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Help fully understanding the composite modes and child/parent relation
Hi everyone!
I’m learning vegas and all that it can do. One thing that puzzles me to fully understand is the composite modes and the child/parent relation. I think I got most of it but some things are puzzling to me. Allow me to describe a few results that I don’t understand:
– When lowering the level slider of a child track to a masked parent-track with multiply, Tracks below the child-track starts shining through (transparency). Why does this happen? The way I understood it the masked track only allows the parts of the child track shining through that resides within the masked regions. Why does the child track level slider allow the track to “go outside” the mask? What’s even more puzzling is that if you have TWO child tracks to this parent masking track and you lower the slider halfway to 50% on the higher child track, the lower child tracks starts shining through in the mask, BUT there is nothing happening outside the mask in this case. (There is however if I also lower the slider of the lowest child track). It’s logical that the parent level slider causes this, but not the children of it?
– Weirdly enough, if we change the parent-track from multiply to say add or subtract composition mode, this “shining through” effect goes away! Even if I lower the only child track to 0% in this scenario all that happens is that nothing is added or subtracted to the color values of the masking parent track. There is NO shining through o lower tracks like in the above example.
– Last but not least one thing I cannot quite understand is what EXACT difference it makes making a track CHILD to a composition track as to just keeping it at the same level below? In the multiply example it’s easy to see, the mask is masking the child track while the transparency is jumping down to the next track creating a “2-way split”. But what is the different with composition modes such as add or subtract? At first I couldn’t see a difference but when I lowered the level slider of the child track to the add composition mode parent track, I saw that alternating the child track from child to normal did cause a difference, but I can’t quite say I understand why and what happens here.
I’ve vacuumed the manual to understand this but I must say that the examples and information in the manual is quite thin on this pretty abstract topic. I do know that children are affected by the parent as in I can move them together etc, I’m primarily talking about the difference it makes in composition mode here. I understand it, but still not fully, which annoys me.
Kristian
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18 Replies
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Thank you for posting these questions Kristian.
The parent-child track thing has me stumped as well. I do what “The Gurus” tell us to do to achieve a specific result, but alas I do so in ignorance of how it all works. This is very unproductive as it doesn’t allow for any creativity on my part in this important area.
Like you, I have researched it as much as possible with little illumination.
Sorry that this post doesn’t help your cause, but I wait in the hope that someone out there can put us one the path to true understanding.
Cheers,Bruce Quayle
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Actually, I’m glad to hear someone else is stumped on how this highly abstract system really works. My question isn’t so much about how to achieve this or that effect. I think I got that under control. What bothers me is that the system is complicated and I don’t quite get it all together and fully understand it. Just like you say, it restricts my creativity to not fully understand how it works.
It’s amazing to not see a more detailed information about this in the manual. This made me wonder at first if I was missing something obvious and had a really unbright moment, but I guess that wasn’t the case then 😉
Let’s hope someone on the forum can explain this!
Kristian
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– When lowering the level slider of a child track to a masked parent-track with multiply, Tracks below the child-track starts shining through (transparency). Why does this happen?
Because the parent and child act as one track. The child is the source. If you lower the transparency of any source track, the track below will show through.
The way I understood it the masked track only allows the parts of the child track shining through that resides within the masked regions. Why does the child track level slider allow the track to “go outside” the mask?
Because the mask is only affecting what part of the child is showing through but transparency is affecting the whole child. As the whole child track has less transparency, the whole track below it begins to show through.
What’s even more puzzling is that if you have TWO child tracks to this parent masking track and you lower the slider halfway to 50% on the higher child track, the lower child tracks starts shining through in the mask, BUT there is nothing happening outside the mask in this case.
This is because both tracks are now being affected by the mask because they are both children. That’s what the parent child relationship does.
It’s logical that the parent level slider causes this, but not the children of it?
Yes, it is completely logical if you think of the parent as the “effect” and the child as the “source”. If you lower the transparency on the parent you are lowering the amount of affect is has on the child, but if you lower the transparency of the child, you are lowering the entire source. Multiple children mean multiple sources to affect. If you affect them all, then eventually the lower (non-child) track will begin to show through.
– Weirdly enough, if we change the parent-track from multiply to say add or subtract composition mode, this “shining through” effect goes away! Even if I lower the only child track to 0% in this scenario all that happens is that nothing is added or subtracted to the color values of the masking parent track. There is NO shining through o lower tracks like in the above example.
Not weird at all if you understand the difference between the modes. Mask (as the name implies) allows some things to be covered and others to show through. This is why the bottom (non-child) track shows through when there is no source to mask. Add and Subtract blend two images together. If you totally lower the transparency of either image you will get the other image. You will never get a hole in the image because Add and Subtract are not Masks!
– Last but not least one thing I cannot quite understand is what EXACT difference it makes making a track CHILD to a composition track as to just keeping it at the same level below?
Making a track the child of a compositing parent allows the two to act as one track. This is easily seen in working with 3D where the child will move with the parent. But let’s use your example of Add/Subtract. If you have 3 tracks and change the top track’s composite mode to Add and you parent the 2nd track to the 1st and lower the transparency of the 2nd track, the 1st track will Add itself to the child but when the child is totally transparent, you will only get the 1st track. If, however, you unparent the child so they are just 3 plain tracks and you lower the transparency of the 2nd track, the 1st track will now add itself to the 3rd track! If the first case, the parent child made the two tracks act as one so the 1st track would only add itself to the 2nd, but once the parent child was removed, the 1st track will add itself to any visible track below it.
Does that help?
BTW, we (VASST) just release a new training DVD called “Absolute Training for Vegas Pro Vol. 10: Compositing 101: The Basics by Douglas Spotted Eagle” which will teach you far more about compositing modes than can be covered in a forum post. 😉
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi!
Thanks for trying to clear this out, it’s apparently alot more complicated then one would initially think it would be. I’m starting to wrap my head around it but some things are still an enigma.
One thing I don’t get is this: 3 tracks, first track solid color red and composition mode add. Second track, solid color blue and make it child to track 1. Third track solid color white, on it’s own.
Now if I lower the transparency to 0% of either track 1 or 2 things go as expected, you get just one of the colors as there’s nothing to add and the white bottom track isn’t lighting anything up as it’s not getting any chance to “peak through”. Same thing happens if I lower both track 1 and 2 to 50%, white still doesn’t affect anything. If I however lower track 1 to 25% and track two to 50%, The white bottom track starts shining through causing a brighter tone.
This sure was trickier than expected, but your reply certainly did help to cast some light over most things after a good 3 reads. I can see the full understanding approaching on the horizon with some minor additions 😉
Kristian
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After some more investigation I realize that “subtract” acts just as expected but “add” is a weird one. Even if I set the child at 50% to a 100% parent with add composition, anything below WILL NOT shine through even though there is a 50% of transparency to shine through. In subtract, it doesn’t act in this weird way. Even weirder in the add example here is that if I move up the third track that I want to shine through the 50% of transparency as a second child BAM it works like expected. Why does transparency get “lost” if the child really is to consider a “source” and the parent a “filter”. Even if I add 100% RED to 50% BLUE, I should still end up with 50% transparency for the track below, right?
Apart from this weirdness I think I got it all under control now and it all acts as expected. It’s still a kind of confusing system though but your reply helped heaps in understanding it all. Especially the “see the children as source” idea was helpful. Thanks!
Kristian
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Why does transparency get “lost” if the child really is to consider a “source” and the parent a “filter”. Even if I add 100% RED to 50% BLUE, I should still end up with 50% transparency for the track below, right?
Because you have to take into account the affect that the parent “filter” is having on the entire composite. In your previous post you said that you had the parent track’s compositing mode set to Add and that only after you had lowered the transparency of track 1 to 25% and track 2 to 50% did track 3 start to show through. This is because track 1 & 2 are being Added together and 25% + 50% = 75% which is the same setting a non compositted track to 75% transparency. You saw it faster with Subtract mode because they were being subtracted but the same rules apply. The compositing mode affects how the two tracks interact.
It is a complicated relationship which changes with every mode because every mode processes the composited tracks in a different way. It is not always as simple as “filter” and “source” like in mask mode but it helps to think of them in this way. Hopefully this at least explains why you are seeing the results you are getting.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi John,
Thanks for your input on this confusing issue.
Now, I speak purely as a retired producer/director/writer (who can never retire) and now has entered the field of independent documentary making:
If I’m not mistaken, we independents (not necessarily retired) are a large proportion of the Vegas community, who have turned to a professional quality – consumer priced editing system, in order to facilitate our dreams.
It baffles me that, with all the really clever people who work for *The Sony Corporation* (or even you ‘Gurus’ at VASST), nobody has yet compiled a comprehensive and comprehensible “How To” manual for the technically disabled. I’m not talking about your great “Basics to This”, or “The Beginners Bundle to That”, I’m talking about a “How To” guide…not a training guide.
Seriously – guys like us just want to know how to create a composite using, for example: one source as a shape and another as the fill with a bg of something else…or how to add rain to a scene without using an additional plug-in…or what settings to use to add a deep and purplish look to a sunset…or how to create a night look out of something shot during the day?
We are not technically brilliant editors searching for a “new” look, we are simple-minded creative folk trying to put our ideas into shape.
If this is a pipe-dream, then what about a glossary or dictionary of terms? Only The Lord knows why every manufacturer of editing systems (and even cameras) have to each have their very own terms for commonly used events or actions. Parent/Child is a great example. I am confident that Avid and FCP both have different terms for this. Maybe…just maybe it would be an idea to include the glossary at the back of the manual with a description (and the various other industry-recognised terms) of, say, ‘Child’ and ‘Parent’, to name but two!
Please forgive my minor rant…it’s actually more of a plea!
And thanks so much for your explanation to Kristian. I gained a lot from that.
Cheers for now,Bruce Quayle
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Oh!
I was under the impression that transparency worked the same under all composition modes (read as it does in multiply). If this is not the case, the results are not as surprising anymore. I read somewhere in the manual that the composition mode “decides how tracks are combined together” so I guess it’s a more complicated picture than just saying it’s a transparency slider alone in all the composite modes. It seems the effects vary alot between modes and it’s not particularly logical.
Is there any list or reference anywhere at how the different composite modes work in this regard? It’s almost hilarious how little the manual to a bought product reveals of such a complicated system. Even more so surprising as it’s very complete in the other areas I’ve used it so far (I usually don’t read them much but rather explore myself).
I guess the only thing left to do is fiddling around, testing, going HUH alot and finally have some sort of understanding for the differences between the composition modes.
Kristian
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There is a lot of tutorials for Vegas out there I think but some things aren’t explained very often. Composition tracks are one of those things that are poorly explained. Sure, lots of info on how to mask, but never ever is the underlying system mentioned as in HOW it works. I always want to know the HOW so I can use it in other ways than the explained. There’s so much you can do in vegas, it’s almost staggering, so I can only agree here.
Kristian
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There is always, of course, the option of training material such as those John mentioned. I suspect that, if you think parent-child is the “big” issue that is not fully explained, that you have not yet begun to grasp the capabilities of Vegas. There is a LOT to understand, and I’m not so sure that such things can be included in the documentation that comes with a modestly priced software package such as Vegas Pro. That’s why there is a market for third party training. It wasn’t that long ago that VASST used to do two day training sessions in various cities around the country. Those didn’t begin to cover everything either.
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