Media Bin Question

Cheesehole wrote on 4/20/2004, 1:27 PM

I don't think so, but often I use a second Vegas timeline as a Media Pool. Now that we have layout saving, I came up with this idea:

Vegas as media pool

You have to use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy clips from one project to the other.

Nat wrote on 4/20/2004, 1:29 PM

Wow can you save the layout for 2 copies of vegas at the same time ?

Cheesehole wrote on 4/20/2004, 1:30 PM

You open the first copy, and recall your saved layout (say #8), then you open the second copy and recall a different saved layout (say #9).

taliesin wrote on 4/20/2004, 1:34 PM

The fact you still can't do that is one thing which dissapointed me of version 5. This is somthing rather important for editing.

Marco

johnnycamcorder wrote on 4/20/2004, 1:59 PM

Yeah, Marco. That's my beef. Workarounds don't make a great NLE.

Sad when you know that v4, the last SoFo update, got us so close. Here's to hoping Sony gets it right with 5.5 or 6.0. That will be the update that I'll pay for.

MarcS wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:04 PM

Can you explain in more detail what you mean by saving the layout and using the timeline as a story board?

Do you essentially drag your all your events to one timeline and then manually drag them to new positions on a second or third timeline until they are in reasonable position - and then copy and paste this to a new version of Vegas?

I can't tell from the screen shot what exactly is being suggested to do?

- Thanks,

Marc

Cheesehole wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:18 PM

Let's say I'm going to make 3 30 second spots for a martial arts school. I have a bunch of tapes of footage. I capture, then review / trim the footage and pull all the best shots out and lay them on the time line. I group them by topic and use markers to divide the time line into categories.

The media pool is okay, but I like the ability to scrub through my source clips. So the time line provides that functionality and a lot more. I can crop, do color correction, make sequences of cuts (useful with two camera shoot), and just leave them there on the time line... so it becomes the media library for this particular project.

I save that as KarateFootage.Veg and open another instance of Vegas. This will be where I edit the spot. In the past, I would ALT-TAB between the two projects Copy/Paste the clips I want onto my main time line. Now that I can recall specialized layouts I can easily get two Vegas apps to look like my screen shot.

So I finish spot #1 and move on to spot #2. I open another instance of Vegas and pull clips / sequences from my media library using CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

And so on...

I use it mainly for media management, but figured story boarding would work too.

Nat wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:21 PM

Cheesehole : What screen resolution are you at ?

Cheesehole wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:33 PM

1600x1200 - I could use more but I only have a 19" monitor. I sometimes use a second monitor which is useful for keeping the Pan/Crop / Track Motion windows.

Nat wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:36 PM

hmm nice i have dual 19" in 1600*1200, will give it a try !

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/21/2004, 3:55 AM

I strongly agree with Marco - I also would have liked to see a better solution for organizing material in Vegas-5. What is shown here - to open two instances of Vegas - has been possible also in Vegas-4 (and was also shown in SPOTs book, by the way).

However, on a two-monitor working place, this solution is nice - but maybe even better is to work with the windows-XP explorer and one Vegas-5 instance (and use the XP-explorer as a kind of storyboard, since here you can sort clips as you liken, and copy the sorted material to the timeline).

MarcS wrote on 4/21/2004, 7:24 AM

When I try moving clips in my Windows Explorer, it automatically resorts them into a list - alphabetically, date-ordered, etc...

Should one be able to change the order of files in Explorer? Is this the Explorer window opened within Vegas, or just a regular Windows explorer window?

Am I overlooking something?

Thanks,

Marc

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/25/2004, 12:04 AM

Marc,

it is simply the windows explorer of XP-home - nothing else. I seems that it does not work for win2000 - people have tested that and came back with the finding that it does not work.

I do it in three steps.

First, I import the clips to the explorer (can also be links only, it is not necessary to dublicate the avi-files). See here an example with 4 files, captured in Vegas-4:
Picture 1

Second, now I rearange the clips - here for example, I move the clip number 6 between 7 and 8 (and it is not resorted automatically):
Picture 2

And then I mark the clips in the windows explorer, and draw them with the mouse into the timeline of Vegas. It works also for Vegas-5. See in the picture, and see that these files are taken over into the Vegas-Mediapool - but here they are sorted according to their names. However, in the Timeline the resorted structure is maintained:
Picture 1

dust wrote on 4/25/2004, 12:32 AM

In Vegas 5 you have the new feature of renaming the clips in a mediabin: right-click on it and choose "Rename". Thsi does not change the filenames, it only chenges the reference names shown inside the mediabin. As clips are sorted alphabetically, this allows you to change the order of the clips (note that sometimes you must leave and re-enter a mediabin to force an alphabetical resort).

You can, for example, prepend every clip by 2 or 3 digits ("001", "002", ...) to determinde the order you want. Or, better, choose "010", "020", "030", ... as prefixes, so you do have room in between them to insert other clips.

Unfortunately there is no keyboard shortcut for this operation, so it is a bit tedious. I couldn't assign it onto a shortcut using Preferences/Options/Keyboard as this action doesn't seem to be listed there, but maybe I just didn't find it?

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an access to these names by scripts, so you can't assign the renaming action indirectly (by scripts) to a key.

Hope it is still of help to you, dust

taliesin wrote on 4/25/2004, 4:46 AM

>> Thsi does not change the filenames, it only chenges the reference names shown inside the mediabin.

Sure about this one? - On my system actually it does change the filename. Maybe you tested it with subclips.
This is what I find is confusing. If I change a subclips name in the mediapool it keeps it's orginal name in the timeline. So now I have two different names for the same clip in timeline and mediapool. This only happens to subclips.
If I change the name of a "real" clip in the mediapool then the new given name is taken everywhere what I think is the better way.

Marco

PeterWright wrote on 4/25/2004, 5:34 AM

For reordering clips and using the Media Pool as a storyboard, try using the Comments field. This avoids possible confusion by renaming clips or subclips.

Make the Comment something relevant to the order you want, e.g.
A01 Arrival scene
A02 Close up - by doorway
....
....
Z25 Rides off into sunset

... then click on the Comment header to place the clips in the order you have chosen.

...

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/25/2004, 12:55 PM

Sorry, but that is still not a storyboard - but a way how to sort comments only.

A storyboard should offer the capability, to sort clips by using the mouse - to be able to rearange them in a fast way. I think that would be helpful - as discussed elsewhere.

taliesin wrote on 4/25/2004, 1:23 PM

Should be fine though. What Peter suggested is still a workaround for me - but it's the one I like most for now. Actually it does reorder the clips in the mediapool - that's o.k. Would be better if in detail view there would be preview stamps. Would be perfect to make a reorder even more simple. Mmh, let's be patient ... ;-)

Marco

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/25/2004, 3:03 PM

Ok, at least for my workstyle it makes no sense. What I wish to see are the thumbnails - that is something that I like to have, to be able to sort the clips according to their content. If I switch to the "detailed" view, where I can add comments - I do not see thumnails any more.

So, if the purpose of the storyboard is to arange clips according to their content, this approach does not help a lot (at least not me).

taliesin wrote on 4/25/2004, 3:45 PM

>> If I switch to the "detailed" view, where I can add comments - I do not see thumnails any more.

This is what I don't like in detailed view either.

Marco

PeterWright wrote on 4/25/2004, 5:22 PM

True, Detailed view does not have thumbnails, but that does not prevent you from sorting clips according to their content.

If you name the clips in a way that describes their content, this can be more accurate than a Thumbnail, which does not necessarily say in one frame what the whole clip contains.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/26/2004, 12:02 AM

Peter, I do not know your workflow (or if mine is stupid). But working on large projects, with 300 or 400 clips, it is simply cumersome to type in a description of the content (what you see simply in the thumbnail).

That is the reason why a storyboard would make sense - or why workarounds via either a second instance of Vegas, or the XP-explorer are great (even if we have said now again and again that these solutions are workarounds only).

In addition, there are some scripts that help us to sort events in the timeline - scripts that work also with Vegas-5 (with a sligth modification).

taliesin wrote on 4/26/2004, 1:17 AM

Descriptions make sense - the more the bigger a project is. Imagine you have lots of shots which look very similar or of which sound is more important than video. In these cases thumbnails would not help. Did I pan from left to right or from right to left? What's there in the end of my pan? Is this the shot in which my interview partner talked about Greece or did he talk about Asia? Lots of cases where descriptions are very helpful. Time invested in ordering the clips is time that can be saved later on.
Thumbnails make sense for more rougher parts of organzing. Can be handled much faster indeed, but it's a different field where to use them.

I would like to have both in one Vegas internal window combined with the facility to order by mouse. Will come - I'm sure ... ;-)

Marco

BD wrote on 4/26/2004, 2:12 AM

Agreeing with wschmid, a thumbnail-based visual storyboard is an excellent tool for plotting projects with hundreds of clips -- such as home movies, and other "unscripted documentaries."

When I used Pinnacle Studio 400, I used its storyboard feature to rapidly rearrange hundreds of clips that were automatically (optically, not timecode-based) made during the capture process. I miss this feature.

That was a very fast method of organizing all those little clips, while imagining what the story line would be, and deleting the unwanted shots and retakes. I definitely would not spend time renaming them.

Then I switched to the timeline view, to edit my home movies in detail

Brandon's Dad