Newbie questions - transitions

WrathWielder wrote on 11/27/2005, 8:47 PM

Hi all!

I recently switched from Studio 9 to VMS. I like the stablility, but I'm REALLY getting frustrated trying to do things that were very simple in S9....

1) Scene detection - both by CONTENT and TIMECODE...I load up a DV AVI in VMS and for the life of me I can't find anywhere to have it detect scenes. In S9 I just hit the spacebar and it gave me a thumbnail for each "event". In VMS will I be forced to do this manually by watching the video?

2) I can't get this whole transition thing down in VMS...can it really be this difficult?
All I want to do it put a transition between 2 events where the audio from the A side fades out and the audio on the B side fades in while the video transition is doing it's thing.
In S9 I split the video into 2 thumbnails and just dragged a transition between them...DONE! It automatically centered the transition between the A and B side and handled the audio fade out/in.
How can I get VMS to do this?
When I hit S and create an event, I then drag a transition onto the line between the events. This is fine and good, but it doesn't "center" the transition so the A and B sides switch midway. In other words if I have a "spin" transition, the A video spins and on the flip side should be the B....it doesn't do this. The B starts after the flip has already happened (sorry for the confusing explanation)

I then did a CROSSFADE and dragged the B side over the A about 6 seconds. When I dragged the transition into this area, the VIDEO seemed to be great, but the audio does not fade out and in...it "overlaps" during the transition so I hear both soundtracks.
If I'm forced to overlap the tracks to get the transitions to work, how can I have the audio NOT crossfade but just fade out/in at the split?

I know this is probably a simple thing and I'll feel really stupid when you tell me how to do this, but I'm just getting frustrated!

In S9 I would do quick videos by capturing into a DV file, detecting scene changes (either by content or timecode), dragging each of these detected scenes to the timeline so all that was there were thumbnails for each scene.
Then I would drag a transition between each thumbnail and burn away!
This is what I'm shooting for with VMS....is it a pipedream? :)

Thanks everyone!

-Greg (S9 expert / VMS dweeb)

Comments

IanG wrote on 11/28/2005, 2:17 AM

In VMS, video capture is done by a separate app called VidCap, which also does the scene detection. You end up with a number of (relatively) small files, each of which has a thumbnail. There's no scene detection in VMS itself. From memory, Studio captures everything to one big file, so your options are either to recapture from the original tapes or split things on the timeline.

As you've already found out, transitions behave differently depending on whether or not you've overlapped the events - normaly you'd overlap them and then add the transition, which lasts as long as the overlap. I don't know a way to disable the audio crossfade by default, but if you want to change the "shape" of the crossfade you can right click on the overlapped audio and select a different one. If you want to fade clip A's audio to zero and then fade in clip B's with no overlap you'll need to add an audio envelope. Select the audio track and type "V". This will add a blue line down the middle of the track. Double clicking on the line will add control points which you can slide along the line and move up or down to raise or lower the volume between points.

Ian G.

WrathWielder wrote on 11/29/2005, 12:34 PM

Thanks for the quick reply, Ian!

I understand now how the video crossfade is replaced by the transition you drag there...and I was able to choose an audio fade that drops very quickly so there is very little volume in the center where they cross over...that way you don't notice that the audio overlaps...
I will also try using an envelope to do a fade instead of the cross-fade and see what happens...might be more work than it's work though :)

If I could, two more quick questions...
1) Do you happen to know of a keystroke that will SPLIT (like 'S' does) and then also overlap the 2 events by the default amount in preferences?
It's not a big deal to have to drag each one over the other, but I thought I'd see if there's a shortcut...

2) Is there a way to join all the frames in an event into a single thumbnail? I'm used to Studio 9 where you split/join thumbnails on the timeline any way you like. I guess you could say each thumbnail is an event all by itself. That way I can end up with 1 thumbnail between each transition.
VMS determines how many thumbnails to show based on zooming in/out, which is a little confusing (for me).
Based on your comment on capturing and scene detection, it sounds like each AVI I drag to the timeline would appear as it's own thumbnail...? I'll try it out next time I capture.

Thanks again!

-Greg

Chienworks wrote on 11/29/2005, 1:18 PM

If you Ungroup the audio from the video with the U key, you can drag the audio event edges independantly of the video. You could then trim the two audio clips so that they don't overlap. Add fades so that the first one goes silent at the end and the next one fades in if you wish. You could even have the audio crossfade happen before or after the video transition if you wish.

Remember to select both the audio and the video and Group them back together when you're done or they'll move separately when you continue editing.

I'm not sure i'm following your thumbnail questions completely. However, i think once you get used to what Vegas does with the thumbnails you'll come to prefer it and wonder how you ever worked with other editors. I look at screenshots of some other editing software and wonder why anyone would put up with not seeing Vegas style thumbnails. Having only a single thumbnail image, or only first & last, or none at all would leave me very lost and confused.

IanG wrote on 11/29/2005, 2:31 PM

Greg

I'm not following your questions either, sorry! It's not the number of thumbnails that changes as you zoom in so much as it's the time between them. The big shock for me when I moved from Studio to VMS was looking at the timeline and realising how much of my footage was complete rubbish!

Ian G.

ChristerTX wrote on 11/29/2005, 4:41 PM

I assume that the thumbnail question is related to how Studio show the clips. There is a distinct area between the clips in Studio where you can drop a transition.
In Vegas it is not as obvious, but you have MUCH more control once you get used to it.

IanG wrote on 11/30/2005, 1:31 AM

>You could even have the audio crossfade happen before or after the video transition if you wish.

In Studio, this is described as an "advanced" technique, in VMS it's simple and intuitive. Watch news or travel programs and you'll see it's used quite often. Carrying on the theme, you can leave an audio track completely untouched while you cut away to a completely different video clip and then come back to the original video.

Ian G.