bezier curves aren't a cheesy effect, it's a very powerful compositing tool.

This is storyboarding in timeline again. It's a mediocre workaround, not a solution.

I see the need for nested sequences but wouldn't story boarding be a bit gadget ?

Monica,
maybe I've missed something but aren't storyboards a pre not post production thing?

I didn't want to offense M. Bezier in person, but storyboard fuction concerns 70% and maybe more of editors. How many need Bezier?

I'm still trying to figure out what the fuss is about nested sequences. I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm not a complete dope either. In the event that last sentence is false, please explain to me WHY nested sequences would be so wonderful. Thanks.

Making a story is a gadget?

...aren't storyboards a pre not post production thing?

Exactly my thought. Perhaps editing sessions would be shorter and more efficient if more planning was done before cameras rolled... (I'm probably going to get killed for making that comment).

The editor has to make visually the story from the rushes. Some write down and make plans, some other think visualy. Take the aproach of Walter Murch for example.

I'm 110% on your side!
Where I work we've got quite a few teenagers hiring gear to make their school projects, glad to see they have a pretty good grasp of production values, even thought about catering for the crew. And they even have a script, worked out what gear they need for what shot, have shooting schedules.
We all need to watch out, these young turks could give a few of us a run for our money.

i think monica is referring to the ability to look at the clips on a blank page if you will and simply shuffle them around - at which point you can then switch to a timeline view when performing your rough cut.

I wouldn't say that it's a lack of planning - but just a way to edit your initial cut. A very visual and fast way to do things without having to deal with a timeline.

I've not used one alot - but when dealing with a story that could unfold many different ways - not a bad tool at all

In premiere Pro, an otherwise unintuitive app, you just can move and permutate the thumbnails in the bin, make place and import others, repeat some, make the stucture of the story and then put the sequence on timeline to work with. Is that simple!

What do we have, instead of this, in our genious app?

It doesn't seem like it would take much programming to make the Media Pool serve this function, especially since we now have subclips. All we'd need is the ability to slide events around in the Media Pool, then have them added to the timeline in sequence.

Is the Media Pool scriptable?

I totally agree with you. It should not be a big thing to make the code for this.

ok, I doubt I would use this kind of feature (storyboarding), but I see the need for it.

About nested sequences, here is what I wrote in the audio forum :

In programs like Final Cut and Premiere, you can create sequences. A sequence will apear in your media pool and contain other events with edits. You can take this sequence and bring it in another sequence, it will then appear as a big block. You can have multiple sequences opened and they will appear under different tabs. So let's say you edit a movie with 8 scenes, you can have each scene as a separate sequence and assemble those 8 scenes in a 9th sequence. You could do something similar in vegas, have 1 vegas project for each scene, render uncompressed the 8 projects and assemble them in a new project. This is the step i'd like to see removed, rendering.

Now nesting has 2 advantages, it will help you better organize the events both vertically and horizontally. Vegas is a strong compositor, I can end up with 10 tracks to make a complex 10 seconds intro. Let's say the rest of my project only needs 3 tracks, I'd be glad to nest my 10 track composite into one big block and have it on one track. The way you would do it now is to have a copy of vegas open for compositng and another to assemble the stuff. This works fine but requires rendering. It will also helo organize horizontally, like in my example where you edit a movie with 8 scenes.

The way I see it for Vegas is like this :

One of the strenght of Vegas is the ability to work with multiple copies of Vegas at the same time. This works fine, and it's great. My idea is to enchance this workflow. I have absolutely no idea how hard this would be to implement, probably not that easy, but in my opinion it would be the best implementation of nested timelines in Vegas.

Here we go : Basically, you can have .veg files in the media pool. So you can take a veg file from the media pool and drag it to the timeline where it would appear as a block on one track. You could then cut and edit this block, create subclips of this sub timeline. If you need to edit the parts inside the block, you right click and choose Open timeline in new vegas window. This would open a new copy of vegas with the desired timeline.

So in my movie example with 8 scenes, the workflow is very similar, I edit each scene as a separate veg file and I have a master veg file where I embed all the 8 veg files. If I need to modify something, I can open the blocks in another instance of Vegas and do a modification, without rerendering. Of course it would also be possible to have a veg file in a veg file in a veg file...

Does all of this make sense at all ?

Ok, nested sequences is a lot more complicated to add than what many people want : just to move the thumbnails in the bin! ( I have my fixations, you see...)

Sony, think what editing and storytelling are in the first place : permutation. Let us make permutation possible.

I can do without a storyboard - had it in VideoWave (puke!!), and it was very cumbersome to edit with (I know that's also a function of VW). When I moved to VideoFactory, it took about an hour of getting used to the timeline view, and suddenly I felt like I was accomplishing something. To have a storyboard view is waaaaaayy down any list of changes/priorities. I'm not a coder/programmer (I do remember writing Basic and Fortran IV code a couple of decades ago), but I'm confident that adding a storyboard view is NOT a simple coding matter...

my 2 cents

Frenchy

I use BoardMaster to storyboard. It will allow for the use of .avi clips as well as image stills. I know that I just rename raw clips to match scene numbers and then hit the timeline. If there was an interface that allowed you to virtually "build" this sequence (and rename clips at the same time), it may nice to have, but unless I'm missing something, it would do no good whatsoever in the "planning" process that is associated with what most people think of as a "storyboard." Aren't you really talking about an enhancement in the media management, as opposed to a "storyboard?"

See my post above. An enhancement to media management is fine. Just let us reorder events and media bins in the media pool and we're half way there. Think of it as a "shuffle edit" for the media pool.

Storyboarding is also very useful for the unscripted documentary---gives you a chance to map out where you are going---

The two things I still use Premiere 6 for are the Storyboard and importing Illustrator files. I can't work without either option. It's odd to me that the StoryBoard idea meets such a wall from the Vegas users, the quick speed of Vegas in editing is it's appeal, what about the quick layout of the story?

Permutation of clips in the Media pool IS planning the storyboald, for me at least.

Asking Sofo or Sony engineers again : Is that necessary scripting a realy big deal for you? Adding this should increase vegas functionality for many of us. Not all of us use vegas for effects or sound tweakening.Some do pure and simple editing.