Question How do you make a custom image with transparency into an iris type transition & place it between 2 different images?

Hi again Ericlnz!

Let us know how you get on.

Sorry that it has taken me such a long time to respond. Yesterday I was so excited to finally make the transition as well as the rest of that particular edit. I went into a good rhythm of editing & so I chose not to distract myself with anything else. I was planning to finish the whole edit (video) by today & then just link my new YouTube video here being cheeky like: "Can you find the crab edit? He he", but there is still a lot of editing to do in that project.

Anyway, the transition worked fantastically. Thanks to your descriptions it was easy to replicate.
I made an unlisted video to show you how it looks for me - 

- (I forgot to adjust the volume for the render though [will probably open another topic on this forum asking why Vegas Pro always lowers the volume of the edit by 5db, lol]) I also included parts of the previous and next video segment just so you could see the transition effects. This is obviously just a 20 second fragment of what will probably be a 7-9 minute (I'm still editing so not sure) video.

Oh, one thing I wanted to ask about - I noticed that nothing else shows up on either of the video tracks (the Parent/Child) ... which probably means that I should render that whole segment as it's own thing & import it back so I could remove the 2 video tracks or else they just add overall clutter to the whole project. Is there something fancy I can do like segmenting those 2 video tracks so I could remove the "Multiply (Mask)" mode for the later part of the track, that way I could at least use one of the tracks for other edits?

Event/Clip the video FX "Invert".  This makes it white although it will still appear black in the timeline thumbnails.

Oh btw I actually had the crab stretched to 1920x1080 and used gimp to change it's color to white, so I could skip this step. xD

This custom iris is actually amazing as I can imagine easily replacing the crab image with a fish / whale / whatever else effect & with enough time making videos I can generate a lot of unique looking transitions that way. While my channel is still small it's like whatever, but if & when it grows people will start to notice the nicely themed transitions.

I can only hope for 2 things:
1) That one day I can return the favor.
2) That I keep coming up with unique edit ideas like this one to improve my editing arsenal over time.

Once again, thank you so much!

Good, glad you got there.
I don't know about the 5db drop in volume.  When do you notice it and how are you measuring it?
You could always minimize the height of the Parent/Child tracks if they get in your way.  Occasionally on other parts of the timeline I've used the Child track as a normal track by placing a white clip on the parent track which acts as a mask making the clip visible. As you are using Vegas Pro you could nest the Parent/Child crab transition. Not being a Pro user I've not had any experience on nesting.  Check here to see if Dr Zen has done a tutorial on that.

I don't know about the 5db drop in volume. When do you notice it and how are you measuring it?

I just googled "Vegas Pro why is the render more silent" and apparently it's a commonly known 'issue' (or at least asked question), but I haven't looked into it yet.

Basically when I edit stuff in Vegas Pro, I try to make it so that I leave all the audio tracks on 0 db and also for the final render, then the final render is roughly about 5db more silent than the windows video player on 100% & this also carries over to YouTube. And if I bump up all video tracks by 5db I get the same exact volume I have in Vegas Pro perfectly matched 1:1.

I try to match my own audio so it would be in about the same range as other youtubers that I watch, as most of them are within the same volume range. (And personally we all hate channels that are either too loud or too silent.)

But yeah, I'll try to figure it out in the near future.

You could always minimize the height of the Parent/Child tracks if they get in your way. 

 I've already set them to be the smallest possible size. Xd
I have an ultra widescreen 2560x1080, so I really struggle with fitting everything that takes up vertical space on my screen.
Is there a way to move the "video preview" window to be on the left or right of the tracks?
 

Occasionally on other parts of the timeline I've used the Child track as a normal track by placing a white clip on the parent track which acts as a mask making the clip visible. As you are using Vegas Pro you could nest the Parent/Child crab transition. Not being a Pro user I've not had any experience on nesting.  Check here to see if Dr Zen has done a tutorial on that.

Oh, that's actually smart.
Yeah, I can just get a 1920x1080 white image & then use the Child track for editing in effects. That checks out.

Thank you once again ericlnz! You are a true editing master!