Remove person from one video; insert into another

[liquidz76]

Hello there...

I've been racking my brains researching on the internet and on these forums the correct terminology for the question I have.

I am trying to find out how to remove a person from one video and insert them into another video (just the person, not the background). I'm not referring to "green screen" effects. I know how that is accomplished. I'm referring to sort of "cropping" a moving person in an existing video and then inserting them into another video with a different background.

For instance - I taped my niece's Christmas recital, and I wanted to remove her from the existing video and just superimpose her into a winter-themed background with snow - not a still picture, but rather, the entire moving image of her. I've heard you use compositing for this, but I'm not sure.

I currently own Pinnacle Studio 14 HD Ultimate, Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9, Cyberlink PowerDirector 8, and Corel VideoStudio 12. I'm not sure if any of these can accomplish this task, but that feature hasn't been marketed on them as far as I know.

Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?

Thank you so much!!

[videopoo]

Its a technique call rotoscoping:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping

You'll need to know software like After Effect or Combustion for example. Requires a high quality source and a resonsable amount of skill to make it look good.

[The village idiot]

Does WAX work in Vegas Movie Studio?
http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

[liquidz76]

Thank you so much for that information.

I always thought rotoscoping was used for tracing animations only, but it looks like it works for what I need.

According to the top 10 video editing applications on this link: http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

...all of my video editing programs are capable of this except for Cyberlink PowerDirector.

I'll check and see if it's possible and post my results.

Thanks again!