VT | Real-Time Blurs in VT-Edit

Concept: Adding & keyframing blurs on video
Module: VT-Edit
Assets: Your own captured media
Time: 5 minutes

This powerful function offers real-time blurring of multiple layers within VT-Edit that is cleaner, more powerful and better than ever. Let’s take a quick, if diffuse, walk through this feature.

Its use is straightforward. Load the Blur filter found in the VideoToaster2\Effects folder into a project with video and place it underneath a video track. Like all VT-Edit filters, it can be stretched to the desired length, though the default filter length is 10 seconds.

Highlight the blur filter and either press the F8 or the Edit Properties button to bring up the control panel. When the blur filter is selected, there is a new drop-down selection in the panel for blur. Choose this.

All blur functions by default are locked to work together. This means spinning any of the Luma, Chroma or Alpha blur settings will move them all. Move the timebar to the left edge of the blur filter and set any value to zero. Note the slightly softened video becomes crisp again, as with all TEd functions, you have real-time feedback of your changes. Click the Keyframe All button.

Assuming you’ve left it at the default 10 second length, slide the timebar about two seconds to the right and set a blur value of 5.00. Keyframe this as well. Advance the timebar another six seconds and Keyframe the existing setting. This effectively retains our current value to this point. To have the video begin sharpening at this point, advance the time bar to the right edge of the blur filter, set the blur value to zero again, and keyframe once more. This now gives a ramp into and out of our blur.

Finally, insert some alpha-enabled text below both the video and the blur layer, stretching it out to 10 seconds as well. Grab the fade handles at the lower corners, moving them in to 3 seconds. Press play.

The video begins to soften just as our text layer starts fading on, making our text look nice and crisp, regardless of the brightness or coloration of the video layer, and then the video regains sharpness as the text fades away.

If you adjust the length of the blur layer, the keyframes you set to fade in and out will remain proportional to the overall length of the effect.

Blurring offers numerous uses, including:

• Reducing sharpness while fading text onscreen, to draw the eye toward the message
• Blurring text on or off, horizontally or vertically in real-time
• Simulating a rack-focus with green-screen composites

Experiment by unlocking the X and Y values and blurring just one or the other to achieve horizontal or vertical blurs.