Event triangles

kairosmatt wrote on 11/28/2006, 5:41 PM
I'm a new Vegas user and there is something that is driving me nuts and I can't find any straight answer about it anywhere. The little triangles blue triangles in the top corner of events:
1. What do they mean?
2. What do the different shades of blue mean?
3. What does it mean when there is only a half triangle (ie only one event has the triangle?)
4. How do you switch them on and off? Right now they are no showing up on my timeline, and I can't for the life of me get them back or find any info in the Online Help or on the web!
Somebody please help!!

Comments

Grazie wrote on 11/28/2006, 9:56 PM
kairosmatt, well not only are there Blue there are ALSO white triangles too! - You can see these too at the front end of the Event, directly, vertically below the Blue one at the front end of the Event

OK, these are "Offset" options. Grab hold of a Blue one and move towards the middle of the event and you are applying a "FADE" offset. This is great if you wish to apply a fade WITHOUT wanting to slip over another event. And yes this works for the Audio part of the Event too.

Now the White triangle you can move in the same way but this provides an offset reference for aligning and "tweaking" where "other" events can be slipped and slid about so you can align them more precisely. Personally. I've never use this offset - but it is there, and others can chime in and explain just what they use this white triangle for.

Once you've experimented with the Blue triangles - each end too - you can apply not only the TYPE of fade - fast, slow linear and so on, you can ALSO apply a transition too. And again this pertains to ONLY one event - you are NOT having too slip over another event.

I've been told by a BBC audio person that fading offsets on 2 separate tracks is the accepted way of fading between two audio sources, instead of what I do, and that just pushing one over the other. Do trey this out and you will hear the difference. It is subtle but well worth it.

I understand these offsets as being ways to fade in and out WITHOUT reducing the length of Events. And that is a powerful tool! But again, you CAN achieve this using a fading track to fade in and out from tracks below. Say you have 2 events butted up to each other on track 2. You COULD on Track 1 place a piece of BLACK GenMed and fade in and out its start and finish. OR you could apply a Track envelop to do the same by adding points and pulling down the envelop just where you want to do it.


And specifically:

1. What do they mean? - Think I've done that


2. What do the different shades of blue mean? eh? I don't see this? Maybe?


3. What does it mean when there is only a half triangle (ie only one event has the triangle?) - Explain further . . please?

4. How do you switch them on and off? I have NO idea!!

Hope this helps,

Oh, your first post here - huh? Welcome aboard - VegHead!!

Grazie

cbrillow wrote on 11/29/2006, 8:48 AM
As Grazie mentioned, these are for accessing the event fade controls. However, there ARE two different shapes and colors of blue, which is something I'd not seen before.

I ran into a problem with these triangles just last night, doing my first real project in V7. I'd never run into this situation in V6, and even created the same project in V6 to prove to myself that it worked the way I remembered. Here's what happened:

1) I put 7 DV clips onto a single track on the timeline, with snapping on and auto crossfade turned off. In this way, they automatically butted together end-to-end.

2) I wanted to create manual audio and video fades at all of the junctions. I reached into the area where the fade symbol normally appears, but could not get it to pop up on the clip to the left of the split between the two clips. I could only access the fade control on the RIGHT side of the split. At the same time, I noticed that there was only a light blue half-triangle in the upper part of the frame display, and it was on the right side of the split line. There was not a half-triangle on the left side of the split.

3) Since I'd adjusted fades this way many, many times in Vegas 5 & 6, I created the same scenario in Vegas 6. In this case, a full, darker blue triangle appeared at the junction of each of the clips. This represents two darker half-triangles meeting at the split. Hovering over the triangle on the left side of the split gave me the fade control for the clip on the left. Hovering over the triangle on the right side of the clip allowed me to adjust the fade on the clip to the right. This is how I remember it working.

4) Went back to the Vegas 7 version and fiddled a bit. I noticed that there would be a half-triangle at the end of any clip that appeared last on the timeline, but that it would disappear as soon as I appended another clip. This left me with a light blue half-triangle only on the right side of each junction, and I could only adjust the fade on that particular clip.

I eventually found out that adding the clips to the timeline with "Quantize to Frames" turned off (I think...) resulted in the full dark blue triangles on both sides of the split between clips, and that I could select each one to adjust the fade of both clips.

My previous (murky) understanding was that Quantize to Frames was of primary use in audio, despite the fact that it appears to change the resolution of the timeline cursor. Specifically, with it turned off, the cursor moves not frame-by-frame with the arrow keys, but at a much finer step when the timeline is zoomed in.
TLF wrote on 11/29/2006, 11:58 AM
Well, I'd never paid any attention to those triangle before, but you're right, there are light blue and dark blue ones.

Here's what I found, and this is only the case with audio...

1. If I insert a video object with associated audio, the triangle are DARK blue.
2. If I split the audio, two LIGHT blue triangle appear. This seems to occur as a result of Vegas adding a very slight fade at the end of split audio to prevent unwanted audio spikes.

And that's it. Those triangles are going to be very useful.

Worley
kairosmatt wrote on 11/29/2006, 1:21 PM
Hey everybody, thanks for all the input! Yup, Grazie, this is my first post here, I'm a new Vegas user.
I kind of thought that the shades of the triangles had to do with inaccurate event edits/splits, where a dark blue meant the events met smoothly at the timeline frame rate and the actual framerate of the two events. This is like when you click on the edit between events sometimes you get a dotted blue line, sometimes a solid one.
I think "Quantize to Frames" insures that cuts and splits only happen on the correct frame.
But like cbrillow I also noticed somethimes you only get half a triangle on one event. I think it may have something to do with when one event is not split exactly on the right frame, while the other one is not.
Also, when I first loaded Vegas, those little triangles were not there! then they were and I got used to them. No they're gone! I've been playing around with Vegas alot, but I can't tell what I did to make them appear and dissapear.
Does anyone have anymore suggestions?
Your advice has all been great, I feel like I'm on the right track
farss wrote on 11/29/2006, 2:06 PM
No but I've got another question!

What do the little triangles at the BOTTOM of the events do?
By accident a few days ago I managed to move one of them from the LHS of the clip to the RHS of the clip where it's outside the end of the event. Freaky stuff, fortunately I managed to move it back where I assume it belongs.
cbrillow wrote on 11/30/2006, 9:30 AM
Just a little P.S. to this drama:


Perusing the manual reveals that these devilish little beasts are called Envelope Handles.

I shall never say "little blue triangles" again.

(Maybe...)

farss - check out p112. Sounds like you may be referring to the "snap offset flag."