SETUP

You may want to to begin by planning everything out. You can use the free storyboard template  found on RodyPolis.com to draw out what you want to happen. It’s helpful to plan everything ahead so you don’t forget anything.

Set your camera on a tripod and leave it there! Be sure everything’s set to manual as you don’t want any settings to change and mess up the shot. I recommend using a remote to trigger recording on the camera.

You also want to be sure the background is locked down. Everything should stay still for the best results. If outdoors, look out for any moving object in the background (ie. leaves, branches).

Be sure lighting stays the same throughout. I found it best to shoot at night and create my own light. That way I’m in control of how everything’s lit and it’ll stay that way until we’re done or dawn arrives.

PROCESS

Once everything’s locked in place, you’re ready to begin. I like to start off by recording the background. I knew the effect was going to be fairly short so I only shot about 15 seconds worth of footage. I then went ahead and told the ghostly actor what he had to do to do. You can have them walk through the scene, sit on a bench, or even just appear. It’s only limited to your imagination! All he had to do in this case was walk to a bench and sit. You can record some more background footage just to be sure.

VEGAS PRO

Import your footage into Sony Vegas. Add the clips to the timeline on separate tracks. Be sure the background footage is below the main footage on the timeline.

Trim your clips up and adjust the opacity of the main track on top. Set the opacity to what you think looks best. You can really dim it to make your friends look very closely then SMACK! The exorcist appears. Just an idea!

That’s it! Preview the video and a ghost should appear! Extra steps may be necessary depending on what you planned.

Leave a link to your Ghostly Halloween videos in the comments below!

Camera Photo: Wolfgang Lonien

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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!

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The other day, I was inspired by the movie, “Chronicle” to reproduce the titles shown at the end of the movie in Sony Vegas. It’s a very simple effect yet adds a nice little pop to titles and credits. In a nutshell, you’ll learn how to mask media events to make them transparent so that we can add any image or video behind them. Be sure to watch the video tutorial above to fully understand the power of masking.

In this written tutorial, we’ll mainly focus on how to mask text to reproduce the effect from the movie, “Chronicle“.

Step 1: Add Background Elements

Before we add any text, lets add what we want in the background.

You can use anything you want here like some digital glitch footage or even a still image. I provided a short clip of digital glitch from which you can download below.

[button url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/robertsproductions/downloads/Glitch_Footage.zip” size=”medium” variation=”green”]Download Digital Glitch (42.9MB)[/button]

[highlight1 variation=”green”]Windows Media Audio/Video file (.wmv) 1280 x 720 42.9MB Length: 00:01:00[/highlight1]

If you added a still image, you can make it move by adding the TV Simulator and Film Grain effects using the following settings.

[tabs_framed] [tab title=”TV Simulator Settings”]

[/tab] [tab title=”Film Grain Settings”]

[/tab] [/tabs_framed]

Step 2: Add Text

Under Media Generators in Vegas, add your preferred text preset whether it’s the ProType Titler or the standard Titles & Text. I found the standard Titles & Text Default preset worked best since I didn’t need anything too fancy.

Be sure to keep your text “White”.

Step 3: Composite Mode

Change the Composite Mode for the track with the text media to, “Multiply (Mask)”. Your text should now be transparent and should show the background footage.

You’re free to animate the text however you’d like. I made it zoom in a bit for each title.

Note: Everything under the Masked track won’t be visible unless there’s footage to mask. Place any other media in a track above the Masked track.

Change Mask Background Color

To change the masks background color we need to add some media in an entirely new video track below everything else.

Once added you may not see the color or video clip appear right away. This is because we need to parent the glitch footage with the text. You can do this by clicking Make Compositing Child on the glitch video track.

Now you should be able to see the background color you added.

Alternate Way of Masking Text

If you want to make the area behind the text a different color, change the text color in the Generated Text Media to transparent and the background to any color of your choice. You don’t need to change the composite mode for this method. Just leave it at, “Source Alpha”.

That’s it! You’ve just learned a few masking techniques in Sony Vegas. You can do this to anything as long as the area to be masked is white.

This written tutorial was mainly focused on masking text. What are some things you’ve done to make text stand out more? Leave your response in the comments below!

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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 make it sound like someone’s talking on the phone in Sony Vegas Pro 10 along with some other audio effects.

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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.

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In this tutorial, I show you how to make it rain in Sony Vegas Pro 10.

Rain Sound Effect: http://bit.ly/olt5iP

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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.

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In this tutorial, I show you how to bring pictures to life by making them move their mouths as if they were talking in which then you could make them say anything in After Effects automatically without the need to sit for hours adding keyframes.

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In this tutorial, I show you how to make skin appear smooth in Photoshop CS5.

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

Photo By: Belovodchenko Anton http://www.shutterstock.com/g/belovodchenko

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