Sharpen — and other add-ons

[Steve Rhoden]

Rick,
The holy grail for my Motion Tracking needs is
“Imagineer Monet”…..and for Rotoscoping i use “Imagineer motor”.

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

[John Rofrano]

> What do you guys like for Motion Tracking?

I use Boris RED for motion tracking and IMHO any Vegas user doing FX work like that should have RED in their kit. In addition to motion tracking, it also does corner pinning (replace a sign), rotoscoping, outstanding chroma key, 3D FX, great FX generators (snow, rain, particles, etc.), titles, filters, filters, filters (did I mention it has a lot of filters?).

I was one of those people who thought, “oh I can do all of that in Vegas” and then I saw a demo of Boris RED’s Motion Key. You can actually erase a moving object from a video (like someone walking into frame and spoiling the shot). I mean, gone like they never existed! You can remove a signpost that you don’t want in the shot just like that. It’s amazing. Then they demoed some pretty impressive cloning (that’s right, just like Photoshop clone, replace a section of the video with another section and motion track it so it moves with the scene) and I though, “hmmm… this is pretty close to magic”. After buying RED I’m finding all sorts of uses for it. Obviously I really like it. 😉

~jr

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

[Steve Rhoden]

John,
I tried investing in borisFX sometime ago,because of its many features and integration with Vegas….but had no ends of instability with it along with too many hiccups, that i just removed it from my workflow.

Imagineer systems Motor, Monet and Mokey aren’t plugins for Vegas,
but they are standalone softwares that aren’t system intensive and
works easy,effective,precise and fast while providing consistent professional output. They are almost unbelievable.

And for Particles….I rely soley on “particle Illusion” for generating realistic and creative particles.

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

[John Rofrano]

Steve,

Boris RED 4.3 has been very stable for me. I use it both stand-alone and as a plug-in for Vegas. You might want to check it out again.

Motor, Monet and Mokey look awesome (the demo videos were very impressive) but with a combined price tag of $12,590 USD they are definitely out of my budget. I just can’t business justify the cost when RED serves my needs for less than $1000. But I believe you when you say they are good. 😉

~jr

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

[Steve Rhoden]

John,

“But I believe you when you say they are good”

Trust me…They are really really good and make some projects that would take me a day and a half to complete..using these products.. takes me averagely 45 minutes.

“a combined price tag of $12,590 USD”

Damn expensive as you have figured out…good thing i have business partners/friends with a little extra cash (laugh) couldn’t handle all these expense on my own. But trust me John they are definitely worth it if you own a studio…they pay for themselves in no time.

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

[Michael Bailey]

Hi Rick!

I’ve used Vegas along with assorted versions of Premiere Pro for the past 5 years and I almost agree with you. I too am the kind of guy who uses PhotoShop CS3 and believes that if you can’t do it by manually [without the help of plugin’s] then you just don’t know the program well enough yet. However 3rd party plugins can improve workflow in a lot of situations, although I avoid them whenever possible in every tool I use.

However, there is 1 single remaining issue I have with Vegas that I simply haven’t seen addressed yet. I do a LOT of Chromakey work and I simply can’t avoid slipping over to After Effects/Premiere to key my videos. I’ve tried all of the internal keying aspects built in Vegas and I know most of the ways to maximize it, but I just haven’t been happy with the final results. Especially the smoothing capabilities, shadowing, color correction and interlacing capabilities of something like Premiere/After Effects using something like Keyframe, or even layering the Internal Keying options.

So…
If anyone knows of a strong Keyer plugin for Vegas 8 that doesn’t take weeks to render panels [lol] and is cost effective [meaning less than a grand] I’d love to hear about it. I’d also love to know your thoughts on effective keying inside Vegas with Vegas tools. Right now I’m running Vista and I’d love to toss Premiere [and it’s memory allocation horrors, especially in CS3] and stay inside Vegas, all the way.

Michael
ActiveInternet.com

[John Rofrano]

> If anyone knows of a strong Keyer plugin for Vegas 8 that doesn’t take weeks to render panels [lol] and is cost effective [meaning less than a grand] I’d love to hear about it.

I’d give you the same answer I gave Rick about Motion Tracing. I use Boris RED for all of my Chromakeying. It plugs right into Vegas and does an outstanding job. I get better results than when I was using the stand-alone Serious Magic Ultra which is now owned Adobe and can’t be purchased alone. There are several tools into the Boris RED chromakey suite and I especially like the light wrap tool which will wrap the light from the background around the keyed subject which really aids in selling them as part of the shot.

> I’d also love to know your thoughts on effective keying inside Vegas with Vegas tools.

If you haven’t read Keith Kolbo’s excellent tutorials you will undoubtedly find out how good the built in Sony chromakeyer can be if the footage is lit correctly:

Gain a better understanding of Chromakey / Greenscreen / Bluescreen
Chromakey Techniques for Budget Productions

~jr

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