Blurrier, shakier credits

[BlueVaporConcord]

Let's say you're like me, and all my fanedits have been movies shot on film with maybe less than stellar quality. The credits in these movies aren't still, they wobble a little, up down, back and forth, however. While I'm ultimately happy with how my credits look in this instance, they don't wobble. They look reasonably aged, and the blur is okay enough, but they're completely static. I use Vegas 14.0, and have struggled to figure out how to get the film stock wobble happening on my credits. Any advice?

 

[Bobson Dugnutt]

You'll probably want to recreate something called "gate weave". I think it's called Jitter in Vegas, but I'm not an expert.

 

[Gieferg]

Two ways to do it in Vegas:

1) Event FX -> Vegas film efects -> Jitter

But my preferred way is:

1) Event Pan/Crop and just adjust the position of the credits by hand moving it a pixel or two (or three) up and down on every frame or every other frame or so

 

[BlueVaporConcord]

Two ways to do it in Vegas:

1) Event FX -> Vegas film efects -> Jitter

But my preferred way is:

1) Event Pan/Crop and just adjust the position of the credits by hand moving it a pixel or two (or three) up and down on every frame or every other frame or so

I figured it would be a bit of a repetitive solution like that if there wasn't an automated one. Hand-jittering was the last thing I wanted to do, but such is the way of editing sometimes! I'll be applying that when I return to editing soon.

 

[Gieferg]

Hand jittering looked better to me than automated one and you dont need to adjust every frame by hand anyway - adjust several frames to get the right look of it, and then copy/paste all of it or part of it as many times as needed.

 

[BlueVaporConcord]

Hand jittering looked better to me than automated one and you dont need to adjust every frame by hand anyway - adjust several frames and then copy/paste all of it or part of it.

My worry with copy/paste is how much I'd need to do to begin with to not make it seem like the jitter is repeating too much. I did once fix a 'freeze frame' (footage of a still frame that was still moving bc of the film) by overlaying tons of copies of it over and over at different intervals. That could work for me, but I haven't tried it yet so it might be better to just have a small amount and not worry to much. Could also simply make like five or six jitter sequences that get interchanged. I'll find out when I get back to it.

 

[Gieferg]

When you have, let's say sequence of 40 points, use sequences of 10, for example (11-20) then (15-25), (5-15), (21-30), 25-35) etc it won't look repetitive.

 

[BlueVaporConcord]

When you have, let's say sequence of 40 points, use sequences of 10, for example (11-20) then (15-25), (5-15), (21-30), 25-35) etc it won't look repetitive.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I'll be trying that for sure.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Vegas jitter plugin is terrible. Never looks good.

 

[asterixsmeagol]

Haha, I just finished de-jittering an entire short film frame-by-frame!

 

[Oddly Oaktree]

I had this exact issue! I ended up adding a motion tracker to my credits that connected to the original, then I hid the original as an invisible layer below. The wobble matched up perfectly! That said, I used Final Cut Pro... I'm not sure if Vegas has motion tracking or if there's a good plugin that offers it, but it's at least a possible route to investigate?

You might also benefit from adding a slight blur effect and—in some cases—a subtle shadow under your text in order to replicate that pre-digital look. 👍