Is there a way to make the flash effect smaller?

[Minimoto]

I have Sony Vegas 9.0 and I was wondering if there was a way to make the flash effect smaller. It always flashes the whole screen but what if my video has those black bars on the top and bottom and isn't full screen. Is there any way to make it so it only flashes there?

[Mastamind]

Wait, does it come out letterboxed when you render it or are you actually editing with letterboxed footage? If it's the latter, you can just switch off "maintain aspect ratio", and your video should take up the whole box. When you go to render it, keep the export settings at the original size of your video (unless you don't want those black bars, but then you'd be messing around with the aspect ratio ).

[mirkosp]

Just make the flash respecting the letterbox.
For example, if you are editing 640x360 letterboxed into 640x480, you'll have 60 black pixels on top and 60 black pixels on bottom.

[Mastamind]

Just make the flash respecting the letterbox.
For example, if you are editing 640x360 letterboxed into 640x480, you'll have 60 black pixels on top and 60 black pixels on bottom.

Actually, vegas will add the flash to the whole thing, so there will be no black pixels. What should be letterboxed will turn lighter, so there will be a gray (or if the flash is very bright, white) box instead.

[mirkosp]

That's not how you do it. You flash by toying with the opacity of a white solid, which you put over the rest, but under the black letterboxes. So yeah, no issue whatsoever. Worst case, you can just crop and letterbox back in avisynth once exported, if vegas is so dumb to flash over the letterbox even when the white flash is under it - which I don't really think will happen anyway.

[Mastamind]

I was assuming he was toying with the brightness. Guess not