Would it then make sense to do the same with the FX icon?

You'd want to maintain a consistant interface.

Rob Mack

Okay, this seems to dovetail with some other ideas.

To have a list of custom Pan/crops or FX appear when you right click those icons, you either need Vegas to automatically load something like the last 6 settings, or you need to save and choose presets to use.

Why not have folders in the project media window that are used for the the content of those custom menus.

This is a trojan horse for a much bigger thing. Why not have all sorts of folders in the project media window. In addition to Bins you could have Scripts, Transitions, FX, Pan/Crop presets, keyboard maps, Window layouts, Marker sets... all exportable as files that you could move to other edit stations. Vegas would probably have to include some folders that are not removable, and you could create custom folders inside those.

This is pretty different from the way Vegas currently works, but would probably be a great improvement. I don't think it'd have to change any parts of the interface that people are currently used to but it'd add a nice new feature.

The other addition that would go along with this should be the ability to pull multiple folders out of the project media view and have them appear as free floating (and dockable) windows. This way you could have several bins open at the same time, or bins and saved presets and saved Pan/Crops, etc.

Rob Mack

Picture of what it might look like:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2072/1892450570_49faed2dc1_o.gif



Rob

WOW... now were talking.. SMS, you watching this thread??
LOL

Excellent ideas! Luv it! - Grazie

extending from this..

"Why not have folders in the project media window that are used for the the content of those custom menus."

This woudl mena that you woudl still phsycially have to geographically move the mouse from one poitn to another. The poitn would then be to stop the need of having to move from the event your working on. In turn, i believe a right click on teh icon, to bring in the ORIGINAL drop down box (ie right click and a drop down box appears with the existing presets from within ur pan crop window)
Its identical data, jsut accessable via the timeline directly

With the folder that toowoudl definately work. and exporting of render settings, filter presets, filter chains etc etc can be done from within the program and not with Preset Manager which is restricted to filter chains only.
This way, if we have a series of presets within a filter itself (ie a filter with a series of KF's ) we can export that as a preset
Would make reinstalls much easier and allow acess to filtering elements without the need to go into menus or drop downs.

"This is a trojan horse for a much bigger thing. Why not have all sorts of folders in the project media window. In addition to Bins you could have Scripts, Transitions, FX, Pan/Crop presets, keyboard maps, Window layouts, Marker sets... all exportable as files that you could move to other edit stations. "

((Sounds good))

This is pretty different from the way Vegas currently works,
((Actually, all youd be doing is creating a "Plugin Manager" type interface which alows u to get into the guts of the tasking elements. As these already exist, its a siple case of creating shortcuts and placing them in a streamlined GUI))

"but would probably be a great improvement. I don't think it'd have to change any parts of the interface that people are currently used to but it'd add a nice new feature."

((The existing interface wont need to be changed AT ALL))

The other addition that would go along with this should be the ability to pull multiple folders out of the project media view and have them appear as free floating (and dockable) windows. This way you could have several bins open at the same time, or bins and saved presets and saved Pan/Crops, etc.

((This makes sense. Avid has a very siilar interface with dockable individualised bins. This works good for those who work with multiple Veg files within their projects as they can open each Veg as a folder and see, as shortcuts or representations, the media which is embeded within said Veg..
This woudl mean that you wouldnt have to open another instance of vegas to view that content within that Veg))

with the FX icon, how bout somethign a lil more streamlined...
such as a 2 part selection where the irst is "use previous filter setting" or use new filter setting
This can be tweaked to be turned on or off wihtin preferences and th ay it woudl work is thus.. lol

first option
"select previous filter setting" - Whatever filter or chain you did last time (ie the last filter set youve tweaked) would be copied and pasted here.
Much like Paste Event Atributes without the Velocity or Pan Crop settings

the second option "new filter setttings" would bring up your filter selection box

With this, u could even expand the selection and tie it to a series of filters chained within the video track if u wanted (ie have vegas scan whch filter sets have been used for THAT TRACK and offer those as options...

Also with velocity, how bout a velocity icon on the event which brings up a numbered box much like when u click on the event properties where u can type in a strecth value and it will behave EXACLTY liek the existing control drag method. This way however as opposed to only having the stretching percentage displayed in the audio track of said event, we have that same display on the video (as sometimes we only cut to music)

Let me expand on what I'm saying about right-clicking the timeline Icon and the folders. The idea is that, for those interface items, Vegas looks in the folder to see what should be in the right-click menu. So it's a way to customize your menu. Pretty much the same way the Windows Start Menu works. And of course you could go straight to the folder if you really wanted to.

What I was meaning about "No change to current interface" is that people still get to use what they know but the interface is expanded, not changed. Same, but more of it. :-)

Your idea of showing nested veg files as folders is a step beyond what I'd described, and a good idea. It allows you to see what media is inside the Veg. I'd probably still prefer that you be forced to open a new instance if you want to do anything with the contents of that Veg, but at least you could see into it.

Similarly, you'd want to show what regions are in a clip. The Project Media window doesn't have this capability at this time. I'm not so sure that I'd want to see a clip with regions represented as a folder, though.

Last thing...Currently, Vegas doesn't really treat saved presets as objects. You apply a saved preset and vegas just applies the settings. It'd be more powerful if Vegas always refered to your preset. You change the details of the preset and it ripples out through your project. Somewhat similar to recurring events in Outlook's calendar... Do you want to edit this effect or do you want to edit the preset? This would be very powerful.

Rob

Media100 was stremlined like this. It's at LEAST a 10 year old idea. Sony should have also bought Media100 when it was for sale.

From memory, and I'm not that familiar with m100, there were things like keypresses to apply the last transition (so if the last thing you did was a 7 second page peel then you could apply it over and over again. The interface of m100 lends itself to this a little better than Vegas.)

Filters, I think, would also default to the last used settings.

Yes. A plain left click would open the filter window, a right click would give you choices of "Last filter chain", "New Filter chain" "Saved chain 1" "Saved Chain 2", etc.

The Saved Chains would be visible in their folder in the Project Media window (renamed Project Assets?).

The Project Media window probably needs a filter just like the Edit Details window.

NOW WE'RE COOKING!!!!!!

"You apply a saved preset and vegas just applies the settings. It'd be more powerful if Vegas always refered to your preset. You change the details of the preset and it ripples out through your project."

Now this is what we need...

I submitted a suggestion and provided a link to this thread. Maybe someone will look at it.

I think this is actually a major change that would deserve development time but it'd be good to see it by version 10.

Judging by what some other development teams have told me in the past, I'd think Madison already has a course set for version 9. But maybe not.

I wish I had tons of time. I could mock up a demo in flash.

Rob

heres another one...

in teh even pan crop window.. instead of having a big F, how about were given the option to replace that with 3 icons
Move freely (XY)
Move in Y only
Move in X only

this would save continuous jumps back and forth to that button when reframing