This is EXACTLY the type of thing I am talking about in this thread. After Vegas 4 the company completely forgot about the basic editor and how to improve it. They completely ignored addressing long standing complaints about things like the credit roll, titler, ripple edit, sudden audio dropouts, flash frames, etc. Although I am apparently in the extreme minority I haven't "upgraded" past Vegas 4 and haven't regretted it either. I did wish they would have allowed a purchase of DVDA independent of Vegas, but they won't and that is a small sacrifice to pay to hold out until some of these long standing complaints are addressed and REAL improvements to the editor are made. Then I will happily "upgrade". It certainly isn't the cost of upgrading. That's cheap. It's the principle of the thing.

John

No, grouping is the way to make sure the clips don't wander apart. You haven't described why this isn't a satisfactory solution.

Doesn't Excalibur or Tsunami have an "unsplit" feature? I'm not at my editing station and can't remember for sure.

Jack

Excalibur does. You can also open a clip in the Trimmer and it's unsplit at that point.

why not just drop it to a new track at the same spot and drag it out?

Dave

It's not clear whether the two events you want to join are two separate clips or just a split you want to undo.

to undo a split you can delete one side of the split then drag the other side's edge to fill the space left by the deletion

to join two separate clips you can select the two as a looped region then render both to a single new clip, but this is not normally necessary, as once they are butted up to each other they will behave as if they are contiguous.

I also find this is a very basic editing feature. It would be very helpful to have a single script to do this.

Marco

Read Peter's answer again. It covers this issue pretty well.

I'll point out that one excellent way to un-split is to use the undo function. Now, true, this is only useful if you have done very little or even nothing else since splitting. However, the chance that an un-split is really what you want decreases very rapidly as you do more editing. As you make more edits, you will probably have moved more things around, added more events, possibly even inserted material between the two split parts, or even deleted one of the parts completely. At this point, un-splitting would probably mess up much more than it would help! By the time undo becomes unviable, un-split would be a disaster anyway.

For those times when you really do want to regain the part you split off, simply dragging the end of the first part out again works very nicely and is completely under your control. In fact, i'll let you in on a secret ... it's actually very easy!

I'm aware of all the ways there are to unsplit a former cut event. And I appreciate the unsplit feature of Excalibur.
Nevertheless I think best workflow you could have for unsplitting is having a single script which does exactly same as Excaliburs unsplit feature. Neither dragging the Events edge, nor using the Vegas Undo feature, nor using the Trimmer is a real option. These are workarounds only. At least my opinion.
This is same like swapping two events. It's not that big deal to manually move the two events. But a much better workflow is provided by using the SwapEvents-script.

Marco

Kelly,
I have used this method of dragging the end of a clip before, but I sometimes end up with gaps between the other edits after doing so. Most of the time when I do this it is LATER in the editing process with lots of tracks to deal with. As many as 13-14.
How do you avoid the gaps? I always leave Quantize to Frames on unless I am audio editing, but I still get the gaps. If I go back say an hour into a two hour project on the timeline and drag an edge, how do I "easily" move everything down the timeline with NO gaps. I find that I have to manually adjust every single edit point to get it "right" or as 'close to' right as it can be.

John

John

Unless you have auto ripple on, deleting half a split event will not move anything anywhere on the timeline - it will simply leave a gap which will be filled when you drag the edge of the remaining split half. If it is important to be totally accurate, you can mark the outside edge of the half you are going to delete with a Marker, then after deleting, drag the edge of the other half to this marker, which can then itself be deleted.

If on the other hand you wish to delete something then close the gap, Ctrl Shift F will close the gap and move everything equally, without creating any other new gaps.

- or have I misunderstood your question?

or have I misunderstood your question?
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I think so Peter. What I am saying is this:

Lets say I have an event on tracks 5&6 butted up against an event on tracks 9&10.

I decide later that the edit point between them doesn't look the way I want it to and I need another 2-3 seconds from tracks 5&6 added before the transition point. I can drag the edge of the 5&6 event to make it a little longer then trim it till it looks right, but then I have to move all of the rest of the events on the timeline down to fit it in. That means the events on tracks 1&2, 3&4, 7&8, 11&12, and 13&14 all have to be moved down.
It doesn't seem to work out without gaps and I find that I have to manually move each of them because nothing else works (not select events to end combined with any form of Ripple edit, or anything else). And no matter which method I use to move them gaps occur.
It is the lack of interest in making those types of basic editing processes easier to do that irks me about the latest and "greatest" releases of Vegas. Basic editing has been considered "done" since Vegas 3.0. I strongly disagree.

John

For the operation you just described i would enable Auto Ripple for all events, tracks, and markers. Stretching the event on 5&6 out longer would then move every event on all tracks from the edit position to the end out by exactly the same amount as the stretch. This should accomplish almost all of what you want to do. I have done this many times and never had problems with gaps.

I can see that there would be some issues with events that span the edit position. These may have to be manually adjusted after completing the stretch. Hey, when you change a track of a multitrack project, something has to happen to the other tracks too. I don't see this as an issue either. To expect Vegas to do these changes for you automatically would be asking it to make edit decisions for you. Vegas may be a great piece of software, but when i make an edit, i want to be the one making it. What would you expect Vegas to do? Should it automatically extend these other events? Should it leave them in place and put empty space after them? Should it move them forward and leave empty space in front of them? Should it split them where you make the edit and leave empty space there? Should it find alternate clips in your media pool and fill in the space with selected sections of them? Now, before you say that last option is too farfetched, it really isn't any more so than the other options. In all cases, Vegas is deciding what to do with your project. I would prefer it to do the absolute minimum change necessary to maintain sync after the edit point and leave me with the task of making the other adjustments.

This is editing after all. When you make a change like you describe, something has to give on other tracks and it's up to you to do what is necessary to make it all work.

Going back to the original question about unsplit, if all you are doing is joining a split event back together with no other editing, then disable ripple edits, delete the second part, and stretch the first part out to fill the space. This won't affect anything else in the project at all.

For the operation you just described i would enable Auto Ripple for all events, tracks, and markers. Stretching the event on 5&6 out longer would then move every event on all tracks from the edit position to the end out by exactly the same amount as the stretch. This should accomplish almost all of what you want to do. I have done this many times and never had problems with gaps.
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I'll try that Kelly. AutoRipple always scared the hell out of me so I never use it.
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To expect Vegas to do these changes for you automatically ....
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No one is expecting that at all, but if the editor is non-destructive one should be able to jump from point to point using a History that is always saved without having to re-do everything after you go back and fix something.


John

People do get into trouble with Auto Ripple, but it's nothing to be scared by. Powerful tool; I'd hate to be without it. As in driving a car -- you have to pay attention.

- and don't forget, you can get exactly the same effect without auto ripple - after dragging the event edge to lengthen it, you'll notice a grey line/arrow above the timeline. This is Vegas telling you it knows by exactly how much you've lengthened the event, and post edit ripple (Ctrl/Shift F) will move everything to the right by exactly that amount.