[Mark Greenwood]

Funilly enough I was working on a script the other week to do this. In my instance it was a “replace media” item – where I could copy details of an event and then replace the actual media and some/all of the details(FX / FADES / KEYFRAMES etc) on the existing event and apply to the new one – it shouldn’t take me long to adapt it to a script to copy and paste to events on the timeline….

Watch this space

[Mark Greenwood]

Here is an example Video

*Note that the Images are 5 seconds long

Then Open up the Tic Tac Toe script

By default this will create a 3 row 3 colum wall. The blue squares represent the solid chosen color, V is where the video will be created – you can choose from the preset list on the right hand drop down – under Checkboard Choices.
Also by default – we will ADD to the current timeline and ADD a parent track so that you can use TRACK MOTION on the WHOLE wall.

Clicking the INVERSE VIDEO button will alternate whether we start with a SOLID color or a VIDEO track

If you choose to use an IMAGE as the alternate item – you will be promoted to select an IMAGE – this will add the image to the PROJECT MEDIA (if it’s not already present). Note that the display will change to show the IMAGE.

If you select ALL VIDEO note that Every track will be created as a VIDEO

You can change the number of ROWS and COLUMS – note you need to click UPDATE to show this change (all other changes will be reflected immediately EXCEPT this one).

Example of choosing 5×5.

If you choose to insert videos – it will use the EVENTS from the SELECTED VIDEO tracks. If you do this then ALL NEW TRACKS will be set at the TIME of the SHORTEST Event. If you DON’T select videos from an existing track OR no track currently exists then you can specify the length of the IMAGE or SOLID tracks (e.g 4.5 = 4.5 seconds) 1 = 1 second, 1:00:00 = 1 minute….

After clicking GO on a 3×3 video wall – note that the original track is now MUTED – we have one parent track and then 9 child tracks

Enjoy…

[Mark Greenwood]

Can I just confirm that the black box message to which you refer is something outside of vegas. E.G. the actual media itself has these areas?

The only way I think to script this would be to run through each frame of the video – take a snapshot and then compare it to an image you already had – that would be one idea – which would of course take a HUGE amount of time – but is at least doable.

Ideally you’d actually do this in C++ so you could process the frames on the fly – but that’s a fair amount of work.

[Mark Greenwood]

Ah very interesting,

I thought it was just me doing something stupid!! I’ve had the same issue with images – glad to know it is a software issue and not user error (yay me)

Oh well roll on 9.0D 🙂

Thanks all,

Mark.

[Mark Greenwood]

….hmm then again when you have a long thin box like yours – the text looks AWFUL!!

So I would probably go with Roger’s idea of flashing the box rather than the text,

Maybe 9.0D or 10 will have a limit transition boundary box 🙂

We can only hope…..

[Mark Greenwood]

I just tried this and you can do it by putting the transition on the TEXT layer;-

here is what I did

1.) Create the Vid layer, the box layer and then the text layer
Vid Track =3, Box Track = 2, Text Track =1

2.) Add a WHITE BORDER (or some color) around the TEXT layer

3.) Using track motion on the TEXT LAYER scale the text layer till the border fits on top of the box layer

4.) Now edit the text accordingly – as the scale factor may have affected how the original text looks

5.) Now add the transition to the text layer (e.g. Hard Flash) and remove the border FX

6.) Run it….

6.) Transition should be limited to the contained text area now

[Mark Greenwood]

can I ask which version – if it’s version 8 or 9 do you have the ‘C’ version downloaded e.g. version 8c or 9c – if not it might be worth downloading the update, other than that does this happen if you create a new project with the same media?!? It might be an issue with a particular piece of media…

[Mark Greenwood]

There are a couple of ways to do this reasonably quickly –

Create a new video track and then setup the Title for the first picture – with fades / video fx / pan moves etc – however you want that one to look. Then highlight that Event on the time line and click Edit/Copy (ctrl c – PC or command c – Mac) Then Paste onto the same Video Track at the position where the next picture is and click Edit/Paste (ctrl v – PC or command v – Mac) and then choose to make a new copy of the source media. You can then just edit the Text on that copy of the Title.

If you want an automated way of doing this – currently vegas does not have a way to do this – I guess a script could be written to create a Title based on some MetaData based on the Picture – but that again would rely on you having the description you wanted within the MetaData of the picture anyway….

[Mark Greenwood]

When you say ” I’d like to add a short description for each photo” do you mean that you would like some Text to appear within the Video? Or do you mean you would like to add MetaData to the photo – if the latter then Vegas is not the place to do this….

[Mark Greenwood]

I wrote a little script which will show you ALL offline media

https://mgreenwood.com.au/upload/FindOffline.dll

Just stick it in your script folder (typically c:\program files\sony\sony vegas 9.0\Script menu)

Run it on your project – that will tell you on which track and which event is the culprit….