ghost horse, the trimmer won't edit clips as you capture, and neither will the timeline. For that you would have to be very careful in chosing your start and stop while capturing. In normal capture, that means hitting the record and stop buttons at just the right time. You could presumably use advanced batch capture and type in the start and end timecodes of each clip.

If you do want to make use of the trimmer you can bring each clip up in it (one mouse click) after capturing, trim the start and end points (two mouse clicks), then append the clip to the end of the project on the timeline (one mouse click). That would be about as close as you can come to what you've asked for. You wouldn't even have to look at the timeline in order to edit this way.

does it seem that no one uses the trimmer? I use it a lot since I make music videos. I like following the beats to techno making the scenes change alot more, I need a lot of clips and the trimmer helps a lot

Yeah, the trimmer's redundant. Keep it on the timeline, save yourself a step.

Alba-zerox - I also am making a music video (just for fun so far) and use the trimmer to select segments of about 4 seconds that are copied to the timeline. Seems to be more efficient than putting the raw clip on the timeline and copying from that. But I am new to editting so not sure if this is the best way.

I wish I my source video was in bigger pieces, I have about 70 little clips of 1 minutes each, and each one needs to be put in the trimmer to look for useful video. And then as the video gets re-editted I need to go thu the 1 minute clips again. So it is a bit tedious loading the clips into the trimmer. Next time I will try to splice all those 1 minute clips together somehow so I only have one big one that I can put in the trimmer

Simply un-switch the Scene Detection option at capture... : 1 clip (well, maybe two).

I also find the trimmer much more useful than the source window in Premiere --because of the ability to create viewable regions within long clips. In Premiere you cannot see any markers in the source window. What I end up doing is dragging and dropping sections into premiere bins and renaming them but it's more tedious that way and easier to get confused on big projects.

Marc

And from the trimmer, you can choose to put only an *audio* or *video* segment (from an audio-video clip) on the timeline without having to delete one or the other after splitting if you do it directly on the timeline. And if you want another part of the original clip, you then have to go back to explorer and do everything again with the timeline method instead of just going back down to the trimmer and selecting.
Anyway, I find it easier to pass by Trimmer most of the times for what I do.

I think I'm developing a learning disability. I've tried to mark regions in the trimmer so I can use the Region View on a long project, but the view is always blank. What did I miss in the instructions???

I use the trimmer extensively. I work primarily in long-form documentary, with a shooting ratio (total hours of raw tape: finished running time) of anywhere from 4:1 to 25:1, depending on the project. A lot of "cinema verite" stuff, with no script prior to shooting. This means I spend a lot of time combing through hours of video, trying to break long takes into "scenes" or themes. Final edited sequences often have little or nothing to do with the linear timeframe in which the raw video was shot.

For this kind of work, I use the trimmer to:
- set and name regions and save them to the file (Later, I can grab the regions by name in the explorer window and drop them on the timeline)

- set sync point markers in the file for multi-cam shoots;

- pull audio or video tracks out separately for use as ambience or cutaways.

My great wish is that SoFo would enhance the trimmer so that I could set a region in the trimmer, drag and drop the region to a particular Media Bin and have the Media Pool treat that region as an instantaneous subclip of the larger file. Currently, if you do this, you simply get another copy of the entire file in the Media Bin.

>"I've tried to mark regions in the trimmer so I can use the Region View on a long
>project, but the view is always blank. What did I miss in the instructions??? "

Either check "automatically save regions and markers with file" in the Options|Preferences dialog, or click the "save" button in the trimmer.

This will save regions and markers to the media file so that they are visible in the Explorer window and the timeline.

i was "afraid" of the trimmer until i started editing video from a vacation in rocky mountain national park. now, every clip i put into the trimmer, play from the beginning, then click M to mark in & out points. this makes it really easy to pull out multiple segments from a single clip to place on the timeline. i just double-click between the markers to select, and drag & drop.

As far as I know, the trimmer is the only way of doing 3-point edits in VV. It's great when you want to replace a specific amount of footage with a cutaway of exactly the same length.

If there's another way I'd love to hear about it (although the trimmer does just fine for me).

bd

Never have.

...by selecting Regions, saving the markers to the media for later viewing in the Media Pool, and drag-n-dropping said regions to the timeline. It's a killer workflow that beats mix-n-matching multiple tracks on the timeline for longform editing.

- jim

I guess im the only one here that always uses the trimmer.. If I have a few tracks on the timeline and I want to add another piece I always select that pice in trimmer. I find it an easy way to have a look at material.. I use it like a spot-set. In the trimmer i just browse through footage and select the part I need, drag it to the timeline. This way I think I can never screw up the good things I did in the timeline. It's like another vcr you can watch tapes in and select the stuff you want to use..

grtz

>>"pull audio or video tracks out separately for use as ambience or cutaways"<<
If I understand you correctly, you can also right-click and drag an .avi from the media pool, drop it on the timeline, and select if you want to use "audio only" or "video only".
FWIW,
Randy

>> whizz through and right want you want,

Say what?

I use it pretty much the same way mark30 uses it.
I haven't come to understand all this "regions" concept yet... but I'm sure gonna have a closer look at it; I feel I'm "missing" something here...
In fact, what I'd like is that when I edit something in the trimmer I could have the option to transform this new selection as a new clip. From what I read, it's almost what the "regions" are, hence my curiosity to have a closer look at it...

I'm using Trimmer quite a bit right now, especially for certain scenes. For example, for a 1.5 minute scene with two actors: close ups and mediums of each actor through entire scene and long shot of scene. Multiply this times 2 because there were two parts to the scene, the first half taking place in one part of the room and the other half taking part in another part of the same room. Then there are 2 extra close ups (very short) of one actor doing something with his hands. So that’s 12 different shots, each with 2 to 5 takes. As I watch the tape, it is clear that some parts of some takes are best and some parts of other takes (of same shot) are best. So I get into lots of clips to deal with for this 1.5 minute scene. SOLUTION: I captured all the clips with any part I wanted to potentially use. As I worked through the script, I plunked, say the close up of Actor #1 into the trimmer and select only that small part of dialog I'm interested in testing in the timeline. I put that up into the timeline. Then I want to try, say, the medium shot of Actor #1 for the same small bit of dialogue and see if that works better relative to the mix with the previous shot and what I'm thinking will probably be the next shot. So I plunk that clip into the Trimmer and get only the exact bit I need and put that into another track, just under the close up. Maybe I even do a long shot, etc. Then I play between each of them to decide which one works best. If I didn't have the trimmer, it would take longer and not be as manageable. This way I can get EXACTLT what I want in the Trimmer window and try it out. Sorry for the long winded response! Hope it is understandable.

Another example: the Director comes by to see the rough cut. He says, “Where the heck is the line where Actor #1 says, ‘She’ll appreciate a letter.’”? I say, he didn’t say it. The Director says, yes he did, check the other takes. Well, I have logged all the takes as clips, according to what dialogue is covered. I go to my log, find every take containing these lines, plunk one at a time up in the Trimmer and show the Director that the actor missed the line every time. It was so fast and easy (took less than one minute for entire process) and we could go on to the next item at hand. I love the Trimmer.

JCG