[Andrew Lenczycki]

To copy keyframes, you need to be in the keyframe editing dialog box (to my knowledge, you CAN’T do this straight onto a track) by selecting the Track Motion button on the track header, select the first keyframe “diamond”, then either shift-click on the last keyframe “diamond” (you want to copy) or CTRL-click on individual keyframe “diamonds”. Once you have all the keyframes you want selected by the method above, right-click on any of the selected keyframe diamonds and select Copy from the menu.

Now go to the track you want to copy the keyframes TO, press the Track Motion button again to bring up the track motion dialog box, and move the cursor to the time location you want the copied keyframes to start “from”, click the new keyframe button, then right-click on this new keyframe diamond and select Paste from the menu. The keyframes selected will be pasted into this new track, beginning at the location of the cursor when you created the new keyframe diamond. Sorry, very wordy, but in practice, very easy to do (I use this technique a lot).

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Quickly played around in Vegas and got the basics of what you want. I’m attaching a Vegas Pro 10.0 file you can play with if you’re so inclined.

3402_samplevumeter.veg.zip

[Andrew Lenczycki]

I actually think that is actual video of the boombox playing.

I do believe it could be done using multiple layers in Vegas. You would need a picture of (only one) tape reel, and then make it look like it’s turning by setting the center point of the picture to be the center of the tape reel and then keyframing it to move so many degrees on the Z axis, causing the reel to “rotate” about the center of the reel. I would try to match the time per revolution to the existing video you reference (i.e. if the tape is going at 3 seconds per revolution, I would keyframe to have the reel rotate 360 degrees every three seconds, then repeating the keyframes every 3 seconds for as long as the song plays. You would duplicate the other reel on another layer and keyframe it as well. You would need to have a picture of the boombox front (lots of them at google images) and make the tape transport area transparent (so you can see the tape reels rotating in a lower layer). I would use a png format picture for this, which could be done in Photoshop. The LED levels meter could be done, but would be very tedious, again with little green squares on different layers that would turn “on and off” to match the level of the music. You might be able to find some sort of LED light animation on line if you look hard. I believe it could all be done with Vegas, but it would be very time consuming, especially the LED level meters.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

What specifically are you referring to in the video?

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Mike,

I don’t quite follow what opening this file in Vegas will do or correct. Can you elaborate? Thanks.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Have you tried renaming the files from within Windows AFTER sorting them thru windows by the “date stamp” field. If you group rename them they will be in that filename order.

Ex: jpg010, jpg002, jpg059, jpg41 came from two different cameras, but they all have their “date stamp” data. If you sort by that field, say they end looking like this:

File Date Stamp
jpg059 12-7-2011 12:15:03
jpg002 12-7-2011 12:22:15
jpg041 12-7-2011 12:25:58
jpg010 12-7-2011 12:26:19

Now if you batch rename them (click on the first file name in date stamp order, then shift-click on the last file in date stamp order, then right click and select rename “vacation_pic”) they will be renamed in date stamp order, but will be named vacation_pic(0), vacation_pic(1), vacation_pic(2), vacation_pic(3). I have to do this frequently when we have group events with multiple pictures taken by multiple people and I want them all to be in date:time taken order.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

I don’t think this should make any difference, but my “normal” process is to produce short 3-5 minute segments in Vegas (which equates to a single football or lacrosse game), then in DVD Architect, I create a PlayAll playlist consisting of the 8 to 15 segments (or chapters). During the playback of the PlayAll, at the end of each segment, the last second of music is cut off if I don’t add the 1 second “blank” track with no audio.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

I generally find the same problem with video sound on DVD’s I create (not CD’s). The only way I have found to “fix” this is to add a one second generated media solid color, usually black, to the end of each segment, with the audio ending prior to the generated media (essentially the same thing you’re doing with your 5 second space). It’s a bit annoying, but it always seems to work when I do this. Just confirming that you’re not the only seeing this.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Sean,

This is relatively easy to do, all from within Vegas. I did a quick dummy to test my theory of how to accomplish. Based on what you wrote, I believe you’re trying to get the following:

I inserted my “video” (just a picture of mountains in this case) on a track, then I inserted three new tracks above the “video”. On each track I added a Solid Color from the Media Generator tab. One track the solid color was green, one track white, the last red (the colors of the Italian flag). At this point all three of these tracks/events are “stacked” on top of each other, with the top green event covering the other two solid colors (and the “video” below), so all you will see is a solid green screen (output).

Next, I went into the Pan/Crop for the green solid color event, and turning off the “Lock Aspect Ratio” and “Size About Center” buttons, changed the Position:Width from the default 720 (I am working in 720 x 480 4:3) to 240, which makes the green event 1/3 the width of the screen. I then close the Pan/Crop tool, click on the green event and right-click Copy. Move to the white event and right-click, “Paste Event Attributes”. Do this also for the red event. This pastes the “attribute” of the green generated media (at 1/3 width). Now you have all three color events still stacked on top of each other, but now 1/3 the width of the screen.

Now, on the track header (on left side of each track) for the green event, press the Track Motion button to bring up a dialog box. On the top left of the box, press the Source Alpha button and select 3D Source Alpha from the dropdown list. Still in this dialog box, click anywhere on the display, showing the location of the track in “3D space”. Now, while watching your output display, start pressing your keyboard left arrow key. You should see the green event starting to move to the left on the output screen. Keep pressing the left arrow key until the green event is on the left side of the output screen, stopping when the right edge of the green event is even with the left edge of the (now visible) white event on the next track down. Do the same with the red event track, except press the right arrow key to move that event to the right. You should now have an approximation of the Italian flag, which is completely “covering” the vide event below it.

Lastly, go the green event and moving toward the top edge of the event, you should see the cursor turn from an arrow into a hand with finger pointing. At that point, hold down the left mouse button while dragging the Opacity line. I pulled it down to 36% in my example. As you do this, you should see the “video” under (the green only) event starting to appear. Do the same for the white and red events and you should have the output like above. Below is a screen shot of my Vegas dummy project. Hopefully this gets you on the right track (pun intended).

This is just ONE way of getting what you want. There are other ways (i.e. you could create the green, white and red tracks and save the project as “Flag”, then drag the Flag project onto the timeline of your main project (on a track above your video), then play with the Opacity again. This would give you the entire flag on only one track. You could also just paste a complete Italian flag picture on an upper track and again, reduce the Opacity to let what’s below it show thru.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Jim,

Don’t feel dumb, Vegas is a great program that has a LOT of capabilities. Many times, there are multiple ways of doing a single task (keyboard shortcut, menu command, etc.) I’m constantly learning things that I didn’t know Vegas could do, just by reading on this forum, and there’s a great group of people that are willing to share their wealth of knowledge on the various topics regarding Vegas.