Importing Video

rollysons wrote on 4/22/2009, 5:00 PM
Up front, I am a newbie to this video editing. I have a music performance that is 51 minutes long that I want to edit. When I import video using File-Import-DVD Camcorder Disc it chops the video into smaller movie clips. No big deal but when I put them into the timeline the video track is fine but the audio track chops the last second or so. I can't just move them up against each other in the timeline without having a quite obvious gap in the audio portion.

So is there A) a way to have the audio and video portions of the clip be exactly the same size on the timeline while not losing anything? or B) any way to have the importing sequence not chop the the files into small sizes or else adjust the sizes?

Thanks.

Shannon

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 4/22/2009, 9:46 PM
Check your camera's manual first: it may well be that it is your camera that chops up the video in smaller pieces.
Chienworks wrote on 4/23/2009, 3:52 AM
Probably the camcorder is inserting chapter markers every X minutes. Vegas' import function barfs completely at these when splitting them up. Vegas absolutely needs to have an option to ignore chapters and import as a single file! Unbelievable that this isn't an option. Alternatively check the camcorder manual to see if the chapter markers can be turned off, though this won't help on videos already recorded.

Head on over to the Vegas pro forum and search for "dvd import". You'll find lots of alternative ways to import DVDs that avoid the problem.
Terry Esslinger wrote on 4/23/2009, 10:37 AM
Could also be the FAT32 drive format problem. FAT32 drives have a limit of 4GB per file. It will break up larger files into these smaller sizes. If this is a problem youn need to reformat your drive as NTSF.
richard-amirault wrote on 4/23/2009, 1:28 PM
When I import video using File-Import-DVD Camcorder Disc it chops the video into smaller movie clips.

Well, I'm not sure *exactly* what you mean by this. Vegas does this automatically with "scene detect" . It splits the imported video whenever there is a new "scene". In other words .. when ever you stoped recording, paused the camcorder for 5 seconds or 5 minutes, then started recording again.

By doing this it makes it easier to find specific parts of the video, as well as import specific parts and then, if you decide later, to go and find somthing else you didn't think you needed.

Is this what is happening? Are the splits all at the end/begining of scenes? Or is something else happening?
Chienworks wrote on 4/23/2009, 1:54 PM
Vegas doesn't scene-detect on DVD import. Also, since DVDs are usually limited to 4.7MB then a FAT32 problem would at most cause one split, not 'lots of smaller files'.

DVD import splits on chapter markers, and many DVD-recording devices automatically set markers at 5 or 10 minute intervals. I suppose some camcorders might do so each time recording starts, but the automatic markers are much more of a problem because they can come in the middle of what should be a contiguous scene. Unfortunately Vegas offers no method to get around this problem.
bz wrote on 4/30/2009, 5:44 PM
I have exactly the same problem. I zoom in and look at the wave form. It turns out that the first 0.12 seconds (or so) of the audio is missing. When I look at the wave form in the timeline, it looks like the last couple seconds is missing. But in reality, it is the first couple seconds that is missing in the audio not the last couple seconds. And then Vegas lines up the audio to the left.