Vegas Video 4.0 Sparkle Effects

[Sakuya]

I'm a beginner to Vegas Video 4.0. I have made a plain music video before without using any effects and just having videos fade into each other. That's as far as I've gone.

I was wondering if it was possible to add sparkles and other extra little tidbits in Vegas. A great example would be this music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46vN313X2A

I find the combination of still images and effects there is genius! I especially like their use of the sparkles turning into the title logo around 35 seconds into the video. Are these effects possible with mere Vegas Video 4.0? And Wax?

[guns1inger]

You *might* be able to do it with WAX2 - I haven't really played with it's particles enough to know how will it might work. After Effects or Particle Illusion are really better suited.

[Sakuya]

I don't plan on buying any software just for this. But I do have Adobe Photoshop. Can that work as well? I guess the hardest thing I'm trying to do is just to have the sparkly effects.

As for panning/zooming/rotating the images, I tried it already. I imported a JPEG onto the timeline. Dragged the frame (is that called an "event"?) to make its duration longer, and then applied the Pan/Zoom effect by rotating the image a bit. However, the end result has the image rotating incredibly slowly.

Are there simple tutorials for Vegas 4.0? Wax is even more confusing.

[guns1inger]

The speed at which things pan and zoom is controlled by you and the keyframes you set. If it is happening too slowly, bring the keyframes closer together, or shift the image more between the keyframes you have.

The simple answer to your particles question is no. The effect you used as an example uses particles that have been carefully controlled so that emitters move in a particular way, sending particles in specific directions. To do the same in photoshop would require basically hand animating every particle yourself to create a sequence of images you could import into Vegas. Theoretically it can be done - animation has been done this way for more than 100 years - but practically it would be a huge job.

As for WAX tutorials - start with the debugmode site and the WAX forums - there are some tutorials there. Otherwise google for them - that's how I would find them.

[Sakuya]

I actually have Windows Movie Maker on my other computer. Is that a good choice for effects?

Edit:
Nevermind, like Vegas, it only has the normal and common effects. This is proving to be harder than I thought it would be. If only After Effects was more affordable!

[guns1inger]

Look at Particle Illusion -> http://www.wondertouch.com/index.asp

The SE version is reasonably priced and has a fully working 30 day demo. The pro versions watermark in the demo version.

[Sakuya]

The pro versions watermark in the demo version.

What? Can you please rephrase? Do you mean the demos put a watermark on your productions? The real version of 3.0 or SE do not have watermarks, right? It sounds like just what I'm looking for. Thanks!

[guns1inger]

The demo version of Particle Illusion SE does not watermark or have any restrictions for 30 days.

The demo version of Particle Illusion (non-SE) does watermark and has other restrictions - it's all written on their site.

The full versions have no restrictions at all.

[Sakuya]

Thanks. I have some off-topic questions to ask relating to Vegas Video 4.0:

1. What is the resolution mostly used for music videos? 640x480 assuming that it's 4:3? Or is widescreen better?

2. Vegas' preview function is a bit laggy. For example, it won't pause whenever it would get to the point on the timeline where the clips overlap to cause the fade-in. Therefore, the preview would pause at this one frame, after the fade, the preview resumes at the next frame.

3. What codec should I use to save the project as an AVI so that it's not too big? I'm aiming for below 100 MB. It might be anywhere from 1 minute to 4 minutes long.

[guns1inger]

1. In what context ? For download, make it whatever you want. In conjunction with question 3, you will have to find a balance between resolution and bitrate to get your file size right. Personally, I like widescreen (2.35:1 is my favourite AR to work in). I would suggest working in as high a resolution as you can, then resize down later. 640 x 480 is the 1:1 equivalent of NTSC full screen (720 x 480). if you are only aiming for download, you may as well work in 640 x 480 (fullscreen) or 640 x nnn (widescreen)

2. Not much you can do with version 4. From version 5 onwards the previews became real-time with a fast enough machine. Until you upgrade to Windows XP you will be limited in your Vegas upgrade path and will just have to live with it.

3. Xvid will easily give you well under 100MB for 1 - 4 minutes, as will WMV. At that length, 20 mb should give you excellent quality.

[Sakuya]

Personally, I like widescreen (2.35:1 is my favourite AR to work in). I would suggest working in as high a resolution as you can, then resize down later. 640 x 480 is the 1:1 equivalent of NTSC full screen (720 x 480). if you are only aiming for download, you may as well work in 640 x 480 (fullscreen) or 640 x nnn (widescreen)

If I make an amazing product, I might decide to make more and put them on a DVD for TV viewing. But at the same time, I'd want to downsize it to a more suitable resolution for download/web viewing.

Exactly what dimension is 2.35:1 AR?

[guns1inger]

640 x 272 @ 1:1 PAR.

If you are intending to go down the DVD route, I would suggest to use the DV template in Vegas (720 x 480) and work from that. You can always resize down later.