How do I move a still precisely?

ritsmer wrote on 11/29/2006, 2:08 AM

I need to move stills precisely in the timeline to make precise lenght of crossfades or to make them follow the music - and it seems to be too coarse what I can do with the cursor (a good laser mouse) - even if I set the timeline to show 5 seconds over approx. 3 -4 centimetres - and even if I adjust the cursor driver to slower movements.
When I nudge the stills they mostly jump 0.2-0.3 seconds or more.
Any good suggestions?
BTW: are anybody having good experiences with other devices than a mouse? thumbball? joystick? other?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/29/2006, 3:40 AM

Zoom in farther.

I use the trackpad on my laptop and a scummy $8 mouse on my desktop. Generally i do most editing with the zoom level set to show one second increments across the ruler. I have no trouble adjusting frame by frame.

If you select an event on the timeline you will see a set of three timecode displays under the right corner of the timeline. These are respectively start, end, and duration of the selected event. Doubleclick on any of these and you can type in whatever value you wish. This lets you do frame accurate editing no matter what zoom level.

Glynn wrote on 11/29/2006, 2:48 PM

I find the quickest way is to position the cursor at the end of the event and use the arrow key to back up. About ten gives me 2 seconds. Just snap the next event to give the cross fade.

Chienworks wrote on 11/29/2006, 3:12 PM

How far the arrow keys move the cursor depends on the zoom level. It could be thousandths of a frame if you're zoomed in close enough and have quantize to frames turned off. It could be 10 seconds or more if you have a very long project and are zoomed out far enough to see the whole timeline.

Alt-arrows always move the cursor a single frame at a time.

rustier wrote on 11/29/2006, 3:14 PM

How about this:

Since the pics follow the music
Just play the video with the music with your finger over the M key and press it wherever your ear tells you you want a photo change. Then just snap the pics to the markers and stretch or compress the photo event to suit your needs , making sure whatever transition you use is complete at the marker.

Note* The preview may not be totally accurate with the timing. I know sometimes in the past I have had to go back and fine tune a slide show - since the sync was important to me.