Thanks for the confirmation. The manual shows a nice black cursor, hence the question. In most instances (titles and so on) there aren't a lot of difficulties in manipulating the needed keyframes, but in this instance I wanted to track action. The only way I could do this was to count frames. Odd that Sony hasn't provided the syncing capability.

If you do a search here, there's an explanation by Sony as to why it does not work.

Eventually I found Spot's explanation of why not, so thanks. As he said, be nice if there was a work around. Makes using generated media a bit of a pain if you want to do something that isn't just stupidly simple.

"Makes using generated media a bit of a pain if you want to do something that isn't just stupidly simple."

Yeah, right . . . now try synching this stuff to music? No, you can't.

( apologies to Herman Melville - who had he been an editor may have had this response!)

- There it sits all greyed out, tempting, siren-like wailing at me to come close and yet CLOSER . . . . to the "Rocks of Illogicality". Like the mermaids of yore, that greyed out button sits and beckons me to a Promised Land, fom which no NLE-er returns! Beware, Ahab! Beware! Thar be that Grey Button . . . .. spiritless, taunting, grey cold-eyed button summonning up vast empty tracks of non-synch! If you look closely you can see and then hear whole realms of potential creativity just pleading for release, begging to be let out and shine forth.


. ... and, ahem . . where was I? Ah yes, it don't work! Synching Text to action on the screen? Ho! Now that would be nice!

Grazie

Well, it can be done, Grazie, but it's darn hard work. You have to set the generated media to the required length and then set to work with pencil and paper and calculate the frame number for every effect. You set keyframes at these calculated points and manipulate the effects required. Then you play it through and determine your errors and interatively work through until you have the required result. Doesn't sound like fun? One must be driven to create those transitions. There has to be an easier way! Doing it in Vegas really does require that calculator Spot and Farss were talking about a few days ago.

Serena

Oh yeah! Silly me! . . .

Seriously, I want the same "ease" with which I can key frame track Motion and 3-d and beziers and Pan/Crops and other FXs. All these can be synched. Having the Greyed-Out button on MedGen is at best a "tease".

Grazie

Well, not "silly" for I'm sure you knew all that. The silly bit is in Vegas not being able to sync on MedGen. And I don't understand why it has to be so (as Spot declared). Surely the software should be able to assign timecode to MedGen when it's placed on the timeline, if that's all that's required. What I've been doing is applying a colour gradient that tracks action in the frame, which is a pretty silly thing to attempt without an easy syncing facility.
I liked your take on Moby Dick!
Serena

> and then set to work with pencil and paper and calculate the frame number for every effect.

There is a MUCH easier way to do this. Scrub the timeline to find the place where you want an event to occur in your generated media. Then use Ctrl+G then Ctrl+C to copy the cursor position to the clipboard.

Now go to your generated media and double click on the time readout in the lower right-hand corner of the keyframe timeline and use CTRL+V to paste the cursor position there. When you press ENTER the cursor in the Generated media keyframe timeline will jump to the project cursor position. Just place your keyframe there.

~jr

ok, jr, I'll give that a try.
At present I'm using an Excel program to do the calcs, so that's really quick too. Just enter the timecode for the start of the clip and then the timecode for each required keyframe -- out comes the time for each keyframe in the GenMed. But I think your way is basically easier.

Just to report back my experience with jr's method.

On the project timeline cntrl+G copies the cursor position to the clipboard, from where it can be copied by cntrl+C and pasted elsewhere with cntrl+V.
Now in Generated Media because the Sync Cursor is greyed out then the internal timeline of GenMed always runs from zero. So if you put the GenMed on your timeline at 00:00:00:00 then the procedure is to put your cursor where you want it to finish on the project timeline, do the cntrl+G, cntrl+C thing, then go to the GenMed panel, highlight "length" at the top of the panel and cntrl+V. This will set up the duration as needed.
Now on the project timeline, where-ever you want to create a keyframe, set the cursor, do the cntrlG/cntrlC and then go to the GEnMed panel and paste that into the keyframe time (bottom right corner). All as jr said.
However, if the GenMed is not at the start of your project timeline, then all this falls down (or I've missed an important step). Because there is no link between the internal timeline of the GenMed and the project timeline, none of the cursor times copied from the project timeline can be used inside GenMed. So if you want a GenMed of 15 sec duration, and it is placed 30 minutes along the project timeline, then 00:30:00:00 pasted into the keyframe position on GenMed isn't what you want.
You have to go back to calculating the position of the keyframe in GenMed. Actually this is pretty pain free once set up; I use Excel. Simply enter time at start, then time for each keyframe position, and out comes the keyframe time for GenMed.

I'd rather Vegas did this, of course.

"I'd rather Vegas did this, of course."

" . .. it might be worth your while to voice your suggestions via Support "


. . . . oh yes . . .oh yes . . .


By the time I'd work out WHAT and HOW to do all this . . .I would have LOST what I was wanting to do!

I have this "bolted" to the top of my white board area on the right of my edit space

"Stories are like ARROWS in flight. You gotta grab 'em - otherwise you will loose them forever!" - Grazie

. .. . White-boards/Cork-boards are great for plopping/pinning/thumb-tacking ideas down . . I got fed up with all those scraps of paper blowing about . . .

G

Hello JR, well it would be possible to stretch the GenMed across the whole timeline for this particular project and switch things on and off by keyframes. One could do it also for subtitles etc, provided they're each of the same type of GenMed. It's another way around the problem.

OK Grazie, suggestion has been submitted!

Some time back Spot provided a link to a calculator that will do the calculation and "farss" was going to get one for his work. Excel is cheaper (if it's already on your machine)!

http://www.calculated.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=55


Serena

Serena, You didn’t miss anything. You have to place the generated media at the beginning of the track, make the keyframes, and then slide it into place. For that trick to work. I agree it’s not perfect. Let’s hope Sony makes it easier to deal with in the future.

~jr

JR - "I agree it’s not perfect." . . for me I aint after perfection . . however a bit of freedom would be neat? Just to be able to synch GenMed would be real neat . . ho, and how about this for text and stuff? I realise your advice is the best we got at the moment - thanks!

Best regards,

Grazie