Compositing Digital Juice animations in Vegas

[Mike Kujbida]

Bruce, check out the FIRST TIME Using Juice Products with Vegas? Please Read thread on the Digital Juice Vegas forum.
Like you, I was stumbling around when I first started using their products and this helped me a lot.

[Bruce Quayle]

Thanks Mike!
I shall go there right away.
Cheers,

Bruce Quayle

[Bruce Quayle]

Right you are Mike! So I’ve got my effect working – fantastic!
But I’m still a little confused. (Not surprising really 😉
What are the mattes for as I really don’t appear to need them? Am I missing something really important? It also seems to make a mockery of the ‘parent’/’child’ debate in the manual. So I guess that this must have more to do with compositing different lines of video together…right? But again…why the matte?
I’d really appreciate your insight.
Cheers,

Bruce Quayle

[Steve Rhoden]

Don’t right off your mattes…they will come in handy when
you get your compositing juices flowing a little later on…LOL.

Here is a clear and precise method of using mattes in vegas that
i got from a website that is most helpfull.

using mattes in Vegas:

1. Arrange your clips on the timeline.
Track 1: matte
Track 2: your video clip
Track 3: background animation

2. Click the Track FX button on Track 1 and select the Mask
Generator tool.

3. In the Mask Generator dialog, select a Luminance key from the
Type dropdown. You may also need to click the Invert checkbox to
get the effect you want.

4. Click the Compositing Mode button in Track 1 and select
“Multiply (Mask)” from the menu.

5. Click the Make Compositing Child button in Track 2.

Steve Rhoden
Creative Director
TNX EFFECTS STUDIOS.
sample bits at
http://www.youtube.com/hentys

[John Rofrano]

> What are the mattes for as I really don’t appear to need them?

Steve hinted at this but there are really two answers:

(1) You are correct… you don’t really need them for the DJ Editors Toolkit stuff. They are for NLE’s that don’t support Alpha Channel and require a grayscale matte. Both do the same thing. Since Vegas supports alpha channel the mattes are redundant.

(2) They are useful for creating your own overlays. Using the mattes you can select any background from, let’s say, your DJ Jump Backs collection and you instantly have 100’s of new overlays. Use the lower thirds mattes with your Jump Back collection and you now have 100’s of new lower thirds. So they are really useful, as Steve said, “once you get your compositing juices flowing”. (Read: the mattes turn your entire Jump Back collection or any motion background into 100’s of new Editor’s Toolkits)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Bruce Quayle]

Thanks guys. The veil is lifted from mine eyes!!
This is all beginning to make sense. I see how powerful the mattes could be in the right hands.
…now I get to spend a day or two on the old learning curve-mill.
Just one more question for you John: Where do I find “(Read: the mattes turn your entire Jump Back collection or any motion background into 100’s of new Editor’s Toolkits)” so I can indeed read it?
Thanks so much to everyone for their help.
Cheers,

Bruce Quayle

[John Rofrano]

> Where do I find “(Read: the mattes turn your entire Jump Back collection or any motion background into 100’s of new Editor’s Toolkits)” so I can indeed read it?

Sorry for not being clear… the word “Read” in my comment was short for “read between the lines” meaning that the implication of what I just said is that the mattes can be used to make the equivalent of Editor’s Toolkits from other media that you might have lying around. Don’t be afraid to experiment… which you are probably doing right now. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com