(Laz, thanks for your feedback. I am starting to realize part of it is thinking differently.)

OK, well since I posted I realized I could use the Internal tab to reenable the
Trimmer window in VF 2.0. However, now I want to do one other thing that's key to my workflow: After I have trimmmed the clip in the trimmer, I want to replace the original event on the timeline with the trimmed version. I know I can place it back on the timeline before/after the cursor using those buttons in the trimmer, but I don't want to have to delete the original event, and I'd also like the events following my trimmed one to ripple back so there's no empty time left. Maybe this is too much to ask, but perhaps I'm still missing some tricks.

(The reason I want to do this is that I have tapes with many small scenes on them. Typically, I pick and choose from these scenes, and then string them in a rough cut on the timeline. Then I go back and trim them down to eliminate any junk from ends of the scenes.)

--Judd

To answer the 2nd part of your original question, you should be getting what you want by default - you can toggle it with the Ignore Event Grouping button. It looks like 2 film clips with a lock in the middle.

I'm an ex-Studio user and you're absolutely right about thinking differently - VF gives you far more freedom, but you have to learn to use it.

Rather than inserting / replacing trimmed clips have you tried trimming on the time line by splitting clips? I find I've got plenty of junk in the middle of the clips as well, so once I've got them in some sort of order I start thinking in terms of a single, very bad, clip rather than a collection of smaller ones. It's a lot easier to work out exactly where you want to trim when you can put the clip in context with the preceding and succeding ones.

Have a play with ripple edits, I think that will do a lot for you, too.

Ian G.

Excuse me for butting in, (another confued S8 user) but were you saying that I can achieve a ripple effect by using Ignore Event Grouping?

I find that when I drag a clip left on the timeline to make a transtion I have blank space left at the end of the clip.
Then, if I drag a clip right, for instance to allow a title to fade into black on the Video Effects track, then end of the clip moves over the following clip forming an unwanted transition.

Is the Ignore Event Grouping button how I get all clips on the timeline to move together when I drag one of them?

Bryan.

You'll get black blanks at the end of the event with a transition as it fades to nothing, but you can adjust this by ungrouping events and changing the timing or type of transition. To adjust the timing hover the curser at right edge of event/transition and move curser to the top and the icon changes, then click and drag transition to left. I think with S7/8 the transitions can stretch from one event to the other, so it took me a while to fathom this out.
To move all events on timeline, click 1st event then r-click and select 'select all events to end'. You have to experiment to find out how many tracks you can multi-select.