How To Crop Image For Green Card Online?

How do you crop an image/video in sony vegas with the backdrop of the main project still in the crop area?

• I know that's a mouthful, but hear me out, I know I've done this before, I've cropped an image in Sony Vegas to edit an image over a video, when i pulled up the cropping ...show more

• Answer:

  Okay I'll give this a try.... here goes.... If you want say, a cat's face meowing on a hmmmm, okay on an owl. Let’s say the goal is to put the whole head of the cat, on the owl’s body. I would use a still image for the owl. You can take the frozen choice from a video, by moving your cursor along the timeline of the owl to choose which area to freeze to a still image (jpeg) Say an owl is sitting on a tree branch... in the video preview click on the upper area, showing a tiny icon of a square floppy disk & this will take a snapshot of the still you select from the video. Now use this still in the timeline for track 1, the owl. Then take the new image that is now in your project media above & drag it down to the timeline (owl) & delete the owl video. Now stretch the owl still, to the length of the cat video in track #2. Then on track 1, the owl, take your cursor & put it at the very top of the image/video in the timeline & hold the left click to pull down the bar, making the video transparent to your liking, so you’re able to see through to both video’s (or vid & still) FIRST line up both video’s to your liking, then start the masking on each in the pan/crop area. To line up both, with the transparency setting down on vid track #1, when you can see through to both, you can use the pan/crop to blend each of them, also making the size a better match. Remember to do this at the BEGINNING OF THE VIDEO in the pan crop location (at the bottom where it shows your location in the video or still, (beginning, middle, end, etc.) If you do it in a random area, say in the middle of the video or still, the changes won’t begin until you reach the half way point (or wherever you start the changes) You don’t want the beginning of the video/still to be out of sync, then blending together as it goes further along. So look below or peek over to the workspace in your timeline (move over to the right your pan/crop window) then be sure you’ve at the beginning, then make your edits & lineups. Remember to put the transparency back to normal once your masking is finished. Changing the transparency temporarily allows you to line up both images in the tracks to your liking in the pan/crop. Now you will use the pan crop in each track ! then 2 seperately. In the pan/crop., there should be the “Mask” checkbox in the lower left area. Check this & select on the left, the tool to outline what you want to show in the video….eoutline the owl’s body with the tree limb on track 1. Then for the cat, in the same, (pan/crop/mask checkbox), outline the cat’s head (or from the neck up, the entire area all around) The issue is the more movement there is, the harder it might be to do masking, frame by frame of only the cat's face as it moves. But if you rather just do the neck up & all around, cutting off starting from the bottom of the neck then all around, you will get everything the cat is doing from the neck up without having to do the frame by frame (of only the face) The issue will be how to blend the background which you would want the top & bottom to do, you can use a sky background or black. (making track 3) Also remember, try to learn the "chroma keyer" in the effects tab, you can select a color to remove in each of the backgrounds. Say all the outside of the cat is blue all the outside of the owl that's purple. In the chroma keyer window that pops up if you drag the effect to the video/still, click the color area, then select the little dropper & touch in the video preview, the outside colors (purple in one, blue in the other separately) This would zap out, the color you select if it's mostly solid for each image outside the face/body. Then in track #3, you could drop in a cloudy sky video that would animate in the background where you had the different colors you don’t want, that would only show the lovely animated clouds around the face and the body making it blend nicely & look more real. (yeah, “real” a cat’s face on an owl’s body lol) There are a gazillion video’s in youtube of tutorials on just about every how-to you would ever want to know. Not all are great, but using them has helped me learn a LOT in SV. When you do locate a helpful video, use www.keepvid to copy your fav. YT vid’s (or a free screen recorder) & save them in a file to your computer. This way if the vid is removed or you just can’t find it, or temporarily don’t have internet access, you will have your how-to teaching videos saved :0) That’s what I do & I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used them over & over on something I forgot that worked really well. There’s a guy in YT http://www.youtube.com/user/guerillabill who explains SV how to’s really well, you might subscribe to his channel & look first in his teaching tutorials on how to do things. I’ve learned so much watching his vids. It’s kinda’ tough to explain it clearly in writing without sitting next to you. I think once you try the above, you will get to the aha moment & get it. Sometimes remembering to way back when you did something long ago, just needs a little memory trigger. I sure hope this makes sense dear. Also, I didn't know which SV version you have, some earlier ones or basic versions don't have the mask option. Once you work with masking more & more, you will find you're able to do some really cool things. Practice practice practice huh? Message me if you have more questions, I've been learning this program in detail the past 2 years. I'd love to help, if I'm able. :0) I hope this helps! Good luck!