Timeline Cursor Position Limit? Why?

Sol M. wrote on 1/14/2006, 4:20 PM
I'm experiencing something very odd in Vegas (6b) and it doesn't make sense to me why Vegas would have this sort of behavior, so I thought I'd toss it out here to see if anyone can confirm what I'm seeing.

There seems to be a limit as to how far you can position the cursor after the last event on the timeline. I can't understand why this would be.

Here's what I tested (with the time ruler set to "Time and Frames"):

1) On a new timeline, the limit appears to be 00:02:00:00 (2 minutes). I can't position the playhead further than that.

2) If I add an event to the timeline, the limit remains at 00:02:00:00 until an event is added past 00:02:00:00
2a) However, the limit is only extended to the last event's right edge. I can't position the playhead past that.
2b) If I position an event far enough past the current limit, the new limit is not the last event's right edge, but just a bit past it, which will remain the limit until an event is placed past this point. I haven't been able to determine how much past the current limit I need to position an event for the limit to be past the last event's right edge. Sometimes it's the event's right edge, and every so often it is a little past it.

Why this is bad (at least for me):

I was editing the last event on the timeline and I wanted to extend the length of the event by 15 seconds by extending the right edge. So, I press CTRL+G and type in a new timecode position for the cursor (e.g. +00:00:15:00). When I press Enter, the cursor only moved +00:00:04:00. No amount of dragging the cursor or typing in the timecode would move the cursor to a position beyond this point.

My only choice was to
1) Place a marker at the event's current right edge
2) Drag out the event's right edge past what I thought might be +15 seconds (so that the limit would at least be extended 15 seconds)
3) Go back to the marker I set
4) CTRL+G to add 15 seconds to the cursor's current position
5) Trim back the event's right edge to the cursor.

5 Steps for an operation that should only take 2 at most:
1) CTRL+G to add 15 seconds to cursor's current position
2) Drag the event's edge to the new cursor position

This is only one example of how this limit can slow down my editing.

And yes, I know I could just drag the event's edge and it would indicate how far I've dragged it, but there are a number of reasons why I wouldn't do it that way:
1) Requires that I be zoomed-in in order to get any precision at all (e.g. to extend the the edge +00:00:15:21). Zooming in/out adds extra steps
2) The event's edge will snap to the cursor (with snapping enabled). Without the cursor, the event's edge will only snap to grid lines or markers, which doesn't provide the precision necessary to extend the event edge to any desired point.

Can anyone confirm this behavior in Vegas for me? I don't know of any other NLE that imposes a limit as to where you can position your playhead/cursor on the timeline (not even Windows Movie Maker!) and I can't understand why it would be like this in Vegas.

Comments

farss wrote on 1/15/2006, 12:51 AM
Well I can't say for certain that I can repo your exact issue but for sure yes Vegas does limit how far you can go past the last event.

But I think this will cure you problem. Just put any event on the T/L and drag it WAY, WAY to the right and delete it. Bingo, the timeline now extends to where that event WAS. Very odd behavior I agree, but you learn to live with it.

I find this a real drag when editing audio, I might put say 5 hours of stuff onto the T/L just to work out how long it is in total and then cut at
say 65 minutes and delete the rest, but now my timeline when zoomed all the way out is 5 hours long. I guess this is kind of the reverse of your problem.

Bob.
Sol M. wrote on 1/15/2006, 2:35 AM
Thanks for the input. I guess I was hoping that there was someone who know why a limit like this would be imposed. I know there are workarounds (there always are), in fact, the extra steps I have to take to perform my edits because of this "feature" is a workaround.

While, I guess I could always increase the internet setting for "min project display length", doing so causes new projects to start with the timeline zoomed out really far, so I'd have to always zoom in just to see the events on the timeline at a usable size. Also, I'm pretty sure I don't know what the numbers on the "Play past end of project" setting represent, but it didn't seem to make a difference no matter what I set that number to (i.e. it did not play past the cursor limit).

At any rate, my problem isn't really with the cursor limit on new projects, but the lack of control we have to position the cursor wherever we want on the timeline at any given time.

If anyone can think of a reason why they would have a limit like this, I'd really like to hear it, because I just don't get it.