I used VMS 4 for just a couple of months before 6 came out. VMS 4 had the preview/play button right in the crop or effects window, and it was really convenient, as you say, to preview just the event you are working on.

I don't know of any easy way to do the same thing (preview just the effect you're working on) with VMS 6. I usually try to arrange it so my pan/crop window or my effects window is off to the left, so my preview window is visible in the lower right hand corner. But this results in the "VCR" buttons (play, pause, etc.) under the regular main timeline being covered up by the pan/crop or effects window.

However, in case you haven't discovered it already, the SPACE BAR is a "play" button. Press the space bar to begin playing from the current cursor location, and press it again to stop playing and return the cursor to where it started. (Or press ENTER to stop playing and leave the cursor wherever it was when you stopped it.)

Note: if your pan/crop or your effects window is open, you might need to click into the VMS main window in order to send your key inputs there. Otherwise, the space bar key is being passed to the pan/crop or effects window, which ignores it. (Look at the title bars of the windows. The "brighter" one is the active window.)

To play just the item you are working on, double-click your still photo (or video clip) on the timeline. This will create a "region" that matches your clip. If you press space bar, the clip will start playing at the beginning of the region. If "Loop Playback" is enabled, then when it gets to the end, it will automatically repeat the segment, over and over, until you press space bar or Enter. If "Loop Playback" is off, the clip will play just one time through, and then will stop with the cursor at the beginning (so you could press the space bar to play it again). (The Loop Playback icon is with the timeline play/pause buttons. It is the second one from the left -- looks like a circular line with an arrowhead.)

You can create a region that includes *any* portion of your timeline by dragging a section just above the timeline scale at the top of the screen. Your mouse pointer will turn to a pointer with a little double-headed arrow near it. Drag out a section anywhere you wish, then press the space bar. If looping is enabled, it will continually repeat just the section you have marked.

You can have a pan/crop or effects window open at the same time the preview is playing, and can be trying different settings or adjustments as the clip is playing. You should see the effects -- color or brightness adjustments, etc. -- in real time as you adjust them.

Regarding your preview quality: If you have high-resolution still photos, they often don't look so good in the preview window. Note that you can select a "quality" setting for the preview -- it's a drop-down selection just above the window that says something like "Best (Auto)" or "Good (Auto)", etc.

Selecting "Best" will give you the best visual quality, but it's also the slowest to render, so the resulting video may be skipping frames and producing a jumpy playback. Selecting "Good" will generally give smoother playback, but slightly lower image quality. This is where you are likely to see artifacts from scaling down hi-res photos. If your computer still can't quite keep up, you can also drop down to "Preview" quality.

"Auto" means it will resize the output to fit into the window size you set up for the preview window. "Full" means it will render as a full 720x480 image, but will only show you whatever fits in the window you set up (ie a 1-to1 pixel relationship).

I hope this helps a little bit. If not, post more details about what doesn't look right.

Tim L

What I find handy is to simply click on the keyframe controller in the pan/crop window, and then use the right and left arrow keys to preview the animation in the pan/crop window. Is that good enough for you?

Thanks for the tips. Compared to version 3 ... version 6 is a tad complicated and took awhile to experiment with to understand some basics. Whew.

When in the pan window, it seems like the only way to preview is to jump between the keyframes. The space bar doesn't work within the pan window.

IW

The space bar doesn't work from within the pan window, but you can leave the pan window open, click somewhere onto the main VMS window, and then press space bar to start the video playing. Once it's playing, you can then click back into the pan window to make adjustments.

However, Paul's suggestion is a good one. Inside your pan window, along the top of the mini-timeline, the cursor has a little "slider" thing at the top -- about where the numbers are that identify the timeline positions. You can grab that little slider thing and run it back and forth -- at whatever speed you want -- to see how your pan/crop is going to look. You still need to be able to see your regular preview window to view it.

Tim L