That's what I've been doing. But instead of the last frame repeating, it starts to loop from the beginning of the clip before the one I'm working with. Very strange, IMHO.

(I've split a short clip into two shorter ones while fooling around with this.)

When you have pink audio and video clips, VMS is telling you that the audio and video from the same file do not line up -- that one has moved with respect to the other.

I believe it does this when it sees audio and video that have come from the same source file, but whose timecodes don't line up. For example, maybe you have a 10-minute clip from "tape 11 clip 3" on the timeline, and you accidentally moved the audio 5 frames ahead without moving the video. This small shift would be hard to detect visually on the timeline -- especially if you are zoomed out -- but might be obvious when watching the video on a TV. VMS makes the tracks go pink to indicate the audio and video are out of synch.

As far as looping goes, you should right-click on the actual event (on the timeline), click on "Switches", then make sure "Loop" is unchecked. If you stretch out the event longer than the original source, the video will stay frozen on the last frame.

However, this only works if you are going all the way to the last frame in the original video clip. If you have a two-minute source clip, and are using only the first minute of it, for example, then this method won't work, because stretching the clip out just adds back in the additional video (i.e. past the one-minute mark). In this case, you can only get a "freeze frame" at the end by saving a still frame from the video, then bringing it back into VMS as a still photo just past the end of your video, and stretching it out for as long as you want the freeze frame. (Enlarge your preview window to full size, and select Best quality, click the "save" icon -- looks like a floppy disk -- and save as .PNG file type).

Tim L

Oh, and one more thing to keep in mind when editing.

The events on your timeline are not separate little video files, though thats how we all picture them, of course. An event is just a little item that says "take video from source file xyz.avi, starting with frame a:aa:aa.aa, and go through frame c:cc:cc.cc".

When you trim an event on the timeline, by dragging the beginning and ending edges, you are just changing the start and stop times (the "in" and "out" markers). When you split a clip, you are just making two such events in the place of one. If you take a clip from a:aa:aa.aa to c:cc:cc.cc, and split it at b:bb:bb.bb, you now have two events: one from a:aa:aa.aa to b:bb:bb.bb, and a second from b:bb:bb.bb to c:cc:cc.cc. (Okay, this much is obvious, right?)

The thing to remember, however, is that each clip still is just a reference to the original xyz.avi video file, with "in" and "out" time markers. If you take the first clip and stretch out the end of it, VMS is just going to add back in the "extra" video from the original file. Nothing has really been chopped off or terminated by splitting the event.

But there's another way to acheive the freeze frame in this case: you could render out just the section of the video you want to a new file, in which case bringing the new file into VMS on the timeline *will* now end at the frame you want, and unchecking the "Loop" switch *will* give you the freeze frame you want.

Tim L

Tim,

Thanks to your advice, my project is working exactly the way I want it to. I made a PNG file from the next-to-last frame of my video clip (the last frame wasn't quite as good), then cut the last frame. I Photoshopped the PNG, then imported it back into my project, set it to run for 2 seconds, then faded to black.

I spent LOTS of time trying to get here, and the key was your explanation.

Good, I'm glad it worked out for you.

I guess freeze frames and such are trivial in the full version of Vegas, where you can work with a velocity envelope. This is the kind of thing you see in commercials or in the Amazing Race, etc., where video ramps up to fast speed, slows down, freezes for a moment, resumes normal speed, etc. You control this just like an audio envelope, dragging the control line faster or slower, etc.

Having to save a freeze frame and bringing it back in as a still photo, etc., is a bit more work, but I guess that's the price we VMS users pay in order to save about $600 (compared to the full version of Vegas & DVD).

Tim L