[Theo Van laar]

Go to the project media tab and right-click on the media you would like to replace and select REPLACE from the pop-up menu.

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

It’s very easy to create the handwriting effect in Vegas Movie Studio if you use spicemaster, a plugin for Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio.

https://www.pixelan.com/downloads.htm

And the method how to do this can be found here:

https://presentationmaster.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=16465

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

Hi Don,

First of all, since you are the one who shot the footage and the editor, you are the only person who can decide how the end result should look. So if you are satisfied with your result, that’s perfect. And if you think that my result was e.g. to colourfull, that’s fine (you can adjusted the result by playing with the settings for the colorcurves FX).

And yes, you can do magical things in Vegas without using the MULTIPLY MODE. I tried to show for a Dutch videoforum that you can convert a awfull and terrible digitalised old 8-mm film into a very descend video with just a few mouseclicks. Although you might have problems in reading the text, the pictures will tell you the whole story: https://www.videomontagefaq.nl/index.php?action=artikel&cat=374226&id=331&artlang=nl

Now about your result with the color corrector FX: I tried to look at it in a very objective way: i.e by using the Videoscopes from Vegas (Ctrl + Alt + 2).
This is your original footage:

When you look at the histogram (one of the several output options of the videoscope), you can see that pixels with a lower value for RGB and luminance are almost absent (with fits with the idea that the footage is overexposed).

Now lets have a look at the histogram of your corrected footage:

It’s clear that there is an increase in pixels with a lower value (darker pixels). However, it is still not yet perfect.
Now look at the histogram of the MULTIPLY MODE treated footage:

On the left side it looks OK now, although I could have reduced the number of pixels on the right side (the bright pixels) a little bit with the COLORCURVES FX which I had added already.

Now to come back to your corrected footage: it is very simple to improve the left side of the histogram by re-dustributing the pixels using the LEVELS FX. Just drag the INPUT START slider a little bit to the right until you are satisfied. The result could look as follows:

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

Don,

I made a graph to show you why the MULTIPLY MODE method works much better on over-exposed video then just the Vegas color corrector FX.
Every pixel has (in the 8-bit system) for every channel a value between 0 (black) and 255 (white).
What the MULTIPLY MODE does is simply multiply the value for every pixel with the value of the same pixel at the track below and divide the result by 255. (This will also work when you have two different tracks).
In the graph you can see for every pixel with a value between 0 and 255 (X-axis) what the new value will be after duplicating the track and adding the MULTIPLY MODE (Y-axis).
The yellow line shows the unchanged value without adding the multiply mode.
The blue line shows what happens after activating MULTIPLY. Black (value 0) and white (value 255) pixels remain unchanged. All the other pixels become darker (have a lower value). And unlike adding the COLOR CORRECTOR FX, the change in value depends on the starting value of each value. In this way the contrast will increase proportionally.

The purple line in the graph shows why I duplicated the track with your footage twice. Adding an extra round of MULTIPLY enhances the effect of increased darkness and contrast.
And ofcourse since the SONY COLOR CURVES also has the ability to treat each pixel proportionally to its value it is for that reason the most suitable FX to finish with.

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

It looks like the installation didn’t work well…

Here is a link to the free CartoonR for Vegas. You can try this one.

https://www.videomontagefaq.nl/attachments/431/NewBlueCartoonrVegasSetup10.zip

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

You can either drag the Video FX from the video FX tab onto your events. Or you can click on the FX symbol on each event to add FX to an event. In addition, you can add the FX to a whole track (see the FX symbol in the track header) or to the whole project (drag the FX from the FX tab to the preview window).
etc.

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

‘Thanks very kindly for your suggestions. I didnt understand why you made 3 copies of the clip and stacked them one on top of the other and only made adjustments to the top one. How does this work please?’

I will not bother you with all the mathematics behind this trick. But the general idea behind the different MODES is that you can blend different layers in different ways. In the case of the MULTIPLY MODE, layers are blended depending on the color value for each pixel. So dark pixels will become darker while light pixels will not become lighter. And that was exactly what was needed for your footage.
And why I stacked three layers instead of e.g. two? Because the footage was very very over-exposed.

And then about the effects (gamma and color curves) added only to the upper track?. Because of the blending mode it will certainly affect the outcome of the combined blended layers.

But anyhow, depending on the footage you will have next time, the solution might be complete different again…

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

‘I am not familiar with the copy tool as well.’

Just right click on an empty space of a track or a trackheader and select DUPLICATE TRACK

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

This is what I also have seen before. If you set the mask while the preview is set to a low quality, the results are different for the rendered version. The solution could be to set the preview quality to BEST FULL and not to automatic as you have done

Theo

[Theo Van laar]

Did you create the mask in the EVENT PAN/CROP window? In that case could it be that you have set the value for FEATHER at something else then zero?

Theo