Tech question: one project vs. several

Michael Madigan wrote on 6/26/2005, 11:38 AM
Hello everyone,

These forums are a great place to get lots of information, I'm new to Vegas and definitely like all the features the program has to offer.

Question of the day: I have a 25 minute short film that I'm putting together. Question is: should I put together the individual "parts" of the movie (I'm thinking 6 or 7) and render those into AVI and put one Vegas project with all the AVI's together, or should I only work on one project and use markers?

The reason I ask is that when I play around with the "Insert Time" option, only part of my tracks seem to move. So I'm worried if I put everything in one project, then if I want to add / delete time, I'm going to spend a lot of time manually moving tracks back and forth. But I'm also worried that I'm going to render my files into AVI and then rerender them again in another project, don't want to lose any quality of the files.

Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks!! Mike M.

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/26/2005, 11:59 AM
Ripple edit will allow you to easily insert things into one project and have things move around as appropriate.

There should be no re-rendering involved even if you load an AVI into a project and re-render. That's because Vegas is smart enough to realize that you are not making changes to an already rendered AVI file. It will then do a bit-for-bit copy when you do the final render.

In V6 of course you can do Nested Vegs... so you don't actually need to render those files anyway.
rs170a wrote on 6/26/2005, 1:38 PM
...when I play around with the "Insert Time" option, only part of my tracks seem to move.

Make sure you click in an empty area of the timeline when you're doing this. If you select an individual clip/event, only that track will be shifted.

Mike
vicmilt wrote on 6/26/2005, 5:03 PM
I definitely recommend working in small sections and then joining them all in a "master show".
V6 let's this all happen seamlessly, by importing the various VEG files into the master assembly, as if they were AVI files.
Then when the whole show is put together and you find the inevitable revisions and tiny changes, you simply right click the veg, and Vegas brings you back to the original short part. Revise IT, and when you return to the master assembly, the revisions are automatically in place.
Don't get much better than that...
v
GG wrote on 6/26/2005, 5:26 PM
Actually it could be much better it it was true nesting. That is having all the tracks in a region collapse visually while working in one instance of Vegas. Currently it has to open another instance of Vegas, we work on it, save it again, then it rerenders in the master instance. Lot of extra steps and extra time involved, but better than previous version of Vegas. Working on a movie that mught have 50 scenes or more and then having maybe 25 instances of Vegas open for tweaks is not very practical. It also takes more time to close those extra instances. Imagine having 100 instances of Vegas left open just so we can tweaks small sections.

GG
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/26/2005, 5:57 PM
> Actually it could be much better it it was true nesting. ... Imagine having 100 instances of Vegas left open just so we can tweaks small sections.

I guess it’s a matter or personal preference. I think nested veg files are far better than nested tracks in one project. When you right-click on a veg to open it to make the change. You make the change and close the instance. It’s no different than a dialog box opening that you interact with and then close. I use this feature a lot and I never have more than two instances of Vegas open at a time; the main project and an imbedded veg that I might be changing. It’s just like opening an audio file in Sound Forge and then closing Sound Forge when you’re done.

Here’s why I feel nested vegs are better than nested tracks. With nested tracks: Imagine having 1000’s of tracks open in one project. How do you manage that? What if you want to shorten one nested section? How many nested tracks do you have to manipulate? With nested vegs I just trim the end just like any other event and I’m done. I can fade the whole thing in or out with one swipe of the event. The best part is that with nested vegs, your entire project is on one track. No scrolling through 100’s of nested tracks. So the same argument can be made either way.

IMHO, nested vegs are pure genius, but like I said, it’s a personal preference I guess. I happen to like how Sony solved the problem.

~jr
GG wrote on 6/26/2005, 6:52 PM
jr,

Working on just two instances is no sweat. What I said was a full length movie with 100 scenes which are all separate veg files. Yes, I can work on just one or two at a time, but the extra time and steps add up a lot on a long form project (where nesting is needed). Add all the extra time for waiting for every instance to open up (it's not instantly), resave the veg (you have to resave it to have it affect the master instance). Now close all those open instances. Now do some more tweaks as you try to finish this movie. Back and forth, extra time, extra steps, instances stacking up from being being open. Waiting for the new renders to finish. It seems much better and easier to just right click and select Expand to open up a region. After all, we only are seeing one video and one audio track on the master instance. The region expands to allow tweaking just the tracks it needs and then close it with one click. Everyone wants to move forward to having one app do it all and we seem to be going backwards with more instances running. I know it's a Vegas limitation. Not to mention the plugin structure that won't frame serve things like Boris with durations.

Vegas evolved form a track level audio app and they probably have no choice than the way it is. This current way seems to be a workaround to real nesting. That is probably why we still have problems with not being able to apply certain things to events, like 3D and audio FX.(real time non destructive). And why we lose grouping/sync of audio to its video when we don't want to. Or having to make a delete twice for the video event and then its audio. Or try to move the video and the audio won't go with it to a new audio track. All the apps out there do not behave this way. The video and it's audio should always be treated as one until we say not to.

Even if it did need 1000's' of tracks, you wouldn't need to have them all open at once. You open maybe one, two or three regions and just those tracks quickly open to reveal the section. Four instant steps of Select event(s), Expand, Edit, Collapse and then move on. We now have Right click, Open new instance, Focus to new instance, Edit, Save veg, Switch focus to master and Wait for render. Seven steps which also adds extra time..

Better structure for event level editing and FX should overcome these track level restrictions. Acid has this problem too. You have to have a seaprate track open for every different loop. Sonar allows all the loops to be on one drum track in series. Much better and easier, especially when applying a drum track FX to all the drum parts.

GG