• VEGAS Pro

  Creating an Animation in Vegas and Using it Another Video

  Posted by Steven Diggs jr. on November 7, 2011 at 1:30 am

  So, my friend Mik created an animation in his version of Vegas. I want to add the animation to my video on my project. How do I do this?

  Dave Haynie replied 14 years, 10 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Stephen Mann

  November 7, 2011 at 5:56 am

  He can render an uncompressed AVI file or encode an uncompressed MOV file from Vegas, then you just drop it on your timeline.

  Steve Mann
  MannMade Digital Video
  http://www.mmdv.com
• 

  Steven Diggs jr.

  November 7, 2011 at 6:18 am

  How do you make an uncompressed AVI?
• 

  Danny Hays

  November 7, 2011 at 6:52 pm

  Select render as “AVI” and uncompressed is one of the AVI type presets to choose from.
• 

  Dave Haynie

  November 8, 2011 at 6:24 am

  There are lots of ways. Much of this depends on how you intend to use the animation in your video.

  If you want to use the animation as an underlay (for example, maybe I want an animation to show on a TV screen in another animation), you can render it to some reasonably sized output format. It should be rendered progressive, and ideally at the same frame rate you plan for the final product. In the next level of animation, you’d work on that video, perhaps shrinking and rotating it to fit in a cut-out (transparent area, keyed-out area) in this new level.

  If you want to use the animation as an overlay, you need some kind of transparency. The simplest is to render uncompressed, with alpha channel — that’s the key factor there. Keep in mind, uncompressed files get crazy big, so keep this in mind.

  To render uncompressed, select an AVI/Video for Windows output. Go to the “Custom” dialog, select “Uncompressed” as the Video format, and check the “Render alpha channel” box. This will produce a video with transparency anywhere you don’t have graphics/video in the animation.

  When you load this into another project, it’s just like any other video, but you won’t see transparency right away. You have to select the video track, hit “Properties” and then select the “Media” tab. Where is says “Alpha channel:”, select “Straight (unmatted)” and you’ll probably get what you want.

  If you don’t have the storage for a huge uncompressed file, you can do overlays via chroma keying. This works best with a single color background (red, green, blue), and of course, one that’s not contained in the original image. You can render out such a video in any format, technically, but something with 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color will produce a superior result, at the price of larger files.

  -Dave

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