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Crossfading Video With Stills
I have recently begun editing a wedding video that I shot in SD using a HVR-Z1E. I’m using Vegas Studio 9 on Vista.
The photographer at the wedding kindly gave me jpeg images of his photos to complement the video. My idea was to “interrupt” certain video events with stills via a crossfade, whilst keeping the original audio track from the video event going in the background and then crossfading back to the video.
My question is what’s the best way of achieving this quickly.
My current “workaround” is to use a second video track for the stills and create “opaqueness” envelopes…ie fade out main video track, fade in 2nd video track with still and then do the reverse to go back to the original video track.
THis seems a bit long winded. Is there a way to just drop stills on to an existing video track and get vegas to auto crossfade without interrupting the audio?
Many thanks
Tony
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4 Replies
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I can think of two obvious ways to do this, but I think the method you’ve discovered is the easiest (and the way I’d do it). Here are the steps you describe:
(1) Add a second track above the primary video.
(2) Drop and position the still.
(3) Use the Fade envelopes on the edge of the still to fade it in and out.I assume you are using the Fade envelopes that are actually on the clip, instead of the Track-level Compositing envelope (which will also work – so there are 3 obvious ways to do this!).
The other way, is to ungroup the audio from the video, snip-snip the video and then insert your still. For comparison, I think this is harder:
(1) Snip/Cut a segment out of your video (position cursor, press S, reposition cursor, press S).
(2) Right-click primary video clip and select Group > Remove From (or press U on your keyboard).
(3) Delete the video part of the snipped primary video
(4) Drop the still photo into the gap.Assuming everything is perfect duration/position wise, you’ll get an automatic crossfade. It probably won’t be perfect, so you’ll still end up grabbing the edges of clips and trimming/extending them (of which you have four edges to adjust in this scenario) and you’ll run into the audio clip that is now orphaned from everything else. This is as opposed to Method 1, where you can simply drag the still photo to reposition it and have only 2 edges to adjust when changing the duration.
Still, to each his own and both methods will definitely work. The one that you find easier/prefer is the right one!
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“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television,
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How about adding a white border to the stills. Then a flash transition at the beginning. Could look like a photograph being taken. The photo could then be ang.led a little differently. Add a sound effect of a camera shutter.
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Many thanks for your responses fellas. I think I will stick with the method I was using (ie track composite envelopes). As these things usually go once you’ve done it a few times it becomes second nature…
Good idea about adding the flash transition for the photo-effect btw, I take it your intention was that the flash effect would negate the need for a crossfade?
Tony
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Just to reiterate: The right method is the one that works for you, however…
(hehe)
Using the Track Composite Level envelope means at least 4 clicks to create 4 envelope nodes and two drags. (8 if you count double clicks as two and 10 if double click to create an envelope node and then drag it – unnecessary if you can break yourself of the habit of releasing the mouse button after the second click.)
I personally find using the Event Fade offset twice as easy: just 2 drags and yer done. Plus the fades are stuck to your events.
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