Vegas Pro: How to achieve moving text?

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

I've seen pretty cool examples of text moving in sync with the video motion, as in for example having a text appear written on a building while moving the camera. Can that be achieved in vegas? (I don't mind if it's manual and hard)

I though one could animate it by frame-to-frame basis but I don't know how I would choose the correct position for each from percisely, if you understand what I mean.

 

[David Jimerson]

You can keyframe it, but there's no pixel anchoring.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

Thanks. Do you think moving the title one step each frame using the keyboard arrows is percise/fine steps enough to produce the desired effect?

 

[Ian Stark]

That will depend on how smoothly and uniformly the object you want to pin to is moving. I think it's achievable but very difficult and certainly time-consuming. If you are able to invest in some plugins then look at Boris BCC which has Corner Pin and Match Move within Vegas. Here's a tutorial that shows how easy it is (although this is for an older version of BCC and Vegas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22etV8J3dl8

 

[Ian Stark]

Here's a link to the Boris site. You don't have to buy the full BCC suite - you can buy individual components as grouped sets. The Match Move/Corner Pin/Witness Protection set is $299: http://www.borisfx.com/products/continuum-units/match-move/

 

[David Jimerson]

Thanks. Do you think moving the title one step each frame using the keyboard arrows is percise/fine steps enough to produce the desired effect?

I've always found myself surprised by how well Vegas does if you keyframe the start and end points. It often gets pretty close just on those two, but you can then go in and add more keyframes as needed.

The distance moved by the arrow keys depends on how far in you're zoomed in the workspace.

 

[Ian Stark]

Agreed - up to a point. Where it becomes much less reliable (to the extent of being nigh on impossible IMO) is where there is inconsistency in the horizontal and/or vertical and/or rotational movement of the item you want to 'pin' your text or other image against, eg uneven acceleration, jerkiness etc. That's where realistically you're unlikely to get acceptable results using just Vegas keyframes. Against a uniformly moving camera shot yes, I guess you could get away with keyframing. I guess it depends on the level of 'lock' you're after and what the target is.

 

[David Jimerson]

I don't disagree; I'm simply saying that the results can end up surprisingly good.

 

[Ian Stark]

And I agree you're not disagreeing

 

[El Director]

Planar tracking is going to be the easiest. You could literally do this in five minutes with Mocha. If you wanted a free way, Blender has a good planar tracker and can do this.