How do YOU use the A/B track layers . . .

AFSDMS wrote on 6/13/2003, 10:08 PM
Following the great discussion of the trimmer (gee, I'm NOT alone after all) I got to thinking about the A and B layers in a video track. I used to 'do' film and am familiar with A/B rolls, but I once tried to figure out how to put something on the 'B' roll and failed miserably. It kind of seemed redundent with all the track available, but I imagined it wouldn't be there unless it really made some work easier.

I hope I'm not alone in wondering how the A/B layers of a video track are best put to use.

Comments

rebel44 wrote on 6/13/2003, 10:22 PM
In Insert option you insert another video track and drop the frames into it.What could be more easy? or just from media pool drop the clips and timeline will be created(video and audio).
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/13/2003, 11:17 PM
I love drop/dragging a clip onto another clip for the auto fades. Premiere 6 doesn't do this (unless you used track 1 only). It was a major pain in my butt to do multi clip fades at the same time (had to adjust the rubber band on everything on seperate tracks!!!).
The auto track creation when putting a clip on the timeline is awsome too.
These two things make slicing up clips and fading easier then cutting warm butter. :)
Chienworks wrote on 6/14/2003, 7:06 AM
The auto-crossfade feature in Vegas pretty much obviates A/B layers. From what i've seen of their posts in here, SonicFoundry pretty much admits that the ability to expose the A/B layers is merely to make people used to other editors more comfortable. In Vegas, there is no precedance of A over B; they're both equal, so there's no need to worry about whether a clip is in the A layer or the B layer. You can't intentionally choose one or the other, but it doesn't matter anyway.

About the only use i've found for the feature is to help me detect when i've accidentally piled three clips up on top of each other. It's not easy to see this in a single layer, but when exposing the A/B layers it shows up clearer.
AFSDMS wrote on 6/16/2003, 10:35 AM
And I thought there was some magical capability buried in there. Makes much more sense now that it seems to just be a feature to ease users who are transitioning from another product.

Thanks for the comments!
BrianStanding wrote on 6/16/2003, 12:31 PM
The only time I use the A/B layers is when I have inadvertently overlapped media and need to expand the layers to get a better idea what's actually going on. Helps cleaning up "mistake" overlaps.

Other than that, I agree, no real advantage over single track behavior.
StormMarc wrote on 6/16/2003, 9:41 PM
One thing I really miss from Premiere is the ability to drag a transition and see the length of the transition in the info pallete. I have not been able to find a way to see the length of a Vegas transition (looked in edit details). I have to double click on it to create a selection of the transition. These are extra steps and it seems like it would be simple for SF to show the overlapped transition area in edit details --or even better would be right on the bottom right corner of the timeline (hint...hint) automatically as you overlap clips.

Marc