Achieving “Sin City effect” with Vegas Movie Studio 9

[Gabriel Burning]

Please if someone has any ideas, ANY, please help!

[D. Eric franks]

There’s no way to do this without being able to select and isolate a particular color range (makes sense, right?) and I can’t think of any way to do that in Vegas without using the secondary color corrector. There might be other tools online that can do this for free/cheap, but they are all going to work by selecting and isolating a color range. You might search for “pleasanville effect” – that was the nickname for it before Sin City!

[Gabriel Burning]

Ok, thanks. I’m all for using some kind of tool to isolate a certain color, as long as it doesn’t require money. =)

So do you know of any particular tool that would at least help me do this?

[Gabriel Burning]

And with tool I pretty much mean some external application (program).

I mean it seems like such an easy thing to do really, something that you would be capable of doing with VMS…

[Terry Esslinger]

I followed the directions on that video and could not get it to work (with 9Pro). I have done it before following the directions in Ed Troxels newsletters( https://www.jetdv.com/vegas/forum/index.php), but its a little more complicated than this video shows. Look for Color Pass.

[Gabriel Burning]

Yes, well you see the problem is I own Movie Studio not Vegas Pro and so I don’t have secondary color correct. What I’d need is some way of doing what a color pass does but without having to upgrade to Pro.

I’ve tried using chroma key, and maybe I just did it wrong but that worked somewhat badly for me, please try it if you think you can make it work, that would be very helpful. What I tried was to add the same clip to two different tracks and completely desaturate the first clip and then add chroma key so that the color would “shine through” from the second track.

I also found this video/tutorial:

https://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11237_7-6323933-1.html

Now, that video is what made me try using chroma key and maybe it can inspire you to ideas that would help us crack this nut.

[D. Eric franks]

Yep, it can be done that way (any method that can isolate a color will work), but I’m afraid I don’t know if your version of Vegas can do it. Here’s your track layout and summary (see the attached image too):

Track 1 – Parent mask based on chromakey reveals…
|- Track 2 – colored bits in compositing child
Track 3 – desaturated background

Here’s the Step-by-Step (matches screen grab):
1. Add clip to Track 1. Chromakey to the color you want to keep. Toggle Show mask only on, which you’ll do while perfecting your mask anyhow. Normally, you’d leave it off when you are done. You want the colored areas to be white, everything else black (and there’s your mask).
2. Click the Track FX button and add a mask generator. Set it to Luminance and toggle Invert on.
3. Change the Compositing mode to Multiply (Mask).
4. Add the clip again to Track 2 and click the Make Compositing Child button.
5. Add the clip again to Track 3 and desaturate it.

Again, this sort of track matte key or travelling matte is a good fundamental technique, but seems complex for Vegas Movie Studio, eats up three tracks and it’d be a lot easier using the Secondary Color Corrector. On the other hand, if you can do it for free, that’s fantastic.

[Gabriel Burning]

THANKS! It did the job very well, I’ll be sure to make use of this effect in the future!

(this picture is obviously not a perfect example since I didn’t maxmimize the effect)

[Gabriel Burning]

THANKS! It did the job very well, I’ll be sure to make use of this effect in the future!

(this picture is obviously not a perfect example since I didn’t maxmimize the effect)

The original: