Thanks, Edward, I'll watch your videos and learn how to write these scripts! This one sounds just about right -- will it run on a selected event, or does it search for the first event? Anyway, from what I've seen, your scripts look a lot less complicated than what I've seen before. Whew!!

Happy Otter, thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure I want to spend $100 on Vegasaur...

Happy Otter, thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure I want to spend $100 on Vegasaur...

@HarryLl
Have you checked what Vegasaur offers, what it costs on Black Friday, and what your hourly rate is?
Unless, of course, you consider scripting a hobby, in that case it's a different story.

@walter-i., the good thing about learning how do so some of these simple things in scripting is that you can the expand that when you need to do something a little more complicated. Yes, Vegasaur (and Excalibur) has a bunch of tools already pre-written (and, yes, Excalibur will also add the fade in/outs for you) but it's nice to know ways to help your workflow when these pre-written tools don't do exactly what you want done. Not saying the purchased products aren't worth it but, sometimes, learning some little tricks like this is also very helpful and this script is not that complicated so it's a good learning opportunity.

+1 @jetdv is exactly right. There are so many situations where commercially-available plug-ins simply won't do what you want. Having said that, there is no need to "re-invent the wheel" for those users who only want a specific task that is readily handled by available plug-in toolsets such as Excalibur or Vegasaur. I, for one, enjoy writing scripts, and often develop "free tools" https://tools4vegas.com/library/ for user requests that might be of general interest and force me to explore and learn different parts of the scripting API.

@jetdv, @wwaag

I completely agree with you, of course, which is why I pointed out when he considers scripting a hobby.  

In my professional life, I worked a lot with programmers who wrote software for our special requirements. I, too, have had great pleasure in solving minor or major tricky problems in software terms.
Unfortunately, I don't have any programming skills myself.

@walter-i., the good thing about learning how do so some of these simple things in scripting is that you can the expand that when you need to do something a little more complicated. Yes, Vegasaur (and Excalibur) has a bunch of tools already pre-written (and, yes, Excalibur will also add the fade in/outs for you) but it's nice to know ways to help your workflow when these pre-written tools don't do exactly what you want done. Not saying the purchased products aren't worth it but, sometimes, learning some little tricks like this is also very helpful and this script is not that complicated so it's a good learning opportunity.

I've taken you up on the offer to learn... and am now installing Visual Studio 2015 Community. Can't wait to start simple scripts that will make repetitive tasks a mere click of the button away!

I've taken you up on the offer to learn... and am now installing Visual Studio 2015 Community. Can't wait to start simple scripts that will make repetitive tasks a mere click of the button away!

@Selina It can be a fun process. Drop comments on any video you have questions about and let me know what tutorials you'd like to see in the future.

@jetdv I've certainly having fun with it. At first I tried to download VS2022, but couldn't follow along as nothing was in the same place and I just didn't fancy the heavy learning curve to catch up. So I managed to find VS2015 and download that. Now I could follow along, but when it came to running scripts in Vegas 19, I soon discovered I needed to add .NET 4.8. Once that was added I was cooking on gas... Looking forward to rapidly acquiring the skills necessary to automate my own little tasks. Thanks a million for taking the time to explain things in a clear way. I particularly like the toggle idea of x=!x, certainly will save a lot of unnecessary coding! Reminds me of the discovery of Select Case as opposed to nasty nested If statements...