Sony Vegas: How to create a multi-screen channel trailer?

Recently a friend asked me to create a trailer for his Let's Play Gaming Channel. So I got the idea to create a wall of TVs where each screen shows a different game he is playing with the camera moving around from one screen to another...

Even though I'm quite familiar with Sony Vegas, I haven't done something like that before. That's why the whole process was so interesting and the result so satisfying. That's how the final version looks like:

Not too bad, right? So let's go step by step explaining on how to make such a trailer.

1) Creating a TV wall

For doing that you either look for a fitting image online or create your own one. Make sure you can it has about as many screens as video clips you want to use. Once you've chosen a picture you put at the bottom of your project. 2) Put the clips on the screens

I downloaded like 12 videos of different games from my friend's channel. Then I started one by one, putting a video file above the TV wall template and minimized them by clicking on the icon at the edge of the clip in the timeline to open a window. Then you can accurately adapt the size of the clip and move it around to match on one of the TVs of your template.

That step you do with every clip until your TV wall is finished. That wall full of screen may looks like this.

3) Rendering the TV wall video
Following that I rendered like a 30 second clip of that wall. This new file I copied into my project.

4) Let the "virtual camera" run Now you work with your newly created TV wall clip in your project. Click again on the small icon at the bottom of your clip (see first screenshot in Step 1).

At the bottom of that menu you see a timeline where you can set time markers. Now you can decide where to place the "F" window at each second.

You can zoom in, zoom out. Experiment a bit which works the best for you. In my case it worked best not to leave the gaps too big as moved the "F" window slowly from right to left to show the channel logo at the end.

And that way you can create this kind of trailer video. For music I chose to use a fitting track in the YouTube Audio Library.

I hope I could help or inspire you to create a nice channel trailer.

Btw. I also made a tutorial video about it, if you wanna see a deeper explanation:

Sony Vegas: How to Use Speech Bubbles

Is there a proper way to create speech bubbles with Sony Vegas? Not really, but there's a quite simple way doing it in combination with GIMP.

Surely, you can also just download pictures from a Google image search, but if you wanna create a customized speech balloon, I'd recommend using the free GIMP software. So, step by step:

1) Open GIMP, and create a new project with an empty layer. Ensure that the layer is transparent.

2) Use the pencil to draw a speech bubble. Alternately, you can create by using the circle form.

3) Fill the inner part of the bubble with white color

4) Save the file as png to keep the background transparent.

5) Go back to your Sony Vegas project

6) Add the png file into the project

7) Adapt the file to the same ratio as the video you are making (e.g. 16:9)

8) Adjust the speech bubble to the size you need it

9) Add an extra text box with the text for the speech bubble

And that's it. Also check out the corresponding video below:

The YouTube Editor is gone - what now?

Google decided to remove the YouTube Editor from its platform - a tool which I used quite often and now is unfortunately another way needed. Let's see what's possible now!

Usually my main purpose to use the YT Editor was to put footage from my GoPro together to cut it correctly afterwards. Therefore I could easily just upload everything to YouTube, set the videos to 'private' and then put them together as I needed them. After the new clips were created, the uploads could be removed.

It helped me to avoid long rendering processes with Sony Vegas and using YouTube for that saved me lots of time! Now I need to find a way to do it offline in a similar less time consuming way...

So I tried combining these mp4 files via command:

copy/b V1.mp4 +V2.mp4

The size of the file changed, but it did not actually append the second file - although it worked with other files before, maybe the GoPro file is too big.

Following that I was looking for another tool which could do that and I found 'MP4 Joiner'. With that tool I could put the mp4 files together which was done in a few minutes before I can upload the new created file to YouTube.

Luckily it's still possible to cut single videos on YouTube by going to 'Video Manager', 'Videos', select the video, dropdown 'Enhancements' and then use 'Trim' as seen in screenshot above.

So to summarize: Create a big video file and cut in on YouTube - but of course only if it's for files which should just be on YouTube in raw format. 

That's the workaround which works for me. If you have a better idea, just leave a comment and let me know :) 

Budokai Tenkaichi 3 Modding: Changing the background music

This tutorial shows you precisely how you can change the background music from the classic PS2 game Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3.

Back in 2013 I already made a tutorial about this topic here on my blog, but this time I want to go more deeply into it with having more knowledge and experience about it - also with additional video material.

Note: Your PS2 has to be able to run copied games - either with having an integrated chip, using ESR or running the game from the local or external hard disk drive - or via LAN if you like it that way. For testing this whole scenario I would recommend you to have an emulator, but more on that later.


1) Copy the disk to your PC
Select a folder to copy the content of the DVD on your local drive. It contains the folders 'BIN', 'DATA' and 'IRX' plus two files to give the disk an ID (also it looks different depending on the version - EU or US). For the music modding you just need to focus on the folder 'DATA'. 












2) Open the AFS file with '2' in it using DKZ Studio
Within the folder 'Data' you'll find a file named like PZS3US2 (in the US version) or PZS3EU2 (European version). You need to open this file with the tool DKZ Studio, which you can find online.

As you can see then this archive is filled with a huge amount of files from the game, mostly with character voices or noises as adx files. With double-click you can listen to every piece of sound because luckily the software has en adx player included.


With this huge amount of files it's divided in three pages and you'll find the actual background music close to the end of the third pages. The files are named like this: zs3_00_US.adx (again, US version).

3) Changing the background music
So and here's the interesting part: In order to change the music you need to convert your music to the adx format. So you need to go and check for the PES Sound File Converter. With that tool it's pretty easy to do. Click on 'Add' to select the files you want to convert, go 'Next', select the output folder and the process will run. And: Also mark that the song should run in a loop!

Before in terms of the file itself there's only one thing you need to look after: The size. As you can see in the screenshot above all the files are having a size between 3 and 5 MB. The created adx file should have a lower size than the file you want to change it with in order to work without any conflicts or error messages. So you need to shrink your mp3 files to a lower quality. I used the video editing tool Sony Vegas for that, but there are surely better ways to manage that.

So let's say you now have an adx file with a suitable file size, then you need to rename it to the file you are planning to change it with. Then, - in DKZ Studio - right-click the music file which is about to change, click 'Import' and select your converted file with the same name. If no error message shows up, the whole process worked out. Now, do the same with other music tracks you are planning to change. You'll also notice on the file icon which files were already changed.

4) Create a patch
With every change done the whole thing should be saved. By using 'File' and 'Save' I sometimes ended up not having the correct size of the afs file which meant lots of files were missing.

So I recommend the following way: Create a patch with all your changes! So go to 'Patch' and select 'New Patch (With Modified)'.

A dkz file will be created. The file includes your music and after double-clicking it you have to select 'Patch' and then 'Apply patch in folder' before choosing the destination folder. So go to the place where you extracted your DVD and select the 'DATA' folder. All changes will be applied. Now check if the file size didn't drop and also the changing date of PZS3US2.afs should be quite up-to-date.

5) Burn it and test it!
I'd recommend to use IMGBurn to create an ISO file with the extracted DVD files including your changed afs file. Confirm the suggested label name and let the process run.

With a completed ISO image you need to find a way to test it. A quick and fast check would be possible with an PS2 emulator like PCSX2. You only need to find a matching BIOS. Of course you can also burn it or copy it to your hard drive directly but it would be good to know if it really works.

If you changed the first file (zs3_00_US.adx called 'The Meteor') you directly notice after the intro video if the process worked.
To check all the background music, go to 'Duel', select two fighters and while selecting the stage you can move to the right to check all the BGM. Have fun to fight with your own music!

And did you notice the screenshots with the new characters? If you want to see more, visit the blog and other channels of Kinnikuchu. A tutorial from my site will follow soon.

Sony Vegas: Rendering in portrait format

Many videos from mobile phones are recorded in portrait format. If you edit such a clip the basic settings for rendering are offering you the video in landscape format - but what if you don't want it?

Like if you want to share such an edited video on WhatsApp. Rendering from a video in portrait format to landscape is pretty impractical for a phone.

In my case it was a video in portrait format where I added some subtitles in order to resent it.

Luckily in Sony Vegas (my description is about Sony Vegas 13) there's a way to solve that problem in order to render a video in the correct aspect ratio.

So what to do?

• Edit your video in portrait format
• Go to 'File', 'Render as'.
• Click 'More filter options' and select 'Match project video aspect ratio'
• Now you can chose between 720p, 480p and 360p
• Click 'Render' and the process will finish your video in portrait format

So that's all. Have fun sending edited videos to your friends. And take advantage of WhatsApp Web.