Animating Effects with Per-Parameter Keyframes in Sony Vegas Pro 11
In this tutorial you'll learn how to make the most of Vegas's new by-parameter keyframing capabilities for effects plug-ins that ship with Vegas Pro 11 using the new Sony Text & Titles plug-in as an example.
When the Titles & Text window opens, click on the title and bring it down to the spot where you want to place it in the timeline. In this tutorial, we're primarily concerned about what's in the Preview window and then what's in our plug-in, so you'll want to rearrange your workspace a bit as shown in Figure 3 to make the preview window and the Titles and Text plug-in more visible.
Figure 3. The new title in the preview window with the workspace rearranged to put the preview window and the Titles & Text dialog front and center.
In this example, to match what's happening in the clip, let's change the text to Riggin' the Ropes by typing the new title into the Titles & Text dialog. Center it by clicking the Center icon from the Titles & Text dialog's WYSIWYG controls (Figure 4), and play through the timeline.
Figure 4. Typing in a new title
Adding Keyframes by Parameter
You should see a basic title on the screen; nothing too special there. So let's see what this new keyframing-by-parameter stuff is all about.
First, you'll want to bring down the timeline a bit so you can see more of the plug-in. Those of you familiar with the Legacy titler will notice that we have some new buttons on the screen. The new clock-face buttons shown in Figure 5 are for animation. And you'll notice that pretty much all of the parameters have an Animate button.
Figure 5. Animate buttons for all parameters
Click on the disclosure triangle next to Advanced to see advanced options, and you'll notice Animate buttons there as well. Click on the one for Scale. It brings up a new Scale timeline in the Titles & Text plug-in (Figure 6).
Figure 6. The Scale timeline in the Titles & Text plug-in
Now, we have an outer entry here called Titles and Text that you can see on the far left in Figure 6. If you were working with multiple plug-ins and you wanted to animate elements of each of those plug-ins, you would see an entry for each one of your plug-ins at this outer layer.
When you click on the details for each of our parameters that you choose to animate, you'd see a new entry down here for that animation (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Outer-layer timeline entries for each parameter you want to animate
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