Well that's usually the way I work too except in this case I had many hours of footage which had all sort of timecode problems. So I just made two 3 hour DVCAM tapes for the client to keep as masters, then I captured them back with burnt in TC from my DSR-11 and burnt two low quality DVDs for him to give me back an EDL, which he did an excellent job of.

So I recaptured the DVCAM tapes which means I've got two files, each around 3 hours long and trying to trim that on the timeline is a pain cause the EDL references source TC.

I've since worked out how Vegas is making me work. Open file in trimmer, enter in/out points, add to T/L, THEN clear Trimmer History, open same file again in trimmer. Quite tedious! It'd be much easier if the trimmer window had a Commit button, you could enter new in/out point without it trying to recalc things UNTIL you hit the commit button.

If I'd captured using scene detection maybe the way the trimmer works would make some kind of bizarre sense but in this case scene detection wouldn't have worked period.

What would be a really nice as a Vegas add on is a simple spreadsheet / database you could give to a client so they can enter an EDL and they give it back to you to open in Vegas.
Bob.

i wrote asking questions about it's use last year, especially since i do a lot of edl work - still haven't bothered with it, though in 5 the ability to make a sub clip has come in useful.

it must have looked like a good idea at the beginning, but the designers lost the plot.

leslie

I think that is one reason why experienced Avid editors have so much trouble with Vegas, they edit by use of the "trimmer" and trying to use the Vegas trimmer ,nuff said .

(Must admit I use it all the time and have little problems,not with someone elses EDL though .)

Well, since I;ve found another trick that save a few clicks.
Double click the duration window and hit delete, then you can enter a new in and out point without things getting wierd.
Hardly intuitive but once you know I guess I can live with it.
Surely once you've added the selected clip to the T/L you'd think it obvious you were starting a NEW clip. The other thing that bugs me is this whole 'Looped Region' thing. It might be fine on the T/l but in the trimmer it's plain dumb, sorry to be abrupt but it sucks. It's way too easy to loose it. Surely two special markers would make more sense, they could be something really complex like IN and OUT :)

Bob.

A couple of alternatives Bob;

In the Trimmer, each time you drag and set an in and out point, you can hit R and create a Region, give it a useful name, click the floppy icon to save it then go to your next in/out. Doing this will create a list in Vegas Explorer, which can be sorted by any column, including the Region name. These can then be lifted in bulk to the time line to create an "instant program"

Also - if you prefer working on the timelime, the camera timecode can be displayed on the video thumbnails by setting that preference, so splitting and dragging edges is a fast way of finding those in and out points.

I agree though, that it would be great if your client's list could be pasted straight into edit details or similar.

Peter

Hi Peter,
the EDL is pretty short so typing it into the trimmer seemed simple enough, pretty much got it down pat now, I'll try the region trick next.
Bob.

Instead of draging to select the region, I now prefer to use Ctrl+G to move the cursor to the in point, then hit i to set it, and do the same for the out point, and then R to make a region. This way I can just enter the TC as a string of numbers (eg. 12300 for 00:01:23:00) and have the I/O points to the exact frame.

Norm

Good point Norm - much quicker if you already have T/C specified.

Bob, you should really look into the clip logger in the Veggie toolkit. I use this to take logs in that were made for media100. You open the log, assign field names, import it to your project, and you get a timeline of offline events based on the log file times. From there you just recapture the offline media.

My log file is a tab delimited text file with tape name, description, in point and out point. That's all you need. The new clips will either use the description for file names or it can use tape name plus description for the name.

As far as the Vegas trimmer goes, I don't think the Madison folks have ever understood the concept. A trimmer is there to work on individual media files. This includes creating clips (subclips in our case), and applying media FX.

Rob Mack

I'd have to disagree with the statement that the Vegas programmers don't get the concept of the trimmer. I come from an Avid/FCP background, and while I may have initially experienced the same frustration that some of you are currently experiencing, I find the trimmer quite robust and useful after using vegas for about 2 years now.

Coming to Vegas after using mostly FCP for a good 4 years (v.1 baby!), I was used to a workflow that started with the trimmer. Here's my basic workflow:

1. Open source file in the Trimmer
2. Cue up timecode points either by playing through the footage or directly typing in timecode (using Ctrl+G as someone else mentioned).
3. Type "i" to set the in-point, followed by "o" when I've reached my desired out-point
4. Create a Region of the clip (by typing "r"). I'm all for minimizing necessary steps for a task, so I enabled the "automatically same markers in source files" option in the preferences, so no need to hit the floppy icon every time I set a marker or region.
5. For the next clip, all that's necessary is to once again hit "i" and then "o" and the highlighted area in the clip will change respectively.
6. Go through entire clip creating regions where necessary.
7. When you want to add the clip to the timeline, make sure the desired region is highlighted by double-clicking on the region marker or anywhere with the region's limits or add it to the timeline before moving on to create the next region.

IMHO, Vegas' implementation of the trimmer, while possibly takes some getting used to (I can't even remember now if that took long or not), has an advantage over most other trimmers-- multiple regions. This feature is great because you can simply use the same source file to set all the clips you want to come out of that region and not lose any of your previous in/out points when moving on to the next region.

The only workflow feature I think vegas lacks in regard to the trimmer, is that you can't modify clips on the timeline from the trimmer even if you've used the "open in trimmer" feature on a clip in the timeline. Any changes made to the clip have no effect on the clip you selected to open in the trimmer from the timeline and thus the clip on the timeline would need to be replaced by the new clip, an unnecessary extra step IMHO. Thankfully, Vegas has good fine-tuning features on the timeline so going to the trimmer to do fine adjustments is not entirely necessary, but all the same, being able to isolate and work on one clip is nice.

Note: Just a disclaimer that I am still on Vegas 4 (with no great intention to upgrade to v5 ATM), so if you're referring to v5 and the workflow I've described doesn't work, then perhaps they broke something in v5 ;)

No, the Trimmer hasn't changed much - now has ability to create subclips. ..

I have always loved Regions in Trimmer, and the ability to sort them in the order of the name we give them makes it even more flexible. Same as putting them in bins.

Yes, these are good things and very laudable.

And yet I maintain that a trimmer is essentially a place to work on individual media files. Last I checked you couldn't even apply mediaFX from the trimmer. Duh!

Seems like this is one module that could use some focused attention. Keep what it does well, add what it ought to do well.

Rob Mack

Rob, if you could add FX at Trimmer level, rather than Event level, this would mean it applied whenever that clip was used, which may not be what you want - similar to adding FX in the Media Pool, which we can already do.

Your workflow may be different - maybe you could describe how you'd like it implemented.