Forgive me if you veterans already knew this, but I found this very interesting tip at pcmagazine.com's review of VF:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,7892,00.asp
..."click on Options and hold down the shift key while selecting Preferences. On the internal tab, find "Show Trimmer" and set it's value to TRUE. While you're there, set "Show Speed Control" (scrubber) to TRUE. The trimmer isn't really necessary if you import video from a DV cam and use automatic scene detection. The media pool is a much better place to organize your clips. But if you import long analog clips, the trimmer comes in handy."
Tried it, and it works. Very interesting!