Transitions, the making of

[BuddyB]

Every once in a while you see a unique transition someone has made and used in a presentation. I would love to know how one would learn to create and apply them in Vegas, or any other editing app.

[Peru]

Can you give us an example?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Hi Buddy, Do you have Photoshop? There are a number of tutorials on creating or modifying existing transitions that you can find by googling.

I don't use Photoshop Elements so am not sure if one can carry out the same tasks in that software.

[BuddyB]

I do have Photoshop. And as an example, let's say a cap and gown left to right, or a pair of scissors closing. I don't exactly remember now what I've seen in the past that I thought clever or appealing. I was just wondering if this would be purely a coding thing or what. At some point I might like to do this. Seems like I remember a bi-plane crossing the screen with a quick engine swoop.

[Chuck Engels]

Take a look at the Gradient Wipe transitions available in Premiere Elements and what you can achieve with those.
http://muvipix.com/products.php?searchp ... =0&btn.y=0

There may be something similar in Vegas too

[Bob]

Buddy,

Vegas does have the gradient wipe transition, and, like Premiere Elements, you can add additional gradients. Your example of the plane swooping across could be created with a simple gradient wipe overlaid by a keyframed plane cutout, for example. Which brings up a key point: Begin by learning how to use the program features. Get comfortable with handling multiple tracks and using key frames to control image position and effect parameters and you can create many custom and unique transitions. It's largely a matter of imagination. Some transitions are done using plugins, but sometimes, you can come up with something similar using the built-in features. Search for Custom Transitions in Vegas and you'll find a number of tutorials.

[BuddyB]

Thank you both for the input..I do need to get a better feel for key frames before I take that plunge. Albeit slowly, mainly because of time constraints, I'm headed in the right direction. The gradient wipe in Tutorials, first icon on the left, would not play for me because it said I needed a plugin that it couldn't find. Could be because I'm running Firefox instead of IE.