Bob - it's easy ...

The Trimmer is exactly the right tool.

Say the first Car is Car "A". Drag to select the in and out points of its first run.
Hit R to create Region - type in a name - e.g. "Car A Run 1"
Next car the same, Region name "Car B Run 2"
Eventually you'll get to Car A's second run.
Create Region - "Car A Run 2"
Once you've finished and saved your Regions, Vegas Explorer (Region View) has a list of
everything, organised with all the footage for any given car grouped together.
You can drag from here to the timeline, singly or severally.

The order can be re-organised any time by clicking on any header, and twice to toggle reverse order.

Peter,
that idea entered my head however the problem is this. Go through the first run and mark and label 20 regions. Then get to the second run and I have to keep going back to the first run to identify the cars and it's very easy to forget just what the car in the second run looks like, no number on these cars, some are quite similar to look at.

Craftech,
your idea might work very well as the visual cues would be there from the T/L thumbnails, see the cars aren't running in the same order for each run and as the shot is from a very different angle / part of the track, there's no numbers on the cars and sometimes the cameraman didn't get all the cars in the 2nd, 3rd and fouth runs.

Bob.

Yes I see the problem Bob.

In that case, I would initally name the regions for each run ...
A1, A2, A3, A4 then
B1. B2. B3 etc
regardless of which cars were which. At least I've then got all the runs ordered and separated.
Then I would look again at A1 - rename it Car1/1.
Now look quickly from B1 (auto play will preview as soon as you click on each Region) -through B2 etc until you find the same car - and if you find it in the second runs, rename this Region as Car 1/2)
Back to Run A2 - rename it Car2/1 and look for its next run, which you will rename Car2/2 etc

If say Car 7 doesn't turn up in the B's - doesn't matter - look until you find it in the C's or D's and rename that region Car7/3 or Car7/4.

If you see a Region still named F1 or whatever, you know you haven't yet re-sorted it into Car and Run order.

Bob, I guess it's not the method used by most but I find the old pencil and paper a great help in this sort of project. I go through each clip and write down a description of the action and subject. Very briefly, of course. Once this has been logged then it's quite quick to locate the required clips. If clips contain more than one car I'd cut and name the sub-clips in trimmer, and of course add these to my log. Takes some time to organise, but pays off with less frustration and makes it easier to do later edits. But for sure this procedure reveals my celluloid and scissors experience.

Serena,
You are exactly right. I use good old pencil and paper but you could use a spreadsheet like Excel. I also use Powerpoint to story board the main sections but in the good old days I used 5x7 index cards. The sound track can be just as much work to deal with. Unless there is a constant sound you have to create clips of sounds for each car as well. Typically I film what I edit but if this type of footage is handed to you that makes the old pencil and paper all that more important.

I've not used subclips, but aren't they a solution? then just make a tag for the cars and a tag for whatever else you want, then just drag and drop the tag on to the appropriate subclips. That way, when you are done logging all this stuff into the MM, you can just hit a checkmark and have all the A car footage, then you can hit another check mark, and have all the A car footage from the 3rd turn, or the 2nd race, or the 3rd turn of the 2nd race.

Seems to me (if that's the way the subclips can be utilized) that your answer lies in subclips and the MM.

Dave

Bother, Bob! There I was lying in bed getting to sleep and thinking about your edit problem. It won't help much but it's a bit like that old joke on getting directions to a destination: "If I was going there I wouldn't start from here". I was just finishing for the night when I perused your query, so wasn't really thinking well.
I would have let Cineform split each tape into clips, which I would log as I described but if your memory is fantastic then you could skip that. You load the clips into media manager. You create a tag for each car. Now you play each clip in MM and tag (if clip has more than one car then apply all appropriate tags. You might create tags for event or place (eg. turn #2) and apply these as well. Now when you tick the tag for car "blue Ford ute" MM will show all clips containing that car. If you want to cut a track sequence (top of hill, valley , turn #3 etc) then clicking the relevant tag brings up all clips containing that. Obviously you can have "blue Ford" & "top of Hill" & "round #3". Then its quick to drag the clips to the timeline according to the script you've written around the available material.
Noting that you haven't split the clips in Cineform, this excellent method isn't likely to help.
Now I'll go back to bed!

hmm.. many good workarounds..

IMO, the best option (i do this with Vox Pops) is to segregate each car... in my case, i segregate each question... but the same rules apply here..

basically once uve segregate that one particular vehicle, save it as "Blah Blah Yellow Coupe 1"

start a new project, and do the same for each car.. jsut ensure that that veg file is ONLY left with that one vehicle... i know its tedious sifting through all that footage, but thats the job my friend..

Once u have each car in its own Veg file, go through each VEg individually and edit as required. take a breakevery now and then, coz it will get boring 9all longform does ) IMO anything shot over 2 hours is longform.. lol)

PL, now once each veg has been edited to your liking, create a new project and sequence each car's Veg as project media as required then finish off by adding ur titles etc etc

the quickest way to go through your footage, is to literally zoom into your timeline and scrub.. once u found the car in question.. do what needs to be done to it.. and delete everythign else.

I find this works best for this kind of thing as with teh abundance of footage, theres always crap, but segregating each car makes things easier.

as for trimming, i wouldnt bother with subclips and all that when working with a lump 7 hrs footage..
Id work on the trimmer (if need be. .or the timeline directly) adding the new cuts as u go along AFTER youve segregated teh cars...
It may seem like teh long way out, but its actually th easiest way to NOT make mistakes...
i would really focus on compiling the content first.. and making sure the cars are actually covered as you want them to be.... once THAT is established (ie one veg for each car) , then u can edit THOSE pieces with the trimmer etc etc.. and then have a master Veg with those smaller Veg as your media..

This kind of structure works well for me, and ive been doing 3 Vox Pops a year for the last 4 years fo a prominant marketting company and with teh deadlines they giv,e its the most efficient way of working error free.. with that much footage, mistakes or leaving things out are a definite possibility..
I definitaely wouldnt be watching ALL the footage...

working this way with segregated groups, works well... and is a good management of media. (in the past i would edit each "question" <in ur case a car> to an new AVI and import those little ones into one master Veg. Now with Projects as media, we dont have to render..

i dunno if im making any sense.. but if i had the Veg files and the media, id be able to show u what i mean. Im in sydney, so i dunno where in aus u are...

Another option is to open 6 Instances at a time..
in the first one, u have ur main raw footage..
number 2 has the green 4wd, number 3 has the yellow coupe, number 4 has blue sedana nd so on..

Now, the ONE veg which has all your raw.. is used as the HUGE MOFO TRIMMER>. like Doom, this acts as your BFG... lol

now, scrub through and split whever u see the yellow coupe.. any shot witht the yelow coupe is split, cut and pasted in the INDIVIDUAL instance for THAT particualr car... do this and with memory, remmeber that when u see the blue sedan, u can now cut that out and paste it inot the Blue Sedan Veg.. and as u scrub along, your Raw footage will decrease as u shuffle split clips from Instance to Instance..

Now once ur happy, save each cars Veg but KEEP your BGT (Big Fekkin Trimmer) open..
Open up some new Instance and start again.. this time picking out whatever cars are left...

This might work.. theres alot of juming from screen to screen, but it works..

Farss, you have a dual or three lcd workstation? MAny ways to approach this, first create dir file like "index",assign timestamp funtion to master clips and tape number data , as you "find" cars, save car/scene image into index dir. using a program like ADC Pro, display the images in dir on third screen on some part of second screen. This will give a visual image and index data of cars. if you don't have enought screen space, but have a network, put the index dir on the one of network computers, one that you can put the screen near your workscreen, using this to view images. I have found that assigning a track for comments help with image clips.

You might want to use more than one instance of Vegas in order to avoid going back and forth on the timeline. Have the first instance set to the first part of the race, and then use that as a reference for matching cars as you scrub through the later parts of the race in the second instance of Vegas. You can simple Alt-Tab back and forth between the two views.

Thanks to all for all the help and Serena, sorry to keep you up late.

1) Clips and Subclips I don't want to go near. Much to my surprise sub clips seem to create new physical clips. Two problems here, one I've already eaten up most of my 400GB with m2t and CF DI files, secondly there's a know issue with having too many HDVish clips on the T/L. If this was a DV project my approach would have been to render out new clips from the T/L and then as suggested rename them appropriately.

2) Craftechs very simple method seems the best and simplest solution. Split off the first run and put that on lower track. Then add runs 2,3,4 on upper tracks and split all those. Then slide them around to match what's on bottom track. In effect I've then got a multicam project setup. That means the bottom track's events set the timing and I just trim the events on the upper tracks, dead simple, the visual cues are there and I can use track Mute / Solo to get a better look at a track and / or adjust opacity temporarily.

3) I need to spend some time seeing how MM can help with these kinds of jobs, more on the way i hope.

Overall the bewildering thing is that Vegas really offers nothing over the old scissors and sticky tape approach. Well OK, it's not that tedious but the paradigm is still the same, you have to physically Cut to create a clip and use bins etc.

I'm still left with a question, why hasn't the original approach been virtualised in any NLE. As we move away from the traditional tape / film based acquisition seems to me editing systems need to catch up. Disk space now costs nothing and I'm hearing of shoots using digital film cameras where the camera is just left rolling, they slate shots but there's no break in the recorded media. One can I guess still split the file but why have too, why not use virtual 'cuts' rather than having to physically split the file.

Bob.

Craftechs very simple method seems the best and simplest solution
========
Bob,

I rendered a small clip of a recent show I did to show you how it looks.

John

Subclips are just "By Reference" clips. They don't create new media on the HDD.

I had a similar problem last year. We had several rambling interviews with lonely people talking about their pets. I let vidcap break it up and I also tried using sublclips. Media manager wasn't available yet so it wasn't an option.

Here's how I would have handled it in retrospect:

Capture whole tapes.
Review the tapes in the trimmer
--mark and name regions
--make subclips based on the regions-use the same names (Hint, make the subclips with big heads and tails)
--sort subclips into meaningful bins
--edit

Now I'd have been left with the same problem - Subclips have hard endings and can't be extended out like they can in some other NLEs. It's STUPID but there is some logic to it that I've forgotten, I think Nat pointed it out once and it related to audio.

We're assuming that you really want to use bins here. Regions don't appear in bins, subclips don't appear in explorer. Most systems use bins so it's natural to expect to use them.

Anyway, the solution with the subclips lies in the fact that I also made regions. If you want to extend the ends of the subclip you can go back to the parent media and remake the subclip. While you're at it, reset the bounds of the region that matches it. This just makes it easier to find these things in the trimmer.

That's how I would deal with it if I had to do it again. The advantage to the subclips is that you can sort them into bins. However, there are rantariffic peeves I have about the whole arrangement:

Subclips, Regions, and the Media Manager are all competing technologies. None of them really relates to the other.
--Can you sort regions into bins? No.
--can you view subclips in the Vegas explorer? No
--Can you use the explorer to find a region without knowing what clip the region is in? No
--Can you see regions in the media manager? no
--Can you see subclips in the media manager? No
--Can you extend the heads and tails of a subclip? No
--Can you edit the heads and tails of that subclip? No, you must throw it away and make a new one.
--Can you move a subclip from one project to another? Yes but it will lose it's custom name and all media FX. WTF!

I think the various developers who own these three features ought to start talking to each other. This is a "Vegas doesn't have any media management" issue.

Now, post rant, there are some good ideas here in this thread that show there are many ways to skin a cat (or make cat-hamburger). The Regions-only method is usable when you've only got a few media files, like 3-5 tapes. The Media Manger would work if you broke up the project into many clips, and it sounds pretty powerful once you do that. If it could handle subclips and regions it'd be te tool to use, and maybe it can do that but I don't see it.

Rob Mack

Overall the bewildering thing is that Vegas really offers nothing over the old scissors and sticky tape approach. Well OK, it's not that tedious but the paradigm is still the same, you have to physically Cut to create a clip and use bins etc.

I think the reason for this is because the developers don't know... they don't edit full-time. They aren't running into situations like yours.

To me, it would make the most sense if regions and subclips were more merged into one idea. There should be a way to search regions to bring up the clips you want (i.e. via MM).
You might also want subclips if you're working with audio (and want the subclip to loop). Ideally, you could take a subclip and make a region out of it to see the entire clip (i.e. create a region in the subclip's original/master clip).

2- Last time I just used another .veg and made notes via naming regions.
Unfortunately, not all file types support regions. And if you are working FAT32, the 4GB limitation might stop regions from being created (not sure about this). But Vegas will let you make regions anyways... and not save them.

You nailed it.

The ability to loop was the reason subclips have hard heads and tails.

my impression of subclips has been that it was a feature added to make some users happy but that the developers had no concept of how or why you'd use it.

I think that the regions and subclips ideas should be merged. Make regions become pool objects by default, or use an "always make, never make, or always ask" preference. Add a property that you can toggle on and off to make the subclip loop or not loop.

Make media manager delve into the media file to determine if it has regions, and assign the regions their own entries in the manager.

Rob Mack

Another trick, mentioned before, is to start each subclip with something like the car number and a sequence like aa-zz. You can then sort them by name and select and drag all the clips, say for car 54, to the timeline at once. Been awhile but I think I also used media manager and it did allow me to do away with the pencil and paper.

Larry

This is the sort of material I deal with all the time (but not cars) although I haven't yet had seven hours of it. The difficulty is that real continuity doesn't exist so the end product is more of an impression of an event rather than a record. So my aim is to tell an interesting story that reflects a reality of the event and individual efforts and competitors and others are pleased (hopefully better than that). I don't think there is anyway past getting very familiar with the material. If the event has natural compartmentalisation (eg. tapes 1 &2, or preparation, race 1, 2, 3, and afterwards) then each can be dealt with separately (in the familiarisation and rough edit process). In the two approaches I mentioned earlier the first was definitely from my film editing (bins for cut film, tag notes and logs). The second was for MM, which is really excellent for this sort of thing. Again, you have to spend the time to create tags and to apply the tags to the clips; this takes time (but it involves just dragging either tag or clip and goes quickly) but makes the rest of your time very productive.
I would find the suggested multitrack procedures very tedious and frustrating, but obviously they could be well suited to a strict event timeline. It appears to me this isn't that type of project because it was a single camera shoot and that timeline doesn't exist.
This type of project isn't cheap in post production, or at least not for a end result which is more than a piece for the evening sports report.

Too tired to follow all the above suggestions, but for identifiying the cars...
I'd definitely grab a frame of each - import it into photoshop and make a master contact sheet to at least have a paper printout of all the cars for identification.
I'tll take 20 minutes or so - but you'll thank me 1000 times for the ease in identifying 20 cars later down stream.
v
ps - damn, I missed you again at NAB - next year...

Remember that just because it was shot three times it does not mean that the time order for each car must be preserved (continuity excepted). This is what I would do for your consideration.

I would forget Media Manager and the Trimmer! Edit out into good usable clips for each car one at a time, so you have CarAclip1, CarAclip2, CarAclip3,.....CarBclip1, CarBclip2.... etc with each car on its OWN timeline. No need to name the clips. Spread each time line so the clips follow the same time scale so each car is approximately on the same part of the track as will appear in the final timeline. IE car A on bend 3 is above car D clips 1, 2 and 3 on bend 3. If you find a car (or a location) you can not identify then don't use that clip. Where you have groups of cars then choose the prime subject/leader. With groups playing with time shuffling needs a little extra care.

Have you final project on a line of its own and drag clips for each cars timeline down to the final timeline as you see fit. If you have organized as above then all the drags will be vertical ones from the cars timeline to the final bottom timeline. If after playing the final first draught you see a problem it is easy to change. Then when you have the time order right go through your time line cutting each clip for visual appeal and to give you the story and length you want.

Michael

It's a good idea and works a bit like a storyboard.

Since Bob wants to have as few source media files as possible hed drop a tape onto the timeline and then start cutting out parts and sorting them into other timelines.

You could do this a few ways. I think I'd stil use the trimmer, especially with the limited number of source files. The reason is that you can totally cover your butt by moving through that big media file in the trimmer, marking a region, and adding it to the timeline. Then you get a timeline full of your clips and the regions are marked too. And if you decide to make subclips from a named region in the trimmer, the subclip gets the region name.

Print frames of the cars for identification, or just export frames and view them on screen. In fact, if they're on the clipboard you can toggle them on and off in preview window, although clipboard content is a little easy to overwrite.

Rob Mack

Apologies to Bob for a slight deviation - although it is STILL on beam regarding his initial title - but not about finding a real world solution . .

What IS the difference between an Alpha/Beta tester for Vegas and this statement from Glenn?

I think the reason for this is because the developers don't know... they don't edit full-time. They aren't running into situations like yours.

Answer that conundrum and, IMHO, could see greater/wider/targeted improvements in making this stable NLE even more seductive for the unwashed.

Apart from the "odd" ( read Grazie here! ) software suggestion being emailed to that big "Suggestion Box" in the sky, just where do us mere mortals get to input and have our user feedback get recognised?

We have a wealth of Vegas experience PLUS many decades/centuries of users experience within the biz, on this Forum, how could this be better "tapped" for the benefit of Vegas and SONY?

Grazie

Grazie,

I think that there are many user suggestions in Vegas. So keep making those suggestions.

The problem isn't that the suggestions aren't being picked up but it might be that they aren't checking in with the people who made the suggestions later on. Some features seem half-baked and some of them I know for a fact to have originated from user's suggestions.

The problem of programmers not really seeing the paractical use of things is not limited to Vegas, by the way.

And of course by the time something's in beta I don't think many new features are being added. For instance, I had another company showing us the proposed features of their version 9 product a month after we took delivery of their version 8. Probably, Madison should do a little road show and find out from users what they want.

Rob Mack