Ripple behaviour and the cursor

Ben  wrote on 8/28/2003, 5:19 AM
The V4 ripple is great, but I'd like the option to make the play cursor move to where you've just edited when you ripple. This would be particulary useful for speech editing, music editing, etc. It's how editors such as SADiE have always worked. Here's what I mean:

- You place two cuts in an event, the in and out point of your edit.
- You hit delete.
- Currently, the cursor stays where it is. So, to play the edit you've just made, you have to move the cursor to that point in the timeline.

This really slows down what should be some speedy editing jobs. An option in preferences to make the cursor move to the cut point would be great, as obviously you wouldn't want this behaviour all of the time.

While I'm at it, generally the keyboard shortcuts are fine, but I'd love the ability to move, for example, split to another key, such as numberpad zero or whatever. Also, a toolbar button for split would be handy for when you want to do lazy mouse only operation.

What do people think about my cursor/ripple idea?

Ben

Comments

Ben  wrote on 8/31/2003, 7:27 PM
Bump. Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Ben
Weevil wrote on 9/1/2003, 6:40 AM
Yep, I know exactly what you are saying, but the issue is certainly not only with ripple editing.

Sometimes it feels like you gotta go all funkytown with the mouse clicks to get the simplest things done in Vegas.

Sometimes you want the cursor to move, but a hell of a lot of the time you want it to stay in the same spot just while you touch-up a couple of edits.

I’m a mouse wheel addict and zooming frustrates the bejesus out of me. I don’t understand why I have to move the cursor to the location to make a zoom. Why can’t I just mouse over the right spot and spin the wheel? Talk about redundant clicks.

So much of Vegas’s interface is so clean but I reckon this stuff could do with some serious tidying up.
Chienworks wrote on 9/1/2003, 7:20 AM
The cursor is your active editing spot on the timeline. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to have Vegas assume that the current mouse pointer is the point you want to zoom in on. I know lots of folks who can't help moving the mouse slightly while turning the wheel. In this case a tiny movement when zoomed out could result in having you zoom in to a very different spot than intended. One single click to position the cursor at the desired zoom location first doesn't seem like a serious amount of extra clicking to me, especially when it gives firm visual confirmation (placing the cursor) and frees me from having to worry about the pointer wandering while i'm zooming.
Ben  wrote on 9/1/2003, 8:54 AM
Weevil - I'm afraid I'm with Chienworks here on the zooming thing. That <would> annoy me. I like the way Vegas also zooms to the cursor position. For me it's pretty much only the ripple editing thing that's bugging me right now, though I'm sure there are other things I can't think of at the moment!

Ben
Weevil wrote on 9/1/2003, 7:05 PM
Ouch, owe, ouch, owe, ouch, ouch, d’oh!

...Sorry chaps...Let me rephrase that...what I meant to say was “Why can’t I just HAVE THE OPTION OF mousing over the right spot and spinning the wheel?”...Let me tick a little check box somewhere.

Plenty of programs use this sort of zooming already. Corel Draw does exactly this, but it zooms on both axis not just the X so there is twice the margin for error. Rather than inaccurate and clumsy I find the zooming on Corel to be really natural and transparent. I don’t even notice that I do it anymore; it’s just like focusing your eye on something and then looking somewhere else.

Believe me, use it a couple of times and you get a feel just how much easier and faster it is. Man, using Vegas straight after using Corel gives me the willies big time.

Quite seriously, the amount of times you zoom in and out adds up. I’m sure on some projects I have zoomed literally hundreds and sometimes thousands of times. Every time I do this I have to move the playback cursor’s position...usually twice. That seems like a tremendous amount of unnecessary fiddling to me.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 9/2/2003, 12:44 AM
Additionally, when doing the 'extra' clicking, it is quite easy to inadvertently drag (knock) events a tad ....

geoff