>expletive deleted<

It worked! A testament to some level of intuitive menu, despite a sea of toolbars and options, achieved by a knuckle-dragging operator. Maybe a huge monitor vs. 15" laptop makes it easier to visually confirm the amount of rotation.

Maybe the upright-walking among you knows a way to auto-level, or 'record' the steps taken like a macro of yesteryear for repetition.

Pan/Crop

A video event's framing - including rotation - can be adjusted by using the pan/crop feature on that video event.

Pan/crop is accessed by clicking on the square icon in the event's header and rotation can be achieved by placing the mouse cursor in the area outside of the image but within the circle.

If there is more than one video event that needs rotation, copy the event, highlight the other events and then R click and paste the event attributes via the menu option that appears on R clicking.

I can then apply my audio edits back in Sonic Forge 17 (have not yet figured out how to access it from Vegas Pro user interface).

The preferred audio editor can be selected from Options/Preferences/Audio (tab) - SFP17 may already be coded automatically but if it isn't, you can use the browse button and drill down in Program Files and click on Sound Forge's .exe file.

Then in Vegas Pro, R click on the audio event and select 'Open in Audio Editor' (destructive) or 'Open Copy in Audio Editor' (retains the original audio).

You might want to watch a series of tutorials that Vegas Creative Software uploaded to their YouTube channel 4 years ago. The tutorials use Vegas Pro 17 but they covers all the basics of Vegas Pro which will still be valid for later Vegas Pro versions, The link to the tutorial series is

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDenmwGaF5W6jN_weEpuliY6dB6ocXyCe

Thank you, john_d & Dex.

I tried opening a group of videos R-click selecting them, then starting the render-as process, but the process of naming the first one made me realize multiple events needing rotation correction may not be the same as batch processing a folder of videos. I didn't understand the definition of an 'event' so my expectations are skewed.

I am still not understanding how to preview the amount of rotation. The first time I saw the dotting white frame it was intuitive what I was going to get.

The 2nd video I set up did not show the rotation in the preview window, but the completed rendering had the rotation applied.

Doing them singly takes more time (if batching is even possible), but prevents errors like naming them all the same thing. Or multiple events is not the same thing as batch processing multiple files.

Thanks for the help.

 I didn't understand the definition of an 'event'

'Event' refers to the media - video or audio - that is used on Vegas Pro's timeline. If you look at Vegas Pro's user manual (Help/Contents and Index), video and audio media are called 'events' throughout the user manual. Other editing programs may call them 'clips' or something else, but in the end they are media.

Re rotating in pan/crop, you can also code in the angle of rotation in pan/crop's properties field (see arrow below):

When rotating, its usually necessary to zoom in the pan/crop window so that the corners of the rotated image are within the frame, otherwise you'll get black areas in the timeline image because some of the rotated image is now 'under-sized' in the frame - as shown by the double-ended arrow above.

You can also rotate Track Motion if everything on the track needs rotated. The Picture in Picture effect will let you rotate (change it back to full screen, though!)

The next three videos I tried this on never showed the dotted white 'rotation effect' after I entered an angle in degrees, and after rendering, there was no rotation applied. So I'm missing at least one step.

I can't read on my small screen what commands were clicked in the example video, so I thought I could just count lines in a dropdown menu. But getting video to appear in the preview window seems to be a step I missed...three more times.

I also use Pan/Crop all the time to level my images. Also you can use key frames to smoothly keep the horizon level during the clip. I always use it when by the sea as it is so easy to tip the horizon especially while panning.

I can open a video and add the Crop FX selection, but I don't know the difference between doing it with Media FX vs. Video Output FX. They look the same once selected.

However, I have only successfully 'applied' the rotation angle once or twice so far out of many attempts, so the successful tries were part luck. I can't figure out how I got the dotted white FX 'frame' to appear. That seems to be the difference. If that isn't accomplished, the Render occurs without the incompletely entered option settings.

I'll go try to read a help file or find a demo video I can magnify to visibility again and see if I learned enough since my last help search.

Or maybe someone will recognize what step(s) I'm missing. Maybe I'm in the neighborhood instead of completely lost.

Thanks

Apparently there is a timeout for being logged in. I have typed comments only to 'receive an Error 403 - something is broken and discover I was logged out at some point while typing, and lost the typing.

When I open a video that did not previously have audio peaks created, Opening media produces a video 'frame' timeline and audio peaks. Importing does not always create these visual progress steps.

The last video 'frame' or section has icons for FX and I think Crop/Rotate. The latter produces the dotted white tool frame I was missing. On a small screen it is a little hard to visually compare the orientation of the white box to the non-level video. Maybe there is a smarter way to preview. Render next, apparently. If I over- or under-corrected the rotation from level, I guess repeating (and deleting the .sfx file) is an option.

Murray what you really need to do is to just play with Pan/crop on a single clip on its own on the timeline to get to know how it all works. And try the key frame option too as it really helps keep the level over the clip. Also turn on grid lines in preview so you can see the level across the screen.

Murray, there is a video tutorials section on this forum that will help you get started with all the basic functions including image manipulation.

That said, you seem to be a good job of figuring it out on your own. That's by far the best way to learn this stuff.

Idea from left field:

Apply the Stereoscopic 3D Adjust fx and adjust rotation manually, or use autocorrect, with Automatic crop enabled (the default).

Thanks for all the suggestions & ideas.

Idea from left field:

Apply the Stereoscopic 3D Adjust fx and adjust rotation manually, or use autocorrect, with Automatic crop enabled (the default).

My favourite way to level the horizons in my videos, because it automatically zooms and crops the video according the used rotation. An extra step that has to be done manually when using the other proposed options, pan/crop tool, trackmotion or PIPfx.

Good suggestion, tried it but not sure exactly what auto correct does.

I finished my part of the project! Getting onto the first rung of the Vegas ladder was a big step.

Thanks for the patient help.

Using Vegas Pro 21 build 315:

I can use Scene Rotation to make small rotation corrections like tilted video from a tilting tripod, but so far I have only figured out how to enter a rotation in degrees, but not preview it for the purpose of determining how much to rotate it.

I am not sure if my description is clear, but by analogy, when editing still photos, it is easy to graphically rotate a single image to visually determine what is straight (and not care what the actual number of degrees of rotation is).

Is there way to do this for video? It not, is there a way to export a single frame as some sort of image (like jpeg) that could be rotated in a photo editor to determine the amount of rotation to enter in the Scene Rotation Effect? Or possibly a different tool for rotation? In my last question, some time ago, some suggestions were offered for other types of correction, like Stereoscopic 3D. I didn't understand what that did.

I once made a rotation around an axis and chose the wrong axis. Since I cold not preview the effect with Scene Rotation, I didn't know what I had done until the rendering was done. It was horrible and funny at the same time. Kind of a dynamic carnival mirror effect.

Thank you

Just above the Preview Window is a 'grid' icon. If you click on that icon and from the dropdown menu select 'Grid', the Preview Window is overlaid with a grid pattern which can be used as a reference to line up video or still images against the vertical or horizontal grid lines.

The number of V and H grid lines can be manually set via controls in Options/Preferences/Video (tab)

This approach works very well using the rotate function in pan/crop.

To your other question:

is there a way to export a single frame as some sort of image (like jpeg) that could be rotated in a photo editor

Yes, there is. Click on the camera icon in the toolbar above the Preview Window:

... which will save the image in the Preview Window as either a .jpg or .png snapshot to a folder location of your choice.