Tutorial: Creating Titles With Pizzazz in Sony Vegas Pro
David McKnight demonstrates a quick, easy way to generate sharp-looking titles for your Vegas Pro projects that requires no additional plugins.
Setting Keyframes in the Pan/Crop Dialog to Animate Your Title
Next, open the Pan/Crop dialog for this text event and set four keyframes:
- At the beginning of the event, adjust the pan/crop and set the title to be so large that it appears to be “behind the camera."
- A little ways into the event set a second keyframe so that the title is at its normal position.
- Add another keyframe with this same position near the end of the event (you can copy and paste keyframes).
- Add your final keyframe at the very end of the event so that the title is so small that it has "flown" off into space (Figure 3, below).
Figure 3. Keyframes set in the Pan/Crop dialog.
Close the Pan/Crop dialog box and put a short fade-out at the end of the event. Adjust the keyframes and title length so that the appearance of the text occurs at the brightest point of the “explosion” and so that the text flies out at the appropriate moment in the background (Figure 4, below).
Figure 4. Adjusting keyframe and title-length timing to coincide with the “explosion” in the background loop.
Adding Blur and Glint
Add the Gaussian Blur and Glint FX to this title event. Turn off Glint for now and just work with the blur. Use the default blur at the beginning of the event. Click the animate buttons for both horizontal and vertical adjustments. Add a keyframe to match the keyframe above where the title appears onscreen, and set both horizontal and vertical adjustments to 0 (Figure 5, below).
Figure 5. Keyframing the Gaussian Blur.
What this does is make the title out of focus when it is coming from behind the camera, and it comes into focus just as it hits its normal viewing size.
Turn on the Glint FX. We will use this effect to create a sweeping glow across the title. Please see the video for details on applying the effect (begins around the 11:00 mark).
The particular background video I’ve chosen here has several explosions as the particle wand travels back and forth across the screen. This allows for several text events if you need them. Copy the text event to a new event and edit each one to add the new text. Adjust its length and keyframes to line up with the particle activity. You may need to adjust the speed at which the background video plays so that your text can be read and the movements still make sense. With some text events, particularly shorter ones, you may choose to disable the Glint FX.
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