3. Vegas title creation
introduction:
creating titles and credits is a very important aspect of fanediting. If your fanedit has no custom title and credits, your audience will suspect (and rightfully so) that you are either lazy or don't know how to do it. Custom titles and credits are in my personal opinion a MUST and are a huge underlining of the overall quality of the fanedit.
Champs like Uncanny Antman are masters of syncing cool titles and credits to music. This effort is totally worth it and leads to the audience even more enjoying the thing they are watching.
Always remember one thing: You as the faneditor must accomplish a truly tough task: to let the audience watch a movie and NOT a fanedit.
Explanation: if the audience watches a fanedit,they will not get into the flow, they will search for changes and things that are not working. Fanedits will always have the reputation of being amateurish (and most are), so this is the one thing you must avoid by all means: to have it look like the work of an amateur who dares to hack a professional work of art into pieces.
Now if you create custom titles, they have to look great. If they don't, you will just make it all worse. Cheap is cheap. No doubt about it. A movie usually starts with the titles, so this is the first thing people will see and how they are supposed to get into the flow.
I for one have grown tired of very long starting credits, usually no matter how well they are done. 2 minutes of text in a movie, when it starts, bore me and make me want to skip this part, because I want to watch a movie and not read, who of the people I don't know, has done what.
Titles are where the pacing starts, where the magic starts. Take a look at the movie you like. Learn from what the pros did and create your own style by even improving on that.
Now Vegas comes with a lot of possibilities, when it comes to text creation. I will not explain them all, but give a few examples from the things I know.
Getting started:
text in Vegas uses its own video track, so the first step is to create another video track:
this can be done in several ways, but the best is to switch to the end of your video, right click behind it (where the track is empty) and click "insert Video Track". This will create another video track above the one you just selected.
Vegas has an order of showing the top track first (or only, if there are no transparent parts and it uses the entire screen).
In the new and currently empty video track, right click and select "Insert Text Media"
Basic text options:
The title creation window opens and shows as defaul "Sample Text" in 2 lines, font is Arial, size is 72, text decorations is bold.
Mark the text and change the settings to your liking.
As you can see in the example you can change the settings for each marked part and mix styles just like you want to:
The "placement tab" allows you to put the title wherever you want on the screen.
The "properties tab" can be used for a variety of things, including a background and text coloring.
Text color will be used for the entire text and not just for the marked parts, so you cannot use different colors in one text window. If you want more colors, create a new text window for that.
Background color is by default set to transparent. If there is no video, the background will appear by default as black. If you want the text on a colored background, use the color selection tool and the transparency scroll bar to select that.
Tackling will stretch and shrink you title horizontally. This can also be used to create a movement, where the letters stretch or shrink over time. I will explain that later.
Scaling alters the size and can also be used for movement to let the title grow or shrink.
Leading changes the line spacing, if you have more than one line of text. It can also be used to create a movement between the lines.
The "effects tab" allows the use of more fancy stuff and can also be used to have an effects movement. I played around with this a bit to give you an impression (and it is intentionally ugly, just to be obvious):
Personally I hardly ever use the "effects tab" because the result usually looks cheesy and cheap. Also it has the disadvantage of allowing just 1 deformation effect. If you want a more sophisticated deformation look, use a .png image with a transparent background as basis.
The "effects tab can also be used to create a movement for effects (e.G. moving shadow, growing outline, growing deformation).
To use the title, just click on the right upper corner X to close the window. The title will be created in the track you have selected at the cursor point on the timeline.
Time:
the default setting is 5 seconds. 5 seconds is a good compromise, but can in some cases be too long or if you have more text, not long enough.
To increase/decrease the time move the mouse to the end of the title. Stay in the middle of the track. A symbol with 2 arrows <--> will appear. Left click and hold. Now drag the title to the right to increase the length and to the left to decrease the length.
addition: If you have movement effects set, you should change the time setting in properties to the correct time.
double click on the title --> it will be selected and you can see the time of the title
Now click on the green symbol (Generated Media...) to open and edit the title tool for this specific title.
Correct the time to the proper value. If you don't it will loop.
Fade in / fade out:
There are various ways to present your title and credits all depending on the mood you want to cause. The default setting is to have a non visible fade in / fade out, but for a nice title you may want to change this setting.
I will now explain to you as an example a slow fade in.
Move the mouse to the upper left corner of the title track. A symbol will appear that has 2 arrows and a quarter circle. This is the fade in / out tool. If you use it on the left end it will select a fade in effect, if you use it on the right end it will select a fade out effect. Left click on the symbol and hold. Now drag the fade effect into the title as much as you want to. This can of course later on be easily altered.
There are various fade effects in Vegas. The default is a curved fade effect, which is pretty good, but the various others may also be worth checking out.
Right click in the fade area --> fade type --> select your desired fade type.
please note that the fade effect also affects the background, so if you have set a background this will fade as well.
!!! advanced: finally if you do not like the presets there is of course also the chance to do it all manually:
From the upper tab select "Insert" --> Video Envelopes --> Track Composite Level
This will let a purple line appear on top of the track. The line can be moved with the mouse up and down.
Top means no opacity. If you move it to the bottom you change the opacity to 100%.
By double clicking on the line you can set dots, which will allow you to use a certain degree of opacity flowing from one dot to the next.
Create a number of dots and move them so the fade effect is exactly as you want it. By right clicking on the line you can set the fade type between the dots.
To be continued...