Editor’s Toolkit: Using Transitional Wipes with Sony® Vegas® Video

The various mattes in the Editor's Toolkits are simply black and white animations that are used to define transparency in composited video. These animations do not have built-in alpha channel transparency like the many full-color effects and transitions in the Toolkits and therefore are slightly more complex to use.

Here is how to use a Transition Wipe in Sony® Vegas®:

1. Arrange your clips on the timeline like Figure 1:

* Track 1: overlay matte
* Track 2: your A-Roll video clip
* Track 3: your B-Roll video clip

Figure 1 - The initial timeline in Vegas® with the transition wipe in Track 1.

2. Click the Track FX button on Track 1 (Figure 2) and select the Mask Generator tool.

Figure 2 - The Track FX button in Track 1.

3. In the Mask Generator dialog (Figure 3), select a Luminance key from the Type dropdown.

Figure 3 - In the Video Track FX dialog, from the Type dropdown, select Luminance.

4. Click the Compositing Mode button in Track 1 and select "Multiply (Mask)" from the menu (Figure 4).

Figure 4 - Select Multiply (Mask) from the Compositing Mode menu.

5. Click the Make Compositing Child button in Track 2 (Figure 5).

Figure 5 - Click the Make Compositing Child button in Track 2.

At this point the matte has been correctly configured and the transparency for the transition will be working, but only for the duration of the transition. We still need to do a little work to get the entire transition to work within the context of the larger project.

6. Right-click the track header for Track 2 and select Duplicate. This will make a copy of Track 2 just below that track, making a new Track 3 and pushing our B-Roll to Track 4.

7. Click the Make Compositing Parent on the new, duplicated Track 3.

8. Trim the clip in Track 2 to match the duration of the transition and the duplicated clip in Track 3 so that it does not extend under the transition. The final timeline will look like Figure 6.

Figure 6 - The final timeline.