Let's hear it for the Trimmer

PeterWright wrote on 10/2/2003, 2:12 AM

I've read a few "who uses the Trimmer anyway?" type comments in various places recently, and felt moved to write in defence of this great tool.

Maybe there are other ways of doing the following, in which case please share how you do this ...

My captured footage is made up of three one hour clips. I have almost finished putting together a half hour programme, maybe three weeks work - hundreds of cuts etc.

I want to insert a 3 second piece of footage I haven't previously used.

I double click a clip in Explorer which opens the Trimmer, quickly find and select the 3 seconds I'm after and lift it to the timeline.

If there's an easier way, I'd love to hear it.

- and of course the Trimmer can do much more than this ....

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Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 10/2/2003, 4:00 PM

Seems YOU are the one looking for a fight Zippy. You only complain and rant and frequently use long runs of all caps. Annoying and universally frowned on practies in newsgroups and forums everywhere.

You want to be accepted as a contributing member of the forum? Then apologize now for all your past bad behavior and stop acing like some spoiled ten year old just looking for attention by throwing a temper tantrum everytime you can't get Vegas to do what you think it should.

Grazie wrote on 10/2/2003, 4:09 PM

I like the Trimmer - keeps this Messy Editor in order. Have some Trimmer questions . . I'll make separate posts . . .

Grazie

rmack350 wrote on 10/2/2003, 5:30 PM

My guess would be that it was taken out in 2.0. As far as I know it was always there in 3.0. I wasn't using 2.0

The thing about Vegas, and most good software, is that it provides a user with several ways to do a thing. That's good! Consider most photoshop filters, especially the color filters. They're largely different ways of looking at a task. Lots of them really do just about the same thing.

Editing and logging works differently for different types of projects. When my shop does tabletop shoots for instructional videos we log everything in Word as we shoot. (It imports into M100 and is the basis for digitization). In these cases we know exactly what we'll never use and we don't digitize it.

In addition to our editor working in M100 I also use the same footage in Vegas. I never use the trimmer and I capture with scene detection on. For my particular task I just don't need the trimmer. But other people do and I'm reading about some good uses for it today. And I'm seeing that there are ways to make it more powerful. Some people are using it as a logging tool, for instance. How could it be more powerful for a task like that?

Personally I had thought that the place for more powerful reviewing and logging tools was in the vidcap program but there's no reason you can't work around from the back door by using the trimmer.

About leonardo and spontaneity...

Leonardo made lots of sketches and studies before painting
Hitchcock supposedly had everything thoroughly planned before production started
One of the Germans (Fassbinder? Herzog?) claimed that everthing aesthetic happened in preproduction and that the production stage was merely athletic. (Aliterative fellow)
And even the Great B.B. reviews and logs his footage before he starts to cut.

Rob Mack

PeterWright wrote on 10/2/2003, 7:58 PM

Friday morning - Well, thanks for some interesting posts, and special thanks to mjroddy for remembering to answer my question.

A couple of points. The reason I often capture the whole tape in one clip is I honestly won't know exactly which bits I'll use till the programme starts to evolve. Having everything there and available means instant access and no searching and recapturing.

And, in the scenario I described, there's no room to put a one-hour clip on the timeline to find 3 seconds of it - this is in the middle of an almost completed programme, and the Trimmer means I can lift just those 3 seconds to the timeline.

By the way, logging tapes after capture as regions has at least two advantages over logging before capture -
First, it's so much easier to move back and forth at any speed with a captured clip than it is in camera or with a VHS time code dub.

Second, from the moment each region is created, it's available for instant use as if it were a separate clip.
Also, the in and out points can be changed any time.

Grazie wrote on 10/3/2003, 2:06 AM

Pete, did I read somewhere in the V4 manual that I can put multiple clips into the trimmer window? I can't be correct . . .

I like your approach. Put the whole lot on a hd and then dig out what yer want. The recaptue thing is not an option with this messy editor - promise you that Pal! I've tried logging and writing down on a Word document I set up. This new found "Log 'n Go" - ie the Regions Thingy within the Trimmer - has/is preserving my sanity. Too maqny ideas to get through at time of AdvCap. By the time I'm at the Zen like grey V4 screen, I just wanna get on with it.

Anyways, this is how I've approach my last 10 or so prjects. Works for me. Interviews maybe something else. . . . .

I would like the regions to be globally available though. "A Bin for All Seasons" - yeah?

Ho, another thought . . here I show my ignorance . . any chance that the EDL thingy can be brought into play WITH AdvCap AND while writing Regions? Peter, this is a typical "Grazie-off-the-wall" approach . . but then again I do think there is some "consolidation" for better working practice in here . . somewhere - yeah?

. . .ho .. the next bestest thing would be something like IBMs dictation s/w ViaVoice to react to the spoken word of the editor . . while looking at the rushes! "Ho! I like that sequence - 'COPY' - 'BIN Interview' - 'NAME Interview 1' - etc etc . . .. only a thought . . ..

Now where did I put my copy of, "Sanity Weekly"?

Grazie