Article: Magic Masks with Digital Juice and Sony Vegas
By Jeffrey P. Fisher
Although Digital Juice's Editor's
Toolkits come with a variety of different animated overlays, lower-thirds,
and so forth, occasionally you want to create something unique. Using the
compositing tools in Sony's Vegas 5, it is possible to have one animation act
as a moving mask for another animation. This powerful combination results in an
almost infinite number of customized looks.
I like 058_AniOverlay, Illogical Descent, from Editor's Toolkit 2
except that it wasn't quite the right feel I needed for a project. The client
wanted a cleaner, more modern look instead of this animated overlay's sci-fi
approach. All I needed to do was change the video with a different animation
using the original version as a mask for the replacement look.
Here's how ...
Using the Juicer 2 software, output the animation as a PNG sequence with
embedded alpha channel. When finished, open a new project in Vegas and import
the image sequence by navigating to where the Juicer 2 output the files,
selecting the first frame, and then checking the Open still image sequence
checkbox. Click Open and Vegas adds the animation as one event to the Media
Pool.
Drag the event from the Media Pool to the top video track in Vegas 5.
Right-click the animation and choose Properties. Navigate to the Media tab and
change the Alpha channel settings to Straight. This preserves the alpha channel
information from the original animated overlay.
Below the overlay, add the replacement video. For this example, I used
Digital Juice JumpBack #939 from the new JumpBacks Volume 23: Clean Streak.
This animation collection is chock full of bold, trendy sequences -- just the
look my client wanted. Click the Make Compositing Child button on track two to
composite tracks one and two together.
Next, change the top track's compositing mode to Multiply (Mask).
Immediately, the new video shows through the mask created by the original
overlay. It isn't perfect yet, though.
Drag the Mask Generator: Luminance preset from the Video FX tab to the
top track (original overlay) and then tweak the parameters to taste.
Add in the third video to show inside the overlay and the final
composite is done. (I replaced the proprietary client content with a personal
picture for this tutorial).
You can use this technique with any of Digital Juice's animated
elements acting as motion masks and then replace the original look with
something more in line with your project.
Contact:
Jeffrey P. Fisher is an audio/video professional who writes extensively
about music, sound, and video including the book Instant Vegas 5 (with Douglas Spotted Eagle)
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