I am fairly new to VMS (Pinnacle convert) and am wondering how to duplicate an editing feature that I have become accustomed to, if possible.
I do football highlight videos, and a typical project contains hundreds of circa 8-second clips. I set the “in” and “out” points of each clip, categorize them (offense, defense, sideline shots, etc) to fit the mood of the various songs I use, then do a lot of mixing and matching of clips on the timeline to try and line up big hits with certain points in songs, that kind of thing.
In doing that, I like to quickly swap clips on the timeline. Because each of my hundreds of clips are short, they show up as narrow rectangles on the timeline. So for example, when I want to bring a given video scene point slightly forward (relative to a spot in a song), I swap clips on either side of the scene in question, i.e. find a relatively fat clip to the left of the scene, and swap it with a skinny clip that I pluck from the right of the scene (if that makes any sense).
I do this drill dozens of times in all the trial and error involved in making these videos. In Pinnacle Studio I could move a clip by just grabbing it and dragging it several places over. Clips to the right of its former location would automatically ripple into the void, and clips to the right of its new location would ripple right to accommodate it.
It seems in VMS that I have to do this differently. For example, to move a clip several places to the left, I need to:
1. make sure auto ripple is on
2. create a “hole” at the destination location by pushing all clips to the right
3. turn auto ripple off
4. grab the clip I want to move and drag it left into the hole (leaving a void where it was)
5. turn auto ripple back on
6. close both voids – the excess from the hole I purposely created, plus the one left from step 4 - by dragging the timeline collection to the left in two steps.
In the scheme of things, this is not as painful as I am making it sound, but I do this lots and lots of times, so I wonder if there is any setting I can use, or shortcut, that would allow me to do this as more of a quick drag and drop? As always, any help is appreciated.
Lawson
I do football highlight videos, and a typical project contains hundreds of circa 8-second clips. I set the “in” and “out” points of each clip, categorize them (offense, defense, sideline shots, etc) to fit the mood of the various songs I use, then do a lot of mixing and matching of clips on the timeline to try and line up big hits with certain points in songs, that kind of thing.
In doing that, I like to quickly swap clips on the timeline. Because each of my hundreds of clips are short, they show up as narrow rectangles on the timeline. So for example, when I want to bring a given video scene point slightly forward (relative to a spot in a song), I swap clips on either side of the scene in question, i.e. find a relatively fat clip to the left of the scene, and swap it with a skinny clip that I pluck from the right of the scene (if that makes any sense).
I do this drill dozens of times in all the trial and error involved in making these videos. In Pinnacle Studio I could move a clip by just grabbing it and dragging it several places over. Clips to the right of its former location would automatically ripple into the void, and clips to the right of its new location would ripple right to accommodate it.
It seems in VMS that I have to do this differently. For example, to move a clip several places to the left, I need to:
1. make sure auto ripple is on
2. create a “hole” at the destination location by pushing all clips to the right
3. turn auto ripple off
4. grab the clip I want to move and drag it left into the hole (leaving a void where it was)
5. turn auto ripple back on
6. close both voids – the excess from the hole I purposely created, plus the one left from step 4 - by dragging the timeline collection to the left in two steps.
In the scheme of things, this is not as painful as I am making it sound, but I do this lots and lots of times, so I wonder if there is any setting I can use, or shortcut, that would allow me to do this as more of a quick drag and drop? As always, any help is appreciated.
Lawson