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Masking/Rotoscoping in Vegas pro
Though I have a relatively decent background in computer programming (game programming, writing shaders etc..) I’m fairly new to video editing so my command of the terminology is not to the point that I am able to accomplish much with google searches.
I am presently using Sony Vegas 10’s professional trial and have been able to accomplish most of what I need for my project (e.g., simple masking, rotoscoping, lightsaber/glowing object effect) but what I want now is to place the head of one fellow in one track onto the body of another in another track.
It is simple enough to mask the head in Track “Head” and have it appear in Track “Body,” but is there a way, once masked, to change the position of where the head from Track Head appears in Track Body so to keep in the proper position relative to the neck in Track Body? Also, what would be the name of such a procedure?
All the best,
Byron -
5 Replies
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Keeping the heads position on the body is called Motion Tracking (which is different from the track motion function within Vegas).
There are at least 2 plug-ins for Vegas that have the motion tracking function:
Boris RED:
https://www.borisfx.com/red/Mocha:
https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/tracking_bundleIf you don’t want to use an external plug-in, you will have to use keyframes to do the tracking manually.
Theo
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Boris Continuum (BCC7) also does motion tracking.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Thanks for the information! My clip is short enough that I can manage to do it with keyframes manually- yet what I cannot seem to accomplish is to adjust where the head in from the track containing the head appears in the frame of that contains the body.
If, on an example frame, the masked head’s center pixel is at 400,600 in the track containing the head (0,0 being top left corner) it appears at 400,600 in the track containing the body, when it might need to appear at 555,737 to match the neck in the track containing the body.
What it is that I cannot seem to find a way to do is to modify where the view produced by the masking in one frame appears in the other. The mask works as a window straight through the top layer. What it is that I want to accomplish is to billboard the mask & be able to place that billboard anywhere on the top layer. Is that possible?
Best,
Byron -
Hi Byron,
If I understand your point correctly, you would like the two tracks to be locked to each other, so that when one moves, the other follows.
In this case, you might want to use parent/child tracks.
To do this, click the corner angled bottom arrow in the lower track (the neck track I believe, in your case). If this may help you find this arrow, it should be tooltipped “Create a compositing child” – not sure though, because I have a French version of Vegas, so I don’t know the exact English translation.
Doing this, you will set this track as a child of the other one (the Head track in your case).
Afterwards, the trackmotion settings of the parent track will be applied to the child tracks, in such a way that they will follow their parent.
Hope this is clear enough, and this corresponds to what you are looking for.
Best regards,
Frederic—
Want to match colors between clips? new plug-in here.
Check FBmn Software plug-ins to fix white balance and exposure issues.Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1
Or about Keyframes? https://library.creativecow.net/articles/baumann_frederic/Animating-with-Keyframes-in-Sony-Vegas.phpFrench version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999
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Success! Thank you all for your help!
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