How take parts of 2 original videos and make one.

dsttexas wrote on 8/31/2014, 2:37 PM

I have a home movie project with original movies taken by different folks over a similar time frame. I want to create a single chronological timeline video by capturing various clips from each original and putting them in proper date sequence in a new movie. My thought was to capture each clip I want and somehow put it in a "folder" as an appropriately named avi file, and do this with each clip I want from each of the 2 original videos. Then build my new video from those individual avi's by dropping on the timeline in sequence.

I can't see an easy way to do this.

Another thought is to edit down each original to contain only the clips I want, save each one as an avi, then start a new project and load the two avi files, and cut and move clips from within it to build the sequence. But not sure how to really do that kind of clip movement either.

By the way, one original video was originally shot with 16 mm tape, converted to VHS, then imported as an avi. The other was VHS camcorder imported as avi, I plan to use the DV settings for these. Correct?

Any suggestions? Movie studio 12.

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 8/31/2014, 3:43 PM

Is this your first project with Vegas? I'm asking, because what you want to do seems pretty straight forward to me. (No offense intended) Editing in Vegas is non-destructive for the source file, so you can cut and edit all you want on the timeline, while your original source file remains untouched.

Reserve a video track for each source. Then drag your files to the corresponding tracks. Make sure the audio also has its own audio track. Then start cutting/splitting (by putting the cursor where you want the cut and hit the S-key. You can delete what you don't need. First throw out the uninteresting parts of each track. Then recreate the chronology by moving the pieces around.

musicvid10 wrote on 8/31/2014, 7:50 PM

The interactive tutorials that come with your software are excellent.
After following them, post back if you have further questions.

Steve Grisetti wrote on 9/1/2014, 8:25 AM

I've also got a series of 8 free Basic Training videos on the left side of this page that you may find helpful.
http://muvipix.com/sms12.php

Jillian wrote on 9/1/2014, 2:57 PM

You might also want to purchase Steve's excellent book on Movie Studio and there are hundreds of good and not so good how-to videos on the Web.

Steve Grisetti wrote on 9/2/2014, 7:18 AM

Thanks for the kind endorsement, Jillian!

dsttexas wrote on 9/7/2014, 3:47 PM

Thanks all. Steve's book and video's are great.

I guess after reviewing these I still have a question as to the "best" way to proceed. My source media files now look to be two 1 to 1 1/2 hours (Ext Play VHS to avi) and several 1 hour or so DV avi files from Hi8 camcorder. These 5-6 hours of video will likely only produce about a 1 hour final project after having viewed them and making notes on what to keep.

Given the length and number of these, would you recommend 1) working through each one in the Preview editor to select out the clips of value as individual media clips (discarding 80% and keeping about 20% of original), then load selected media to timeline and final edit all events, or 2) put each original on its own video/audio timeline to edit each from there then combine into a final?

May be just a personal preference, but would there be processing and memory constraints with one way or the other? And would the multiple (4-5) event timelines of method 2) be too confusing to work with? Steve's guides would suggest process 1) is preferred, and seems to me to make more sense to me too.

Thanks again.

videoITguy wrote on 9/7/2014, 7:25 PM

Individual taste will determine how you discriminate between usable footage and throw away from such a project. I would think that your particular sources are easy to work that out - because essentially we all know more than 80-85% of it is throw away (just be honest here).
The clue is get familiar with it by review, review, and review, then you make your choices bringing less than 20% of the source to the timeline thru the trimmer.
This is a totally different select situation than what a pro would deal with when footage is shot in 10 to 1 ratio and you have to match up best exposure, etc, of repetitive takes.
For that kind of select - you go to burned in timecode - do all review to a note taking of in/and out points and then bring it to an NLE, and final conform to original.