Compositing help in Vegas Pro 8

[stantheman1976]

What I'm trying to accomplish is having some cutout text with a background video being seen behind that text. I want to use two different text tracks so I can have the lines of text move in different directions and that's where I get stumped. With a single text track it works fine. I use "Multiply (Mask)" in compositing mode and it shows a black screen with the text cut out and the video seen behind that cutout. With two tracks I get black text. So how can I have both text tracks as cutouts?

[guns1inger]

Think of Vegas tracks as being like an animation table, with the tracks being layers of acetate. The lowest layer is the background, and the layers above it are the other elements. The camera looks down from above, and can only see the background where there is nothing painted on the layers above it.

Your video track is the background. You can only see it when the layers above let you see through them. When you have one text layer transparent text, you can see through the text to the background layer. This is what you want. When you put a second text layer into play, you look through the top layer, but have your view blocked by the second layer.

There are a couple of ways around this problem, depending on the effect you are going for.

A simple fix for your current problem is first use Event Pan and Crop on the two text layers to narrow the black area to be only slightly larger than the text, then use Track Motion to move the layers so that they do not overlap. So long as the text isn't larger than half a screen high, this will work.

For a more complicated effect you may have to create each title in a separate project, then bring them together afterwards.

Edit : Just did a test, which seemed to work.

Create a new project with the first line of text set up so you can see through it. Save the project.

Create a new project with the second line of text set up so you can see through it. Save the project.

Create a new project. Put the first project on track one (it is called nesting projects). Put the second project on track two, directly under it. You can only see the top track, as expected.

Change the compositing mode of the top track to Add, and you can now see both layers.

This method opens up your possibilities. You can have different video backgrounds to your text if you want, or have the text layers pass over each other.

[stantheman1976]

Thanks. I'll try it out today when I get a chance. My goal is to be able to put two different lines of text moving in different directions on the final video. I want a black screen with the text cut out of it and the background video visible through the text as it moves.

[guns1inger]

Both solutions I posted will do that.