The Production Assistant (PA) is a great tool when you make one video a day. You can basically make your own template veg file with one or more slugs (Empty Events) in it that the PA will replace with the file you selected for it.

What I need is an automation that will use the same template, one slug only in this case, replace the slug and make a veg file with a certain file name or just a number and after that uses a different file to replace the slug in the same template and make another veg file with a consecutive number and so on.
I would like to cut a 10 hour event into several, around 60-80 separate clips and have each clip inserted at the same slug but write out a different file for each clip.

I know that sounds a bit complicated but I don't think it is as long as scripting has access to all the necessary actions. It would be even better if the new veg that PA creates is based on the clip name that replaces the slug.

But, as mentioned in my initial post, if some knows a way to replace or work with empty events that would be already helpful. I could imagine importing the whole 10 hours into the trimmer, make regions in the trimmer and drag one onto empty event hopefully preserving the fade ins/outs that where applied to the slug. (I tried that in fact put it didn't work, maybe I am doing something wrong.) From there I would render it out to a specific file, drag a different region onto the same slug and render it out again as a different file.

I replied to your post in the Production Assistant forum before I saw this one (I monitor both forums)

Unfortunately, Production Assistant cannot do what you want. I believe you want to do something like using a template that requires 1 media file, and then select 10 media files and launched PA expect it to make 10 projects with 1 media file each, but it will not do that. :(

I assumes that it's working on one project at a time and that all of the selected media files are to be used to replace slugs and it stops when all of the slugs have been replaced. i.e., it does not create another project if there is more media selected. (sorry)

~jr

John Rofrano
VASST Software
www.vasstsoftware.com

@JR

Thank you for your reply and I apologize I posted it twice.

Yes that is exactly what I am looking for. I am capturing a major figure skating event over 3 days, 10 hours each day with 300 events in total. The customers expect one DVD per event which makes it rather complicated. We don't have any time between events until ice resurfacing, about every 2 hours. At that point we can take the SD card out and transfer the footage which than needs to be chopped up into single events and single files, mp4 for Internet and ISO for DVD burning.
Batch rendering already helps a lot for which I use Vegasaur, I haven't purchased PA as I wasn't sure if it would be of any help.

Is there no proper tutorial about the "Empty Events" and how one would work with it?

OldSmoke,

Events are just containers for you footage. You can insert new takes, delete them, change etc.
Drag a clip with right mouse button and drop it on an empty event. Choose Add as Take.

FYI, Vegasaur Transcoder can generate simple projects (before rendering) with BOLT options (background, overlay, leader, trailer).
It can also add fades, transitions, effects, change other properties of you source clips (click Properties button).