Thanks Bob, but Ignore Event Grouping is off, as is auto-ripple.

(I think VMS probably works much like Pro in this respect since I understand VMS to operate similar to Pro, but with many Pro features and capabilities missing).

By the way, I edited my original message to add a new piece of information that may be a clue.

There's only two ways to add a transition.

1) Moving the events so they overlap.
2) Extending the head/tail of the events so they overlap.

In case 2) if the clip itself is shorter than the event then Vegas will by default loop the clip, there's no more video so this is about all it can do.
Where I'm confused though is looping the clip should not cause the out of sync indicator to fire. Then again it can fire for no reason at all. Maybe this is what is happening. It should tell you how many frames you are out of sync. One trap is it can say 0 frames when it is less then 1 frame.

One other possibility, do you by any chance have Quantize to Frames turned Off?

Bob

In answer to your question at the end of your last reply: Quantize to Frames is on. I also tried adding transitions with it off but get the pink regardless of the setting.

You mentioned there are only two ways to add a transition:

1) Moving the events so they overlap.
2) Extending the head/tail of the events so they overlap.

I am adding transitions by dragging them from the Transitions tab to the time line (to a point in-between two clips). Isn't that a 3rd way to add transitions? I thought overlapping the clips would cross-fade them, but I want a fade through black transition, which is in the Transitions tab. (I could be wrong about this since I am relatively new to VMS, having previously used the Corel product.)

Oddly, when I drag a clip to the left so it overlaps the end of previous clip by, let's say, 2 seconds, I don't get a cross-fade when I preview the time line. At the point where the 2nd clip overlays the 1st one, it simply acts like a straight cut with no cross-fade and I don't see the last 2 seconds of the 1st clip. Is that normal behavior?

Thanks again for your help.

Bob, I forgot to ask about this from your last post:

"It should tell you how many frames you are out of sync. One trap is it can say 0 frames when it is less then 1 frame."

Where does it tell you how many frames are out of sync? I can't find how to obtain that info and can't find anything in the Help file about it?

Thanks.

"It should tell you how many frames you are out of sync. One trap is it can say 0 frames when it is less then 1 frame."


Wasn't sure how to find that info, but from a forum search I found how to have VMS tell how many frames it is out of sync.

I added about 30 clips totaling almost 10 minutes and added transitions between every clip (by selecting all of them and dragging the Fade Through Black transition to a point between the first two clips. This put transitions between all clips.

Every clip except the first one is pink. The number shown for the amount out of sync varies greatly from clip to clip but for any one clip from as low as 4.0 to as high as 45.15. The video is always the same number as the audio, but the video shows a negative number and the audio shows the same number as a positive. For example, -32.15 for the video and +32.15 for the audio. The result is that the clips actually play back in sync. The last clip at around the 10 minute point is of someone talking and the lip sync is perfect. Still, it is odd that each clip is pink and is considered out of sync.

" Isn't that a 3rd way to add transitions? I thought overlapping the clips would cross-fade them, but I want a fade through black transition, which is in the Transitions tab. (I could be wrong about this since I am relatively new to VMS, having previously used the Corel product.)"

No.
If you have two 10 second events (1 & 2) on the T/L and you wish to have a transition between them one second long then the total of the video will be 9 seconds. Event 1 must overlap event 2 for there to be a transition between them.
A fade to black followed by a fade up from black is not technically a transition. A dissolve or page peel is a transition, both event 1 and event 2 are visible during the transition and hence must overlap.
You can overlap events and I'm pretty certain there's a switch that determines if they simply overlap or cut. Once they overlap then you can change the transition form a crossfade to whatever you want.
As I don't have VMS I'm not of much use finding the switches but I'm certain a search of your manual would give you the info you need. Sorry to go on about this but its a pretty fundamental principle in video no matter what software you use.

Back to your original problem I'm at a bit of a loss. Maybe get the transition thingy sorted first.

Bob.

Bob,

You can have two events butted together and add a transition using the forward slash on the number pad or rightlclicking. If there is pad on the video, it will create a dissolve transition.

Dave T2

"Back to your original problem I'm at a bit of a loss. Maybe get the transition thingy sorted first."

Thanks Bob, I will work on finding a switch that determines whether overlapping results in a cut or a cross-fade. The manual does speak to this but isn't real clear to me.

Dave T2. I did try your suggestion to add a transition by using the / key on the keypad or right clicking and choosing add crossfade (after first selecting both events). It did add a transition between the two events but the 2nd clip turned pink.

In the meantime, I observed that the amount shown as the out-of sync amount is 1 frame per second of video. So a clip of 40 seconds+ will show -40.xx out of sync on the video and +40.xx on the audio.

Bob -- VMS is a nearly identical twin to Vegas Pro. If you sat down in front of a computer with VMS running it might take a few seconds to realize it wasn't Pro (well, depending on the window layout and color scheme, etc.). Vegas Pro has a lot of features VMS doesn't, but the user interface is identical.

Dale -- I think you are right that in "other" NLE's you simply butt two clips together and then drop a transition onto the joint between the two. In Vegas, however, the normal way to create a transition (whether it be a simple crossfade, page peal, iris, etc.) is to overlap the two events (clips) for the duration of the desired transition, then drop the transition onto the overlap.

If you want a 1 second transition, simply overlap the second event on top of the end of the first so that there is a 1 second overlap. If you want the transition to be faster, reduce the amount of overlap, etc.

There is an icon at the top of the Vegas window that looks like a blue triangle overlapping a gray one. This must be enabled in order to get automatic crossfades when clips are overlapped. It sounds like yours might be toggled off. Normally, overlapping 2 events creates an automatic crossfade between the two, and then dropping an event onto that overlap changes it to some other transition.

I had never tried it before reading your post, but I see now that you can drag a transition and drop it on the edge (leading or trailing) of any event and it will create a transition there -- even if you didn't previously drag to create a fade-in or fade-out. However, in my testing (Vegas Pro 8.0c) of trying to drop a transition onto a pair of clips that were butted together but not overlapped, it only applied the transition to one event or the other -- it didn't make an A-B transition using both clips.

There is a "Fade through black" preset in the Dissolve transitions, where the A clip fades all the way to black before the B clip then fades back in.

There is a setting in Options > Preferences > Editing called "Cut to Overlap" Time. Here is where you can set the default overlap time. If you manually drag one clip over another, you will get a "snap" point at this amount of overlap. For example, if set the Cut To Overlap time to 1 second, then clips will snap at 1 second of overlap. Also, this is the amount of overlap you get if you use the [/] key to create an overlap where two events are butted up against each other, as DaveT2 suggests.

PS -- Sorry, no help on why the clips think they are out of synch. I've seen it too on occasion. Maybe this is a strange analogy, but its almost like have two concentric knobs, where one thinks its at 0° and the other thinks its at 360°. They're both in the same postion, but due to some numeric quirk somewhere they claim to be 360° out of position with each other.

Ok, I think I have this resolved. Bob put me on the right track with the suggestion that a switch controls the crossfade vs. cut behavior when dragging a clip to overlap and adjacent clip. What the manual seems to say, and subsequent experimentation confirms, is that the transitions in the "Transitions Tab" are used to REPLACE existing transitions (and apparently a straight cut is not considered a transitions). So it seems that a crossfade has to already exist. You can't start with a straight cut and then place a Fade Through Black between them (well you can, but it turns everything pink).

So I needed to enable "Automatic Cross-fades" on the Options menu (not sure if Pro has the same menu structure as VMS). Then I can drag a clip to overlap an adjacent clip, which creates a cross-fade, instead of a cut like it had been doing when "Automatic Cross-fades" as disabled. Then I can go to the Transitions Tab and drag the Fade-Through-Black over the top of the cross-fade and it will replace it.

There is also a setting in Options/Preferences/Editing to automatically add the cross fade when adding multiple clips to the time line so you don't have to drag clips to create the cross-fade.

The only odd thing is that I have a DVD on my desk that I created a couple days ago and it contains Fade-Through-Black transitions that I made simply by dragging that transition to the time line between clips without first making a crossfade. Oh, well - hard to tell what I did then or what the settings were.

Thanks to farss (Bob) for reading my long posts and pointing me in the right direction. Thanks also to Dave T2 for the tip on another way to create cross-fades.