Placing Clips in Timeline - Exact Position

Johannes_H wrote on 8/7/2002, 4:13 AM
I am a new user of VV3 and experienced the following:
If I place a clip into a track of the timeline using drag and drop from the media pool and then I look where the clip gets placed exactly (zooming in so that I see individual frames) I see, that this clips are not placed exactly an "frame boundaries". E.g. the clip starts/ends at a position which does not match a frame boundary according to the ruler, the start/end point is on a position where you cannot get to using one frame forward/backward cursor positioning?
If I place a second clip starting at the end of first clip (snapping on) and again zoom in to frame level, I see a small gap between the end of the first and the start of the second clip. This gap is smaller than one frame?
If I position the timeline cursor at the end of the first clip and insert the second clip using double-click, it gets positioned exactly at the end of the first clip (without gap) but as soon as I move or trim the second clip, the same gap is here again?

I use PAL DV 25fps.
What am I missing here?
Thank you for any information.

Johannes Vienna/Austria/Europe

Comments

taliesin wrote on 8/7/2002, 4:41 AM
Johannes H.? - You are NOT that Johannes I know from the Draconer forum, are you???

To your question - sorry - my system is blocked right now, I'll take a look at it as soon as possible. I think you just have to change a preference or klick an icon to have clips snapped to boundaries.

Marco
Johannes_H wrote on 8/7/2002, 4:46 AM
No, sorry I dont know "Draconer" forum.

Thank you that you will have a look at it.
I also had a look at the preferences but did not find anything to that direction. But I am new to VV3 - maybe it is this simple?

Johannes
seeker wrote on 8/7/2002, 5:04 AM
Johannes,

Do you have the "Enable Snapping" button depressed on the Vegas Toolbar? If not, depress it and retry adding a clip and see if it doesn't snap to a frame boundary.

-- Burton --
Johannes_H wrote on 8/7/2002, 6:07 AM
Burton,
thank you for your reply.
Yes I have "Enabled Snapping" and I see the snap occuring. But after zooming in to a very detailed level, I see, that the snapping is not exact and not on frame boundary.

Johannes
SonyEPM wrote on 8/7/2002, 9:20 AM
Does you time display format match your project framerate? I'm assuming you are a PAL user, so you should set both time display format and project framerate to PAL (25fps).
Shredder wrote on 8/7/2002, 10:10 AM
Johannes,

Do you have 'Quantize to Frames' turned on? (Alt+F8)

I never work without this as your renders can wind up having edit issues if the clips gets shifted even a bit sub-frame on the timeline. With quantize turned on you CAN'T have a clip start or end anywhere but on the frame boundary.

This works independently of snapping, even if snap to grid is off.

I use to get screwed up when I used a grid spacing that didn't match the frame boundaries. This fixed it.

- Jon
Johannes_H wrote on 8/7/2002, 11:29 AM
Hi,
thanks for all your valuable input!
I just came home and wanted to have one more look at the problem, but now I cannot reproduce it any more??? Now it works as I had expected.
Maybe I had changed the "Quantize to Frame" Option without knowing it?
Please excuse this - I am sorry.
Thank you for your help.

Johannes
Johannes_H wrote on 8/7/2002, 1:17 PM
Hi once again!
I think I found it.
I found the following: When starting a new project VV3 comes up with the "Project Properties" and because at this time I have nothing changed the default template "NTSC DV ..." is presented. I selected the PAL DV template and set the ruler format and started to work on the project. And this way the problems I described in the first message of this thread are there!

But after checking "Start all new projects with these settings" within the "Project Properties" the problem disappears and all is fine.

From my point of view this looks like a small bug. There must be some difference within the "initial phase" when the NTSC template comes up and is modified to PAL versus the situation that the PAL 25fps template comes up initially because of the "Start all new projects with these settings" is switched on.

Maybe someone is interested in this findings? I hope my English could describe the thing so that it can be understood.
For me now it works fine.

Regards
Johannes
seeker wrote on 8/7/2002, 9:19 PM
Johannes,

That does seem like a bug.

-- Burton --