Thanx, Rainer. The problem with dragging the videos into the trimmer is that when the video is very long (i.e. 15 minutes) it makes it difficult for me to zero in on the bits I want to select. That's why I've been dragging them to the timeline, where they are stretched out more.

I don't know if this helps you at all, but I mostly never use the trimmer (preview) window. I'm starting to with larger projects though.

What I normally do is get my clips in the order I want within the media window (usually chronological), Then drag them all at once to the timeline. Then I go through the timeline, start to end, dragging the in and out points or slicing and slip-deleting the unwanted parts.

The whole timeline gets smaller and more manageable towards the end.

Len, which version of Vegas? I don't to use the trimmer for short (under ten minute) clips. Right now, I'm cutting four two hour clips and handling them without the trimmer would be really tedious. It's for speed, not precision.

Thanx, all.

Firestorm....the trimmer works quite well for me if I'm pulling something from an individual clip. In this case, I'm pulling from a much longer piece (3-15 minutes) and the trimmer is too small and scrolls way to quickly for me to do any decent cutting. Not even rough cuts. When I pull a completed video onto the timeline from my folder of completed videos, the video is stretched out, so I can make my cuts.

Rainer...I'm using Vegas Pro 15. S'funny, just the opposite for me. I use the trimmer for short clips, but not for very long clips.

I'm starting to make some progress, even with my awkward workflow. Guess I'll just keep plugging away at it.

You can enlarge the trimmer window. :)

David-tu...Thanx. I did that. Put it on the 2nd (very large) monitor. That helped somewhat, but then I can't see the preview of the timeline, so I have to keep going back and forth moving the trimmer window.

I’ve never used the Trimmer that much since one can have any number of Vegas Pro sessions. I just open the media in another Vegas instance, locate the spot that I want to include, copy it and paste it into the new project.

If you have the original projects, you could save as a new project, delete all but the area you want to include in the sizzle reel and nest the limited project. Any effects and color grading will show in the sizzle project.

Right, yes, the trimmer is too small for that, I agree.

Since you are compositing many other 'finished projects', I'm guessing your final project will most likely be a single track, like most of my projects too, so I guess what I'm saying is, I bypass the trimmer all together and use my main timeline and preview window as a giant trimmer.

I could see using the actual trimmer only when you already have a complex, multi-timeline project that you don't want to mess up by dragging a 15 minute clip into it.  When there is only one track though, this isn't as much of an issue.

Hops that makes sense.  Good luck!

Yes, Firestorm. What you said makes perfect sense, and is essentially what I ended up doing. I placed an additional track above my "hero" track, just above the end point of the clips already selected, and I do the chopping on that additional track and just drag the selected fragments down to the hero track. I then delete the parts that I don't need and move on to the next video to "cannibalize."

You guys using hover scrub ? Back in the Firewire days, loading clips from tape, the trimmer was pretty useful. Less so when cards came along. With hover, its really useful again especially with longer clips. Small trimmer size isn't an issue. If you're not using it on longer clips, you're really missing out. If you don't want to use the hover to mark out, just mark in, play and mark out. Add. Spend a couple of minutes using it, I'd bet you won't go back.