Dave, yes, rocking back and forth L and J, this feels different to way originally aimed for but it seems pretty effective.
Its slow as you say, and its pitch shifted which 'could' be problem if cutting to something low frequency.

getting some great ideas here.

Paul.

Caution: this is the EXTERNAL preferences, use at your own risk.

Go to INTERNAL Preferences, search for scrub.

Change Pause Scrub to 1 (digital)

Exit, Postion mouse over Scrubber head and now you can scrub one frame at correct pitch.

Dave T2

That makes sense, it is a digital scrub after all , not an analog one. Ie. it plays samples of the frame in pitch, not like analog whereas the pitch changes with speed.
This looks good.
Is there a single step keyboard action for this? Again without mouse dragging.

Paul.

Hm, just tested this.
Forward frames seem ok, but back frames are a little hit and miss, even when zoomed in. And without single frame scrub using a keystroke or shuttle then its difficuilt to control using just the mouse. Just was playing with it and found it a little annoying really, back and fourth with jumps. I guess this is why its hidden in the Internal prefs.
Its kinda working, just not as smooth and controllable as it could be perhaps.

Edit:
Starting to think that dragging the playhead (in digital mode) is correct, but need keyboard or external control to make it accurate.
Dave, you mentioned making a marco in the shuttle, i am seeing RATE = +1 for forward mouse drag, and RATE = -1 for backwards.
Followed by a brief PLAY / STOP of around 30mS.
Can the shuttle handle that?

Paul.

Would i be correct in thinking;
When you drag the playhead in Vegas to perform a scrub, this is actually performing a multiple operation in Vegas
eg.
1. set rate (plus or minus direction)
2) play,
3) wait time (1 frame in length)
4) stop.

Having this action as a keyboard shortcut (forward backwards) would be good.

Paul.

I need to eat some dinner and then play wiht this, but your thinking was my thinking.

as far as mouse control, mine is pretty stable.

On your General Preferences, do you have Linear Scrub ticked. This might smooth out the mouse.

Dave T2

Dave thanks, enjoy your dinner!

Paul.

Okay,

Try this for a Macro

Scrub Backwards

1) J
2) Pause 125ms
3) K


Scrub Forward

1) L
2) Pause 125ms
3) K

This seems to do one frame at a time at full speed. At least on my system.

Let me know how it works for you.

Dave T2

Was trying different macro setups last night. One main problem was it was not frame accurate, the time delay depends on the frame rate and how much we are zoomed in on the TL.

My attempt failed last night, i was using something similar to;
Forward:
F19 (forward jog)
delay 60
Space
F9 (next frame)

backward:
ctrl + F19 (backwards jog)
delay 60
Space
F3 (previous frame)

this at least gets us to the next actual frame, from Stop locator to next frame F9 or F3. Thats better than just relying on the delay for skipping.
Problem; its too slow reacting to commands... :( especially backwards. Turning the wheel just gets messed up if you go to fast.

I dont know, its starting to look as if this should all be taken care of within Vegas and not trying to make it happen in Shuttle macros. The other point being, anyone not using a Shuttle would be excluded. This should really be intergrated into Vegas and with keyboard shortcuts i think.

Will continue looking...

Paul.

Hi Paul,

I know you have found something that Vegas doesn't do - but if, as you stated in your original post, you are trying to cut to a musical beat, then I'm not sure how frame by frame scrubbing would help.

If I want to cut to the beat, I play the whole piece through and hit "M" on every beat (or off-beat) I may want to cut on - now I have a perfect marker for any cuts I may like to make. Isn't this an easier approach?

Apologies if I've misunderstood your question.

Peter

Hi Peter,
This is the thing, its not about cutting to the beat (or off beat). Thats pretty easy using waveforms and cutting visually using sound amplitude as a guide. Thats not a problem.
My point at the start was, cutting to music. That includes frequency (note) changes which may be subtle changes and cannot be viewed easily. Using M is ok, but the idea was to match the frame accuracy of Premiere and without looping the action to get the exact point.
Its quite a precise thing we are talking about and not just an approximation of where should we cut. For me at least, this is vital. A frame either way on a cut can change the feel of the cut or transition.
At the end of the day, it could be this cannot be done in the current version of Vegas. But so far we got some great ideas its looking pretty damn close!
Just using PP5 and scrubbing the TL is a joy.. I can edit music videos and other music based video material instantly, and bang on the frame i need (see video) - And i am really just trying to copy that ability...

Paul.

My Macro seemed to be pretty frame accurate. Did it not work for you?

Dave T2
You are right, it shuold be a function of Vegas.

I'm definitely going to add this to product suggestions. It would be an easy add. And for all who want to claim one method over another for "best" - it all comes down to enjoying your workflow. I use waveform for audio edits the majority of the time, but especially in some types of music that aren't downbeat oriented, being able to hone in on a particular bass note, for example, this type of scrubbing is extremely efficient once you're familiar with it.

As much as I love NLE editing, users who began their editing experience on NLEs will never know how fast you could do certain things in a linear suite with a competent editor. That's kind of sad.

Dave, when i tried it, i could not get frames to progress correctly. It kinda worked, i see the point of it and you do get playback in short bursts.
But it would depend on the zoom amount as its playing for a set duration (delay in macro) and not necessarily the next or previous frame.
Looking at the actual frame position, going back and fourth seems to result in either skipped frames or multiple clicks of the wheel to get 1 frame advance. Zoom in and it all changes, zoon out, same problem but the other way. I guess if we stayed in one zoom selection, then it may stay close enough to work. But then change the media fps, and we're off again. Just seems a bit too variable. Thats what i see here.

Atom12, yes i will be submitting this also as a feature request. Its hard to explain to people who have not used this kind of 'old hat' editing - and yes it does depend on your own personal editing sytle. But for me at least, i really enjoy this way - its just so fast and intuitive, ears and eyes working together. Two senses rather than one. Best way i can explain it. And, well, it cant be that old fashioned - PP5.5 has it as standard default.

I will keep bashing at this, although i do have other tasks to complete now.
Thanks to everyone for all your brilliant ideas.

Paul.

Must be a difference in cpu, clock cycles etc. becaues on my system it is very consistent at 1 frame either direction.

Oh well. I thought of another way involving ctrl-g, mark I and O, select, play, but it was a lot of work.

Dave T2

Hi Dave, no i can't get it to work consistently.

Thats strange, i have the exact macro you posted and it is functioning, just not frame accurate and again, the Shuttle can't seem to send functions fast enough to Vegas to get smooth operation. Backwards is the worst.
I do not know why it works for you there but not here. It cant be anything to do with clock speeds, in the end, all the hardware clocking works out the same.
The delay setup in the macro would depend on the frame rate of the TL and i tried again to adjust this but still could not find a consistant point. Sometimes 2 frames or 3 even, other delays just get stuck and it doesnt move at all. Others, hit and miss.
Dont know, but thanks for all your efforts! Just not happening here.

Ps. i have posted this as a suggested feature to SCS. See what happens.

Paul.

Just a guess, but could the configuration setting of "Options|Quantize to Frames" explain the difference that you & DaveT2 are seeing (i.e. do you have that option 'checked')?

jerald, yes i had that checked.

Paul.

I was quantized as well. I think it is probably a difference in how fast the CPU, Videocard and Shuttle controller interact with each other. Since I am sure we are on completely different systems, this does not seem to be consistent.

Mine does work consistently on my system.

Dave T2

Only thing i could think of was im in 25fps land and i believe your in 30?
But still, no matter. I dont think writing macros is the solution in this case, this should be inside Vegas and controllable from the keyboard, removing any speed issues from the Shuttle or whatever controller is connected. Thats a better solution, and as stated already, sent a request to SCS along with the video link, just for kicks. See how it goes...
Would be nice to have this though, so even macros would be an interim fix for me at least.

Paul.

A bit of history on this. I submitted a feature request for this years ago but what SCS implemented wasn't quite what I was asking for.

What I've seen in other NLEs was a key command to play one frame of audio either before or after the cursor, without moving the cursor. The reason you would want this is to hear soft sounds like the start of a breath - things that don't show easily on a waveform. Then you could move the cursor a frame, check the audio, and then move the cursor another frame.

What SCS did instead was to play a small amount of audio on both sides of the cursor when you press numkey-0. This totally fails if the goal is to hear the audio on one side of the cursor or the other.

In the words of our last Prez..."Mission Accomplished"!

It's frustrating. Yes, SCS does indeed listen to feature requests, but they don't follow up with more questions, and as near as I can figure they were adding features without much of an idea of what they'd be used for.

Rob

It seems like the natural keyboard shortcuts would something like Alt+J or L to scrub one frame forward or back and then something like ctrl+alt+J or L to scrub a frame forward or back without moving the cursor.

On the later option the idea is just to hear the audio on one side or the other of the cursor.

Rob