Or simply put, stretch out the first frame of a clip. I remember this being a new feature in one of the recent upgrades but forgot the wording and can't find it.
EDIT: I thought of a better explanation; I need to add a hold to the first frame of an event. How is that done?
Still not sure what you are asking, sorry.
Do you want the first frame to be a frozen, still, image for a while before the video starts moving?
If so, go to the first frame and click on the "Save Snapshot to File..." button. Then you can add that image to the timeline in front of your clip.
The way I have done this is to split after the first frame, then drag remainder of clip to right. Copy/paste copies of first frame to fill the space.
For me still the easiest way to make a freeze frame is making a snapshot of the frame and placing that snapshot before or after that frame.
Thank you all. I am familiar with the freeze frame technique but have a somewhat more beneficial way of fixing this in my source software. I need to do a bunch of these and could swear I had once read that this had been simplified in Vegas. But now that I have been familiarized with reality I'll return to reality and get it done the way I have always been doing this. Dreaming can be sometimes just too darn lucid.
As always, thank you for being helpful so quickly.
Or simply put, stretch out the first frame of a clip. I remember this being a new feature in one of the recent upgrades but forgot the wording and can't find it.
The one and only new feature (since VP17?) which is closest to this inquiry is what you find when right-clicking a video event at a particular frame and selecting:
"Insert/Remove Envelope | Freeze Frame at Cursor"
If you want this freeze to have a specific duration you need to modify the envelope.
The even smarter way is to use the "Freeze Frame" feature of Vegasaur because here you can either use a Loop Region or a predefined duration for the freeze length.
I realized what you say just after I had signed off last night. It suddenly dawned in my head that the freeze frame feature was that new feature I was searching for. I had just forgotten this because between Vegas and TVPaint there are so many similarities and the same type of discussion on the user's forum and my brain isn't what it used to be either. In TVPaint you don't need to isolate the first frame. All we have to do is hold Shift down and stretch a layer or all layers into the minus numbers space for any length of frames. Once you have done that you then drag the entire timeline back to the right to make your newly created first frames play from frame one. This makes me wonder if the same system could be implemented in Vegas as well. It's intuitive, smart and works well every time.
I'd say the the way Vegasaur's Freeze Frame feature works is even simpler and faster as what TVPaint does. Not sure if we could find a similar way to do this with the core features of VP. I'll check later.
Got it. Just use the Vegas Pro method mentioned above (Insert/Remove Envelope | Freeze Frame at Cursor), then split where it should end and remove the velocity in the part on the right. And another workflow boost is to use the "Freeze Frame at Cursor" command as an Event button. So it would be a single click to insert.
Also, if you don't own a Vegasaur license you coulde use the free Tools4Vegas "Insert Freeze Frame" script.
In fact the "good ole" method mentioned by 3Point and 3d87c4 is pretty fast and flexible, too. Assumed the ripple option is selected, inserting a freeze frame with the "legacy" Vegas Pro core feature means:
OK, the demo video of the skier was very helpful and made me understand how this is used in Vegas. What I need is different, usually a way to add a few frames to the beginning of a clip which turned out to be too short, basically to manipulate the opening of the event the same way one manipulates an ending to fill in a gap in the timeline.
In my case my even starts with the view of a scenery just prior (3 frames) before a character walks in from left screen. I decide I could make a better matching edit if I added a whole second of the empty screen before the character makes an entrance. But there is also a camera move out starting at frame one. This move has been created in the source prior to importing into Vegas. I need to have that zoom remain.
In TVPaint I can stretch out this event by adding any amount of frames as I described earlier but the zoom must remain activated from frame one. This won't work in Vegas of course because the event is imported with a burned in zoom. This never occurred to me because I'm so used to not having to think about it in TVP. I have a built in animator's mind, not a cameraman's one anymore. We threw our cameras out the window in the 90's when digital technology was made available. My original artwork is created in a screen set to 3840 X 2160 and reduced to 1080 during my export process. I would loose that luxury if I created my zooms in Vegas.
Not sure what you mean. Can you show a video demo of what TVPaint does in case of such a remaining zoom?
Not sure if this would help, but there's a free tool, Insert Freeze Frames, in the Happy Otter Free Tools Library. Here's a link to a demo https://vimeo.com/392307916
It's especially useful if you have multiple freeze frames to enter. It works by adding a png image file to the timeline. Here's link which shows its simple dialog and where it can be downloaded. https://tools4vegas.com/insert-freeze-frame/
Here it is. What I am after is to make the dog's action lead us out of the studio and into the woods. Note that she is backing out of the room but walking head first into the following scene. Even though it's nonsensical I believe it works thanks to the 2 similar camera moves.
@Paul-Fierlinger off-topic, but I love your animation style. I have viewed your other work online. Thanks.
Thanks, DougT. This is going to be a 1 hr feature telling the story of how two freelancers spent the great shut in with little change in life style since this is the way we live year round anyway - in splendid isolation. The opening is a scene in which I crack my head during a backwards fall which leads to a loss of a major contract and driver's license - both forever. The body of the movie will be a collection of short stories down this animator's memory lane through several countries, continents and political upheavals.
If I got it right now what you want to achieve just isn't possible in any video editing software, any kind of freeze would not help. It seems it needs to be modified not as a (rendered) video clip but as a (source) project.
Nevertheless, I spend much of my time working with Vegas. Actually what's drawn in TVP needs to be assembled in one NLE or another, Vegas 6 caught my eye after working 2 years with DVP Velocity. I had three editing tables just for my own needs when there was only film. Making animated films is closer in temperament and process of storytelling development much closer to writing novels than shooting films. Vegas is more of a word processor to me and TVP is closer to a sketchbook. Sandra is a fine arts painter and her GUI spread across her 3 TVP monitors look nothing like mine -- actually not even close. My Vegas GUI is almost uncannily in appearance like a twin of TVP.
I apologize if I am going into an off topic frame of mind here but I decided to grab this opportunity to help my Vegas colleagues better understand what an animator is even doing here. I get that question often.
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. But I think you just need to add animated keyframes in Pan Crop of the Freeze Frame.
Well, this does look interesting and I'm going to try it out with the next one. The only thing that I have some trepidations about is the quality of the frames. Zooming into the corner of a 1080 frame could start looking ugly, particularly when I'm dealing with line art. But the best way to find out is to make a comparison. Thanks for demoing this for me. I know there's an awful load of stuff I have yet to learn about Vegas.