Two Gripes about VV

farss wrote on 8/25/2003, 4:44 PM
Firts one has been mentioned before but I'm raising it again as to date it hasn't been addressed:

1) When an event is split the right portion looses the audio/video linkage.

This in itself isn't a major issue, so long as you remember it's going to happen. Still I find it has an impact on workflow and needs to be fixed. Last night I did a quick edit job on a high school project. Shot on compact VHS and he'd had a go at editing in camera, all I really had to do was cut out the no takes and clean up the edits. Should have taken less than an hour.
Capture the whole thing as one event and split at each clip, delete no takes. But after the split every time you delete the video you have to also delete the audio track, missed one audio section and then started ripple editing. Audio ends up quite a mess. I fixed it pretty quick so not that big a drama.
But if this was a big project with lots of audio and video tracks I wouldn't have been so lucky.
I know Excalibur will resync audio but that's not what I wanted to do, I'd pulled a few bits of audio to use as fill in other scenes so resyncing all of it would have been a disaster. At least one other NLE that I used to use required a bit of work to unlock the audio and video not matter where I moved it.

2) During PTT loss of sync between bars and start of program.

Again hardly a show stopper but doesn't make for a pro look. This doesn't seem to happen during digital PTT but going through my D8 out to VHS it happens all the time. Bars play out, sync splat and then leader, another sync splat and then program. By the way I'm doing a PAL PTT. I've taken to adding my own leader to programs to make this less obvious but it would be nice if it worked right.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 8/25/2003, 5:14 PM
Can't help with #2, but I've always found #1 a blessing (i'm assuming that after you split, the right side delete doesn't delete both the vid/aud. They still move together, right?). I use premiere at work and have always been annoyed by the fact that you must unlink the a/v on a clip to delete just one part.

Aren't all the clips in VV like this though? Where you must delete A and V seperatly? Maybe i forgot to take my happy pills thismorning and that's why I always think it does it. :)

However, if you mean that after you split the A and V aren't linked at all, then yeah, that IS annoying. I did that once. Got pretty pissed. The I noticed for some reason the "Unlink Group" button was depressed. Ends up I hit the wrong key. :)
Grazie wrote on 8/25/2003, 5:33 PM
I don't get 1) Audio stays linked to Video - as long as the UNGROUP Button isn't depressed.

Can't help with 2) .

Grazie
farss wrote on 8/25/2003, 5:44 PM
Garzie,
if you move them they'll certainly move together, but if you delete the right hand event (after the split) only one track gets deleted. If you delete the left hand event both the video and audio gets deleted.

Certainly in a normal DV workkflow this isn't an issue, each clip is already a separate event and all you'd normally do is trim it.
smhontz wrote on 8/25/2003, 6:31 PM
Here's what I do: left hand on ShuttlePro, I scrub thru the single big event until I get to a cut point. Hit S to split. Scrub through to next cut point. Hit S to split. Double-click on the middle section I want to delete, and it makes a region covering both video and audio. Hit delete, they both go away, and if ripple is on, everybody slides in nice and tight. Very fast, and video and audio never get out of sync.
farss wrote on 8/25/2003, 6:34 PM
I'd agree that's a better way to do things but i find it hard setting regions precisely, maybe thats just me.
Erk wrote on 8/25/2003, 8:00 PM
Farrs,

I just tried various deletes and splits. It seems to act differently depending on whether Ripple edit and/or Group buttons are enabled or not. Do you get the same behaviour you described with Ripple on or off?

G



farss wrote on 8/25/2003, 9:13 PM
Erk,
need to do some tests to really confirm this but with ripple edit is where I get into grief.

Just tried it and with ripple edit on then both A & V get deleted, with it off only the video or audio. Really should work the same if ripple edit is on or off.

But what I've had happen after I've only deleted the video is ripple edit slide that later footage over the top of the left behind audio. Wouldn't matter I guess but can get very confusing if you then move footage to drop something in finding an audio segement appear out of nowhere.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 8/26/2003, 7:11 AM
I tried the split with and w/o ripple edit and you're right, they so act diffreently in terms of deleting stuff on the left/right side. Wierd. It's probley a bug. I don't use ripple edit so i never noticed. :)
farss wrote on 8/26/2003, 8:03 AM
I'ts pretty annoying, it work correctly with ripple editing on and I do a lot of work that way just cutting dud bits out of downloaded streaming media but then when I went back to a more usual sort of environment editing a program with multiple takes I switched ripple off so I could leave some gaps in the scenes so I knew where i was and that's when I came unstuck.

It's been raised before and I'd thought it was such an obvious problem that it would have just been quietly fixed in one of the minor updates.

donp wrote on 8/26/2003, 8:54 AM
Thanks farss, I thought I was going nuts here. Did a short 11 minute video the other day and started editing Sunday. After a number of splits and deleted scenes there were many places in the time line the the audio was out of sync with the video and I had to go back manually and adjust the audio back to the video. Usually have ripple edit "on" and I assume it was. Did you say that Excalibur will re sync the audio track to the video track? I have only been at editing with Vegas about 6 monthes ( about 5 videos) so I don't have all the tricks in my head yet.

Most of my problem though was that I forgot and selected the Video track to move to the point I wanted to split and then split, didn't notice the audio track portion with the deleted video did not go away and then had to split the audio and delete it too. All this resulted in missmatched audio and video.

I guess the Excalibur program woud be a good thing to have.
farss wrote on 8/26/2003, 9:00 AM
I don't have it myslef, just too slack to buy it, sure looks like good value.
It wouldn't really solve my problem though because I oftenly pull a bit of audio background noise to patch up other bits. If Excalibur went back and resynced all the audio it'd be a mess, although maybe you can nominate which tracks you want it to work on. You'd have to ask them just how it works to be sure.
jetdv wrote on 8/26/2003, 9:41 AM
It will only resync the selected video and audio clip. It doesn't try to resync the entire project - just the one clip you WANT resynced.
donp wrote on 8/26/2003, 11:15 AM
That would work for my mess. Thanks. I tried a search on the internet for Excalibur. There are so many things with that name in their stuff, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. What is the name of the company that produces Excalibur?
jetdv wrote on 8/26/2003, 11:18 AM
http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com
jeremyk wrote on 8/26/2003, 12:45 PM
Excalibur is a great and useful tool, and I bought a copy. Everybody should have one, in my opinion.

However, even without Excalibur it's pretty easy to retrieve synced audio for a video clip.

Double click the video clip in the timeline, then right click on it and select Open in Trimmer. The video clip and its original audio track will appear in the trimmer. The sections will be selected because the original clip was selected. Press 'tab' if necessary to select just the audio track in the trimmer. Press 'a' to copy the audio track back into the timeline.
Grazie wrote on 8/26/2003, 12:53 PM
jeremyk - Excellent fix!
jetdv wrote on 8/26/2003, 1:48 PM
Since I always edit with ripple OFF, I have never noticed this. Whatever I click on to delete is what gets deleted - whether audio, video, or both. However, I turned ripple ON to test. On the right, only the piece selected is deleted and on the left, both pieces are deleted. However, this actually makes sense! If I have ripple ON and I split and delete a piece, wouldn't I want it GONE and everything move left?

Maybe this is a reason for you to leave ripple OFF and use POST Ripple Editing.
Maverick wrote on 8/26/2003, 3:02 PM
Maybe it's a setting I have made but after I hit S both tye audio and the video are selected and CTRL-X deletes both. HTH