-
Annotating Video with Lines and Arrows
Is there a plugin for Vegas to draw annotations on Video? If I need just a single arrow, it is very easy to do with the Text Media Generator and WingDing3 font. If I need lines and longer arrows, I export a frame of video to mspaint, draw on it, then splice the modified frame back in. That is very disruptive plus it is not easy to draw smoothly with a mouse.
I would like to get a plugin that can generate an overlay of lines and arrows without leaving Vegas (and while seeing the composited result, just like the TextMedia tool). The simple line drawing capability of Microsoft Word or Powerpoint would be enough (i.e. put a smooth curve through a series of specified points, optionally put an arrow head on the end and some control over line thickness and color).
-
2 Replies
-
Instead of modifying the actual frame, I’d just create the arrow on a transparent background which could then be moved and rotated as desired. Using the text generated media should work fine as well. Using Pan/Crop, you could stretch the generated media so that the arrow was longer if that’s what you needed.
Edward Troxel
-
Thanks for the idea of using Pan/Crop to rotate WingDing arrows. Overlaying text is so easy, especially with the ability to reposition and see the composited result in real time. I wish there were a way to do the same with long, curved lines. The line-drawing capability of Powerpoint would be enough.
I’ve pasted a video frame captured from Vegas preview into Powerpoint and drawn lines on it. I can export just the annotations to use as an overlay, but haven’t figured out how to make the background transparent.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up