I too have trouble understanding keyframe operation. All of the tutorials
are about what you can do with Vegas not how to do it and this includes the
big $34.00 book. Beginners (like me) need a block diagram chain of events
showing each operation (leaving nothing out of the sequence) All industrial
computer manuals show each chain of events with chained blocks with arrows
for first time beginners. SOFO manual writers would never make it making an
old "Heathkit Manual". They leave out all the minor details that make it work.
You find out how good a writer you are when you get the secretary (mentally
challenged) to perform the function in question and it works. If SOFO had writers like this there would be no need for a forum. Most of the people on this forum are old hands at NLE and can do everything second nature because they know how it is supposed to flow.
All that is needed is one example of each important operation, and I know that
Vegas has many. I have a lot of experience working on industrial computers and
have had very little trouble with same. Don't get me wrong, I take Vegas to bed
with me. I switched from Premier to Vegas because of complex hard to understand
operations and I have quite a bit of experience in telephone exchanges with
millions of wires and circuits. Ma Bell had one of the most incredible print
systems ever devised to ferret out problems of complexity.
Well, that's my .02cs.

James J. Kizak

Also, when you get to something like the pan/crop dialog, there's a button that turns on or off syncing with the cursor. If you have a certain point in your video that you want say a certain crop, opening the dialog with this turned on puts the cursor at the exact spot on the dialog's own timeline where the keyframe would go.

This has also gotten me once or twice.

Say you want to trim the frame size of a clip, from beginning to end. If I forget to check, & it's turned on, open the pan/crop dialog from the middle of the clip (where you can watch the effects in preview) & you create a keyframe. The result, nice smooth transition from full frame to cropped frame & back again, which is what it's (VV3) supposed to do when you use keyframeing.

I agree, The lack of basic step by step instruction is curious to say the least.
DSE is just finishing a book and I hope it contains some basic chapters like detailed explanation of the many wonderful tools in the program.
I learned trial by error and am still mystified on occasion about how something changed on the timeline without my desiring it to.

This is not a complaining session. I merely am pointing this out to re-assure anyone who is confused and thinking they will never 'get it'.
After stumbling a while, it all started to make perfect sense. I often found myself trying to make things more difficult than they were.

This is a deep program. There are really miles of features to explore and learn.
It gets more fun when you get a handle on the basics.

Cheers,
Rick

The book, "Digital Video and Audio Production" by Rebholz and Bryant have some excellent instruction on the use of keyframes, beginning in Module 4. Experiment!
Good Luck
Grizzly Ike

2 things come to mind regarding manuals & diagrams and such, & why there aren't more to be found...

First is the overwhelming trend for folks to just jump in -- the bane of tech people the world over, to whom RTFM must be almost the first thing muttered when waking every morning. ;p While there's nothing wrong with manuals like those people use in other industries, or other areas of software as Linux/Unix etc., there's just not much of a demand.

Also, when you get into the more creative types of software (Photoshop is a great example), most often folks are trying to figure out how to use stuff in ways no one ever intended, or at least haven't thought of yet.

Everyone's seen these FX: streaming letters & numbers, bursts of intense time compression, & motion stills where they pan 360 around a frozen scene - usually mid-air. As in the music field, while something can be copied for a short while, folks are scrambling to be the first with the next *new* thing or process, so anything other then discussions like the ones in this forum just aren't current enough.

Something to add:
I am currently learning how to keyframe the bouncing ball onto lyrics
using the track motion. I was getting all kinds of unwanted motion instead
of the phonetically syncapated ball and tearing my hair out until I realized
that anytime an FX is on the timeline my tv jerks a bit to and fro. So maybe I
was doing it right but alas, I won't know if its right until render. What now?
Maybe a 20 gazillion gig processor? I love it when I have to pull out the
credit card again.

James J. Kizak

I also wanted to make the ball effect, I found out it was a lot of trouble.
I decided to use a linear wipe at the beginning of the text clip and the effect is really nice.

Maybe my Tutorial #4 will help you understand the basic concept of keyframes.
While the moving target on a map used many keyframes, the principle is the same regardless how many you have. You can see the actual video over at Kelly's video share site.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/tutorial-menu.htm

In fact one of the best ways to use keyframe for simple movement is only set the starting and ending keyframes allowing Vegas to fill in the blanks in-between.

The PDF manual does give some key frame basics.

Lets see if I can draw a word picture. This is from memory, as ususal Vegas is busy and I don't want to stop a render... If I forgot a step, I'm sure someone will jump in. Please do!

A few simple concepts. While you can use keyframes to change levels, colors, that kind of thing the more common use is to either pan, zoom or do both. Panning just means slowly moving across a object, frequently a still image left to right or top to bottom or sometimes at a angle, whatever you want. Zomming means moving in for a close up or pulling back to get a wider shot. You can combine pannning and zooming making it a smooth seamless effect with no jerkness.

All that's required is a little pre thinking of what you want to accomplish.

Assume you have a landscape shot with a horse and barn in the foreground over at the left and a range of hills to the far right in the background. Lets say you have about 30 seconds of video that basically includes that kind of scene. Begin by making that range a event, to make it simpler to work with. Now click on the FX pan/crop button at the right of the event.

To begin you want to start with a closer shot just showing the hills in the background. You would use the pan crop controls to select what you wanted to show in the first frame in the FX control window. Just drag the little handles until you have what you want. Click on the first key frame button at the bottom of the FX window on its timeline track. That should be a little diamond on the FX track timeline, NOT the main timeline. Right click on the frame or the still image if that's what you're using and select Match Output Aspect.

Now if you want to widen out the shot pulling back and panning left, go to the last frame in that 30 second range in your video and repeat the process this time maybe showing the horse and part of the barn. Again use the pan/crop feature to adjust what's in the shot by moving the little handles and dragging the the whole area within the crop lines anytime you see the 4 headed cursor. You then set that scene as the last keyframe by clicking on the last keyframe button. Again, right click, match Output Aspect.

Assuming there is enough time in the video you selected between your first keyframe and last keyframe Vegas will fill in the blanks with you doing nothing else. If the pan/zoom goes too slow or two fast, start over, but either squeeze or stretch the event first dragging it right edge while holding down the Ctrl key.

Now play your event. If you set the first and last keyframes correctly it should slowly move to the left and widen out some at the same time and in effect make it appear as the camera was pulling back at the same time is panned left. If you don't get just the effect you want you can add keyframe anywhere along the way to help Vegas out. There are other ways, but that's the fairly simple way.

Thanks guys for your help. I wonder if someone could compile all of these
tutorials into one book. It's a big help to know what is possible to
accomplish with Vegas. But I assume it would be cost prohibitive to due this.

James J. Kizak