Titles in Vegas PRO- Reflection

[TR16MM]

How can you make a title to have a "reflection quality" to it within Sony Vegas PRO?

[clang]

not clear what you mean - you want the text to reflect what's below it, as if it's made of mirror?

[TR16MM]

Yes I would like the titles to mirror or drop below...

[clang]

making something appear inside text on a plain background is easy: create your title text in one colour, then put a chromakey effect on it, making the text colour as the key - the text will now be transparent. Now add another track below the title, containing whatever you want to show inside the text - in your case, this would be an upside down version picture you want to reflect.

But that surrounding picture complicates things - I'm not sure how to also make the title background transparent so that it will show a third track (your picture the right side up). Someone who knows masks better may be able to suggest something.

It could be done easily enough if you only need a still - in a paint program, add plain colour text to your picture, then save the resulting picture and do the chromakey as above. But I don't know how to do it with moving video - I suspect someone else on these forums may...

[clang]

Yes, it can be done - if you have Douglas Spotted Eagle's excellent book 'Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop (and if you don't, you should), page 388 covers using a Title as a mask to show one video stream under another through the mask 'hole'. He doesn't use the technique for a mirror effect, but that could easilty be done by making one video stream an upside down version of the other as suggested earlier.

The trick is:
Track 1: your title text, which will be used purely as a mask
Track 2: the video you want to appear through the mask (in your case, the upside down version of Track 3 so that it will look 'reflected') - on the far left of the track control pane, click Make Compositing Child
Track 3: your background video

[David Jimerson]

You don't have to do a chromakey on a title to make the text transparent. Go into the Text box and go to the Properties tab, then change the A value in the Text color properties to 0.

In any case, think TR16MM wants to make the text reflect itself, right? Which direction?

[clang]

Quite right, David, if you just want video inside title text, making the text transparent as you suggest is easier than chromakeying.

But I thought TR16MM wanted the text to reflect what was around it, rather than have the text reflected on what was around it, if you see the difference.

[TR16MM]

This is what it looks like so far. Thanks guys!!

T

[clang]

Ah, so you did want the text reflected on what was around it. Looks good.