Dear Sony-Not another V6 wishlist post

GmElliott wrote on 12/23/2004, 1:53 PM

This is more of an update/patch wish list, and quite possibly something that may be do-able.

1) I would like the ability to toggle the view style on tracks. In that I mean I wish I could independantly choose whether the track draws the frames or not and/or displays the title of the media, etc. I was messing around with PPro the other day and realized it had that ability built in to it's track headers.

2) Also how about the ability to scroll to the right while moving new media to the timeline. Sometimes when I drag a long track on to the timeline I'm stuck having to drop it below an existing track creating an additional unwanted track or tracks because I didn't have enough empy slack to the right of my last clip when I went to grab the new media. Does this make sense?

3) Can the characteristics of the timeline cursor be changed. In that I mean to click (hold) and drag to scrub WITHOUT dragging out a selection. Maybe have a modifier key to hold while dragging to create a selection. I know they added the ability to scrub using the cursor in V5 but I wish they took it a step further and have it act more (forgive me) Premiere'ish.

4) The ability to hear audio while scrubbing with the timeilne cursor

and 5) Media Management. I keep hearing this pounded into my head from FCP and PPro users. Vegas can indeed, assumably, easily fix the media management problem of Vegas. Can something be implimented into the V5 code in a patch/update to facilitate this- or is something like that well beyond the scope of a patch?

Thanks for listening Sony.

Comments

NickHope wrote on 12/23/2004, 2:04 PM

Good requests, all of these, GmElliott, particularly 2 & 4 which I have asked for too.

(P.S. But not as important to me as my top 2 requests: 2) Better event-length feedback while ripple editing, and 2) Full event names in tooltips when hovering over events) ;-)

musman wrote on 12/23/2004, 11:26 PM

WHat exactly do you mean when you say:

5) Media Management. I keep hearing this pounded into my head from FCP and PPro users. Vegas can indeed, assumably, easily fix the media management problem of Vegas.

What aspect of media management are you refering to? I believe I heard that FCP can't copy and trim like Vegas can when saving a project. Honestly, I've never used that function out of fear, but I really really need to start doing so I know. I thought this ability gave Vegas an edge in media management and was what most people pointed to as a problem with FCP's.

jaegersing wrote on 12/24/2004, 1:32 AM

I wish they would fix the lack of presets in V5 Track Motion. This should have been patched a long time ago and I hope we don't need to wait for V6.

Richard Hunter

Rednroll wrote on 12/24/2004, 7:55 AM

4) The ability to hear audio while scrubbing with the timeilne cursor

Under OPTIONS>PREFERENCES>GENERAL. There is an option for "allow cntrl+drag cursor style scrub over events". This is normally on, and you can scrub audio along the timeline by holding the cntrl key as the preference mentions. You can also use the jog wheel. Just wondering how these things are any different than what you are asking for?

SeaJohn wrote on 12/24/2004, 12:18 PM

(Rednroll:) "Under OPTIONS>PREFERENCES>GENERAL. There is an option for "allow cntrl+drag cursor style scrub over events". This is normally on, and you can scrub audio along the timeline by holding the cntrl key as the preference mentions. You can also use the jog wheel. Just wondering how these things are any different than what you are asking for?"

You can only monitor audio up to 4x with Vegas (or up to 20x with a change to internal preferences and a good audio card - I can only get to 10x); with Premiere you can scrub as fast as you want (much faster than 20x) and hear a very good representation of the audio.

It was really nice, but I doubt that we'll ever get it in Vegas.

NickHope wrote on 12/24/2004, 12:56 PM

More important for me that I can scrub as SLOW as I want, with scrubbed audio following the cursor movement (or shuttle pro central jog dial) in real time, making audio cuts much quicker to place. I miss this so much from Premiere 6. Even if your cursor is moving at say 5 frames a second, you can still hear the action in snippets of scrubbed audio and make out when sounds start and stop. This was discussed at length here:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=317477

rmack350 wrote on 12/24/2004, 10:16 PM

All good points.

1) I'd add that if you turn off thumbnails and waveforms for a track then it should appear in the track color. Currently Vegas shows you an undifferentiated white event.

2) not sure what you call this. Autoscroll, maybe? most windows apps do this, some do it well. Excel is pretty awful since it autoscrolls at maximum speed. You can't see where you're scrolling to.

3)I think premiere has a handle to grab to move the "playback head" back and forth. That feature makes it possible to drag the head without changing the selection. It also makes it easier to scrub the audio as you whip the head back and forth. Don't know how it works in premiere but in m100 you could wiggle the head back and forth and make it sound like scratching vinyl records on a turntable. You can't get that type of scrub response in Vegas.

On a similar note, I suggested a "play in front/play behind" function a long time ago. I think thee good folks in Madison listened but what they implemented was the numpad 0 key behavior "play around". Not as good. The purpose of the original idea is to help you hear whether you're positioned in front of or behind a noise. "Play around" doesn't help you there.

4) "Media Management" is a vague catch-all phrase. I think we could have an entire thread on it. There are certainly some things you can do in Vegas without complex media management but it's probable that you'd want much more than Vegas offers if you're cutting long form projects.

Rob Mack

vitamin_D wrote on 12/25/2004, 10:28 AM

Here's two:

1) Allow Marker or Region (not only both simultaneously) selection and deletion, so I can use Markers to create Regions on the timeline, then name the Regions, then go back and delete the Markers without deleting the Regions if I want to. If anyone has a workflow suggestion with this, I'd loveto hear/read it :)

Relatedly...

2) Allow Regions created on the timeline to be saved to media -- so I can throw 48+ clips on the timeline, create Regions within each clip and name them, then save the Regions to the media for view in the Media Pool. This is a bit of a pain if I'm s'posed to do it all from the Trimmer, one clip at a time...

If this is a problem if multiple tracks exist in the project, just make it greyed out in multiple track timelines.

- jim

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/25/2004, 11:42 AM

You can use markers to define regions...there are scripts to do this, including in Ultimate S. Using other scripts, found for free on the VASST site, you can also create a region for every event.
Then you can also delete all markers, using a script or using the Vegas marker removal tool.

4110 wrote on 12/25/2004, 1:43 PM

I mentioned these in earlier posts, but I expect GMElliot has more throw-weight so I'll tag onto his post.

1. Activate preview from keyframe. Setting a keyframe is guesswork now. Set it, then look at it to see where it is wrong. Then move the keyframe. Then look again....

2. Fix the metronome.

Thanks Sony,

David

Ben wrote on 12/25/2004, 6:12 PM

Yes, PLEASE fix the metronome bug Sony! Long-standing issue; search the Audio forum archives for details.

Ben

vitamin_D wrote on 12/25/2004, 10:33 PM

Spot:

Yes, but my point was that I can't remove just markers or just regions -- it's all or nothing.

And, as a second and more important point -- I'd like to be able to save regions from the timeline to media, without having to open the media in the trimmer.

- jim

Rednroll wrote on 12/26/2004, 9:00 AM

"More important for me that I can scrub as SLOW as I want, with scrubbed audio following the cursor movement (or shuttle pro central jog dial) in real time, making audio cuts much quicker to place. I miss this so much from Premiere 6. Even if your cursor is moving at say 5 frames a second, you can still hear the action in snippets of scrubbed audio and make out when sounds start and stop. This was discussed at length here:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=317477"

I still don't understand what the difference is. I can scrub as SLOW as I want in Vegas already. I have premiere 6, and never used any of the audio features, but I guess if I'm really interested in understanding what you're talking about then I'll have to go explore it. I read your link above and it doesn't tell me anything different from the Vegas scrub either. Sorry, but to me this tells me either you're not using the Vegas scrub function correctly to achieve what yoyu want or you're just not describing what you want good enough as to how it functions differently in Premiere.

NickHope wrote on 12/26/2004, 11:20 AM

Hi Rednroll,

Sorry for my inadequate explanations. I will try and be clearer.

I think you mean you can scrub as slow as you want using the scrub control in Vegas, or CTRL+drag the cursor with the mouse, or operating the shuttle bezel on a Shuttle Pro. I agree and I can do it too.

What I want to be able to do also is grab the cursor with the mouse and hear audio samples as I drag it left or right along the timeline (i.e. without pressing CTRL at the same time). Premiere does this and it's a great way to quickly and precisely position cuts based on people finishing speaking etc., especially if like me you're a habitual mouse dragger rather than shuttler.

Also I would love to be able to hear audio samples when I scrub with the silver-colored jog dial (NOT the shuttle bezel) in the middle of of a contour shuttle pro.

Rosebud wrote on 12/26/2004, 12:18 PM

3) Can the characteristics of the timeline cursor be changed. In that I mean to click (hold) and drag to scrub WITHOUT dragging out a selection. Maybe have a modifier key to hold while dragging to create a selection. I know they added the ability to scrub using the cursor in V5 but I wish they took it a step further and have it act more (forgive me) Premiere'ish.

i totally agree with that.

Flipper_md wrote on 12/26/2004, 7:44 PM

what i'd really like to know is what's going on at Sony...

is it just me or there's no informations at all on the future of Vegas Video??

I understand it is an already very powerfull software, doign tricks that no other can do, but even the best can always improve :)

busterkeaton wrote on 12/26/2004, 8:01 PM

Vegas Video is dead! Long live Vegas.

The Sony folks and before them Sonic Foundry, do not release details about future versions until that version is set. This way if they cannot implement a feature, then they have not mislead their user community. When Vegas 6 is close, they will announce what it contains, but probably not until then.
I would guess we are several months away from Vegas 6, perhaps there will be a update to 5.0b before then.

Flipper_md wrote on 12/27/2004, 6:21 PM

that's good to know ;)

thanks

I like it whatever they call it 8)