Thank you Old Smoke. I've several times been tempted by Vegasaur, especially as so many speak so highly of it, but I'm not certain how many of its options I would actually use and thus hesitate to spend £100 on it. I wonder if there are any alternative solutions.

Richard

The features I use the most are:
Transcoding/Batch Rendering
Render Assistant
Pan/Crop Copy-Paste
Track Motion Copy-Paste
Project Audit
Proxy Builder
Media Replace
Markers and Regions
Project Archive
Split Stereo to Mono

There are many more that I use but those are the ones I use the most.

I remember some years back that Johnmeyer had written a gap eliminator. A quick search turned this up.

Have no idea whether it would work on later versions of Vegas, but do recall using it in the past to prevent just the sort of issue you described.

It's a shame that Vegas doesn't have this build in. I remember even the old Ulead Media Studio 5 had such a feature.

Timeline Tools (free) may be able to do what you want. Its tool also searches for gaps AND overlaps, but allows you to set a minimum gap/overlap length to search for and adjust. Unless you use 2-3 frame crossfades frequently, you could set the filter to search for gaps/overlaps of less than 2 frames (or simply below your minimum crossfade length) and it would identify only gaps.

Here are all of my audit scripts:

John Meyer Audit Scripts

I think you'll want to look at the "JHM Audit (for short blank gaps).js" script. It looks for really small gaps, as well as really small overlaps. You can change what is considered "really small" by changing a variable in the script.

I don't think you want to use my gap remover script that someone posted above because, as it says in the comments in the script, it doesn't make any attempt to sync other tracks when the gaps are removed, and you can really screw up your project. I wrote that script for a very specific, narrow use.

Take a look at each script. They are designed to find user errors that are very easy to make because of how the Vegas UI is laid out. For instance, it is amazingly easy to accidentally "nudge" the event opacity level as you click on events, and scrub the timeline. The "event levels" audit script will find those problems.

The duplicate fX is really important if you use Paste Attributes because if you already have fX on an event, if you Paste Attributes, you end up with duplicate fX, and this can really ruin your day (and your project).

The No Final Keyframe really helps if you do a lot of "Ken Burns" animation on still photos. Vegas used to have (maybe still has) an "anomaly" in how it treats the last keyframe when an event is lengthened. If you lengthen an event by dragging the left edge, the first keyframe stays at the beginning of the event. However, if you lengthen it by dragging the right edge, if you had a keyframe at the exact end of the event, it does not stay at the end. You can argue all day as to whether that is the right thing to do, but for me, it is not what I expected, and I ruined a lot of projects, where I didn't notice until too late that the photo animation ceased while the photo was still being displayed.

Some of these scripts work on all tracks; some work on all events; and others only work on things that are selected. Read the comments at the beginning of each script to find out how it works.

I wrote these a long, long time ago, but still use them almost every day.

Many thanks to all of you and especially to John as I shall be using his scripts --- that is really so kind of you to make them available.

As far as this p;articular problem is concerned, Timeline Tools does the same as the Fasst App I mentioned in my OP which means that, if you've made a lot of overlaps, these are identified as well as the gaps which is a bind if you are only interested in finding the one or two gaps that have occurred.

Richard

Richard, if you configure Timeline Tools as shown in this screenshot, it will eliminate ALL Event gaps in your selected Track. This tells Timeline Tools to Make a Relative change to the length of each Event of Zero frames (don't change length). It also instructs TLT to ignore changes to the Event Fade curves. And to Adjust Events to have an Overlap size of Zero frames (no overlap or gap between Events). Or you could simply select the Remove Gaps & Overlap radio button instead of the more advanced and flexible Adjust Gaps, Event length, Overlap & Fade radio button selection shown.

Thank you Garry. I'll give that a go when I get into my next project in the next week or so.

In the meantime can you confirm that this will identify only the gaps --- I ask because I make extensive use of overlaps (dissolves) some of which might only be 6 or 8 frames in length and I'm sure you will understand why it wou;d be easier if these were not identified as well.

Sorry to be a pain.

Richard

Richard, I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. The Timeline Tools Gap / Overlap Search tool can be used to search for either Gaps or Overlaps. It will find Gaps or Overlaps that are Greater Than or Equal To the number of Frames or Seconds that you specify in the input box. Enter a positive number in the box to search for Gaps, or a negative number to search for Overlaps. The tool does not support searches that need to be defined by an expression such as (>2) & (<8)