quick question for any one using vegas 7..

[Matthew MD]

Is it possible to combine two video tracks together, almost like having text overlayed, where I can see both video clips as one., Its for a certain effect im trying to get. Both camera shots are in the same spot and I want them combined.

[white_2kgt]

To do that you will have to turn the transparency down on one track or green screen.

[Matthew MD]

dang, I know I had to lower the transparancy on one of them, but I was hoping I could keep them both the same.

Thanks

[mik]

then change the compositing mode from alpha to overlay or screen. see if that's what you want.

[Numbox]

Errrm, what exactly are you trying to achieve? Think logically for a second - you cant have two videos on top of each other without them looking like garbage. You either have to turn on transparency and make it dream-like or use masking to get the portions of each video to be fully visible.

[Worley]

What's wrong with doing a split screen?

In Vegas you can use Besier masks, so if only a small part of one video needs to be make transparent, you should try using them. Changing transparency greatly increases render times.

[24Peter]

In addition to what mik said, you can also try to composite the two tracks as parent/child and then play with the different composting modes - e.g., add, multiply, subtract, etc.

[Matthew MD]

Thanks guys All those ideas sound good but I already got it the way I wanted, I did it a very lenghty way but the results are great.

After I made this thread and thought about it for awile your right I cant literally have one over the other without loosing some pixels/ or using transparancy.

What I wanted was when im looking in the mirror that my mirror image leaves the room when the "real me" is still there. And what I did worked out perfectly you cant tell it was edited in any way.

[veg]

....and may we ask?. What did you do?.

[Frank]

I am guessing he did a simple horizontal crop of half of one clip and superimposed it on the other.

[Matthew MD]

I am guessing he did a simple horizontal crop of half of one clip and superimposed it on the other.

I did that at first but was not satisfied, it didnt look good enough it had a very visible line. Not because the lighting was different but that croping tool looked like it added a line.

So instead I used photoshop cs3. I imported it into there and cut away the piece I didnt want and then replaced that blank area with green color (I overlayed the video over the green background to make sure all was filled) then rendered it out as an avi file (my final was planed to be sd res.). Then from there I brough into vegas and basically had my "unedited" movie file as the background in vegas and chroma keyed the green away from the edited avi file.

Here is the work flow, I might have lost a little quality.

1) .m2t file gets saved as .avi through vegas at 720x480.

2) then took that .avi file an put through photoshop cs3 and greened the unwanted area. Then rendered to avi again (this is where I might have lost a little quality it went from 720x480x24 -to- 720x480x16).

3) then took the file back into vegas and combined it with other clips and did a final render to mpeg 2.



Also quick question what is the deal with the x24 to x16 for.. is this bad? I dont usually use cs3 for stuff like this.

Note: the reason for converting the m2t to avi was because photoshop wont take mt2 files...at least I think.

[Frank]

Your workflow sounds like something I would cobble together; I love tinkering:hv20-smilie77:

[Matthew MD]

lol, do you happen to know about the x24 to x16..?

[Frank]

Sorry, I don't know what the x16 and x24 means. Did you try googling it?

[mik]

2) then took that .avi file an put through photoshop cs3 and greened the unwanted area. Then rendered to avi again (this is where I might have lost a little quality it went from 720x480x24 -to- 720x480x16).



exctly if you know how much is 2^24 - 2^16 that's how little you've lost.

[Numbox]

I did that at first but was not satisfied, it didnt look good enough it had a very visible line. Not because the lighting was different but that croping tool looked like it added a line.

Couldn't you just up the feather while cropping? :hv20-smilie09:

[Matthew MD]

Couldn't you just up the feather while cropping?

Could you tell me where this feature is? I cant find it, this may do the trick.

[Numbox]

I made a slight mistake, feather is not available when cropping, but is available when masking. It's under "path", but you have to choose anchor creation tool and make click in the video once to make it active. Play around with it and you'll get there. Hope this helps.