The answer is easy. Which is better? Yes!

Try both ways; see which you like better.

I've never use the Trimmer. I do all my cutting, pasting, grouping, and shortening in the Timeline. That's one of the amazing things with Vegas... how quickly and easily you can put together a video. My colleagues use Avid and they are constantly clicking to do the simplest of tasks. I would love to have a side-by-side comparison... they on their Avid's and me on my Vegas. There is no doubt in my mind I could create the identical video in less than half the time.

My advice is to follow the workflow that works best for YOU. Ask for advice on how to do things, but create you own style of editing.

I use both.

Trimmer is GREAT for cutting long clips into smaller segments. I then define these segments as REGIONS, naming them as appropriate. Regions are often then SUBCLIPPED. Subclips then show up in media bins, named appropriately and showing SPECIFIC FRAME thumbnail.

If you're working with subclips, it's a good idea to allow a couple seconds additional on each end, to allow for fine-tuned trimming and/or transitions.

Cheers,

Goji

Hi

I also think you should try and see what is best for you. I tried trimmer for the first time last week to chop up ½ hrs. HDV into suclips, but I think I like timeline editing better, but it might just be a matter of what you get used to.

/Ulf

You can do it either way. The timeline is very natural for most people but I highly recommend getting familiar to the trimmer because there are times when it's the best tool for the job.

Here's an example that sold me on the trimmer. I had about 8 tapes, all with long rambling interviews and B roll footage. We knew we'd just want sound bites out of most of the interviews, so I captured all the interview footage of each person as long takes and then went through in the trimmer to mark regions. In Vegas (don't know about Studio) you can see all these trimmer regions in the Vegas explorer, so it's a very quick and easy way to review and organize your media. The regions are listed hierachically under the master clip so it's easy to see what's in there.

There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat here but I wouldn't write off the trimmer. Cutting on the timeline can get a little awkward once you've built up your program and at that point it pays to get friendly with the trimmer.

Unfortunately, the trimmer lacks some insert/overwrite features that force you to do some extra clicking, but that's just a shortcoming that you learn to deal with, and if you've never used another NLE you wouldn't miss it.

Rob Mack

If you're using timeline editing and you want to insert b roll to a long sound bite or interview, don't you need to load the b roll into the trimmer first? and, don't you need to trim the interview first, otherwise you end up with the b roll on top of the interview or sound bite, because, in Vegas, (I have not figured this out) you can't override, your b roll is always on top of your interview. You have to get rid of the interview by trimming it, or you can't make transitions. On the other NLE's, when you override, the bottom video always gets replaced by the video that goes on top. I hope there is a better way of doing this in Vegas. Sorry for getting a bit off track.

You're talking about an overwrite mode. Search the forum, there've been some good conversations about this.

People manage to get along without overwrite. The basic answer is that there are lots of ways to approach things and necessity is the mother of invention. The trimmer in Vegas is somewhat neglected and underdeveloped, IMO.

Rob Mack

Vegas has a trimmer? :)

j razz

For some projects that are shot more or less in chronological order - events, weddings etc - the timeline method is well suited, but for most projects I find it much better to use the trimmer so that the timeline doesn't get cluttered and hard to see what's what.

An important function when naming and saving regions in the Trimmer is that if you name them carefully, you can put them in any order you require with one click. For instance, I'm working on a project with four different interviews - I've been through and made regions of anything likely to be used, and named them with a letter prefix corresponding to the section of the final project that they're likely to be used in, then a brief synopsis of what they contain.

So I might end up with a region list such as:
A01 When we first started
A02 There were three of us involved
B01 We needed funding
B02 We needed to find a contact person
B03 Timing was important
C01 We had trouble with some agencies
C02 We almost gave up when ...
D01 Once we had a meeting with them ...

etc., etc.

- then in effect, I've almost assembled the program before it touches the timeline ...

lol