Vegas: Masking in Vegas

Written by andreas on 7. October 17:17

Following parts will be introduced in this guide
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00. Introduction.
01. Pan/Crop.
02. Enable mask function.
03. Masking.


00. Introduction
This is a guide which will teach you the basics of masking in Vegas. Please have in mind that this guide doesn't struggle for a good looking result, it will only teach you the basics and when you're done with this guide, you can try making a good looking mask by your own.

I'm using Sony Vegas 6.0 for this guide.

Let’s say you want to use the masking function in Vegas to cut a specific part on your clip. I'm going to mask a hole in the dust2 B bombsite from the game, counter-strike.


Click on the image for a bigger version.


01. Pan/Crop
Open your clip in Vegas and then press the event pan/crop icon. You can also rightclick on your clip and choose 'Video event pan/crop'.



02. Enable mask function
Now you'll see a new window pop up, this is the event pan/crop window which you can use for using the masking function. To enable the mask function you need to click the little box in the bottom left corner.


Click on the image for a bigger version.


03. Masking
Let's say you want to crop the big hole in the wall. To do this, click the anchor tool () and start clicking around the part you wish to mask. Use the scroll wheel on your mouse or the zoom tool to the left if you need to zoom in and get a nice working area.


Step one.

Step two.

Step three.

Step four.

Step five - connect it with the first anchor point.

Now you'll see that the area around the mask is black and cut off. It's no longer visible and completely removed. If you would like to change so the whole are cut off and disabled instead, just choose the negative mode in the list to the left.



and the result will be like this..



Some other options to change the look of your mask:


ANTI ALIAS: By having this option on yes your mask will have more soft edges.


OPACITY: Changes the mask's opacity.


FEATHER TYPE: This option will affect the look on your edges. If you choose out the edges will get soft edges going outwards. You choose the amount of feather in the field below. You can choose feather types such as in/out/both/none.

The result of using the feather type (out) should look something like this:



Now you may be wondering what to do when you're clip is moving since the mask will not follow it's correct position. The only way in Vegas to follow the wanted position is to use keyframes to it. We have a guide about keyframes in our guides section if you don't know how to create and handle keyframes.

If you already know how to handle keyframes, simply move the anchor points with the normal edit tool (). You'll need to hold shift while you click, then it will only select the special anchor point you clicked on.

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