Make sure you’re not zoomed in on the timeline otherwise the end may only look like its 5 seconds when its really 5 minutes long.

With the cursor at the end of the timeline, bring the Y offset down depending on how fast you need the snow to go. I set mine at -3.500. The maximum it will go is -5.000. If you need it to go faster, simply close the Media Generator window, hold CTRL at the end of your clip and drag backwards to speed up the clip. You can also slow down the clip by dragging forward. I have a tutorial on that here.

Now lets animate the Progress (in degrees). Position your cursor at the end of the timeline, click the stopwatch/animate button. Move the progress up to your desired offset. I’ve set mine here to 5.000. This will control the snows progress, meaning randomize the pattern and make it look more realistic.

Ok, now we’re ready to animate the X offset. We’re going to be gentle with this one otherwise it may look like a drug dealer lost all of his products. I’ve positioned my cursor toward the middle of the timeline and clicked the old animate button() once more. I’ve adjusted the X offset to -0.263 in the middle, then went to the end and animated it to 0.263.

To prevent the animation from jumping around, select the first keyframe, then while holding Shift, select the very last keyframe. You should now have all your keyframes selected. Right click and choose, “Smooth Fade” just to ensure that our animation will be nice and smooth.

There you have it! Snow in Vegas!

You can create more noise textures to include different sizes of snow either very small or large flakes. If you want to simulate the snow being close to the camera and out of focus, simply add a Sony Defocus event effect to the clip, bring down the radius and your snow will be blurred as if it were out of focus.

That’s it! You’ve just created snow in Vegas. Or at least learned how. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you create anything cool with this or any holiday themed video, post it to the Facebook page! I love seeing what you guys make from what I teach! Get involved!

Download Project File (89.1MB)

What are you hoping to get for Christmas this year? If you don’t celebrate Christmas, what do you celebrate? Reply in the comments below! Happy Holidays!

The post Sony Vegas: Snow! appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

In this tutorial, I show you how to add a retro looking effect to your photos in Photoshop CS5.

Download Project: http://bit.ly/gpXLVk
(Note: The project download above does NOT contain the stock photo used in this tutorial, you will have to add that yourself)

Facebook: http://goo.gl/RkWTR
Twitter: http://twitter.com/robsproductions
Site: https://www.robertsproductions.net/
Request: https://www.robertsproductions.net/contact/request
Email: Robert@robertsproductions.net (Questions)

If you have any Photoshop tutorial requests, feel free to leave a comment below and I will try my best to fulfill those requests.

The post Photoshop – Retro Look appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

Download Project: http://bit.ly/eJcXrd
Backup Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?h1y2qg2qhkt5fbk

In this tutorial, I show you how to add a dark processed lomo look to your photos.

Facebook: http://goo.gl/RkWTR
Twitter: http://twitter.com/robsproductions
Site: https://www.robertsproductions.net/
Request: https://www.robertsproductions.net/contact/request
Email: Robert@robertsproductions.net (Questions)

If you have any Photoshop tutorial requests, feel free to leave a comment below and I will try my best to fulfill those requests

The post Photoshop – Processed Lomo Look appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.

In this tutorial, I show you how to add a film burn transition look to your clips. You can download the Film Burn clip below.

DOWNLOAD: https://www.robertsproductions.net/downloads/FilmBurn.zip
If above failed, Download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?krkn3a3w5ce1poi

Facebook: http://goo.gl/RkWTR
Twitter: http://twitter.com/robsproductions
Site: https://www.robertsproductions.net/
Request: https://www.robertsproductions.net/contact/request
Email: Robert@robertsproductions.net (Questions)

If you have any Sony Vegas tutorial requests, feel free to leave a comment below and I will try my best to fulfill those requests.

The post Sony Vegas – Film Burn appeared first on Robert's Productions | Post Production Tips.