Thanks for the comments on Vegas. I think I'll stick with MS to fulfull my needs. Now, can anybody help me concerning the book? It was about an inch thick, seemed very comprhensive. It was $50 at our local Borders, but I can't find it on their web site (all I get is books on Las Vegas when I search).

I upgraded from Video Factory to Vegas for two primary reasons: (1) I needed more tracks to do compositing, and (2) I wanted to use chroma-key in my composites. Movie Studio 3 now has the 3rd video track and chroma-key so I’m not sure I would have upgraded had Movie Studio been around at the time. I know one more video track is not the same as unlimited video tracks but for what I was doing at the time. I just needed one more to add titles on top of my video overlays and a 3rd track would have eliminated having a lot of re-renders.

Some of the features that Vegas has that I like are the new compositing modes like height maps, bump maps, etc. which allow you, among other things, to make a title conform to the ripple of water or a waving flag. This is a great effect for introductions. The color correction tools are also very useful for correcting those “less than ideal” situations that we all shoot in. In fact, I just captured my wedding video of 13 years ago to put on DVD and I couldn’t believe how out of color balance the two cameras were. It was easy to correct this and make the video even better using Vegas.

You might want to download the Vegas trial and play with it for a while. If there is nothing that jumps out at you a screams buy me for $400 more, then I would stick with what you’ve already got. ;-)

~jr

You really don't even need the manual for Movie Studio since the program includes interactive tutorials. Just go to the help menu and select "Show me how" Movie Studio will then show you how to do practically anything you want step-by-step.

Of course, these tutorials don't show you the real advanced stuff, that is what these forums are for.

As for Vegas, it lacks the interactive tutorials so you need the book. However, it does add significantly more features (as well as a heftier price). I recommend you stick with Movie Studio until you feel the need for more features. To tell the truth, Movie Studio suits my relatively modest needs just fine and I have never felt the need to upgrade to Vegas.

Actually, the MS help screens show very little, including nothing on basics on how to paste clips into existing time lines without overlap, etc. Also, it's nice to have a book on software that shows most operating instructions, with forums left to ponder the odd problems. Now--- I finally got the information on the book on Vegas I mentioned. It's "Vegas 4 Editing Workshop" by Douglas Spotted Eagle, BooK & CD-ROM, September 2003. Barnes and Noble have it for $40, Border's for $50. I buy a lot of instructional books, and this looked like it was well done by experienced Vegas users. If any of you who have Vegas and MS familiarity and take a look at it, I'd be interested in your opinion of whether I should spring with the money to use it for MS.

the one thing Vegas offers is a DVD authoring version that is pretty good... the myDVD that comes with MS is fairly weak.

However - given the price point of Vegas+DVD version, you can get MS and a very nice DVD authoring app for less.

>It's "Vegas 4 Editing Workshop" by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Douglas Spotted Eagle, aka SPOT, is a regular contributor to the Vegas forum. You could ask him directly.

Ian G.

I'm not sure what you mean by Ripple edits not having a function in Movie Studio. They seem to work for me, but I may be doing the wrong thing...

Suzan

Susan:

just curious...

Why is there a blue gradient square beside your name?

In my experience with Ripple Editing (in Premiere, Final Cut), when you lengthen or shorten on clip in a project, the project -- all layers of video and audio to the right -- shift left or right to allow for this change, changing the length of the entire project.

With true ripple editing, I'd be able to add a clip to the middle of my project and all of the clips that follow would move to allow for it, yet remain in sync.

MS allows you to select a segment, with ripple edit activated, and delete it so that the clips to the right move in to fill the gap -- but it really doesn't allow for you to insert clip.

Insert Time is an option, but that's always led to trouble for me, since all of the layers don't move the same amount and I always have to go through and move my clips back into position.

True ripple editing may be a lot to ask of an otherwise awesome app, but maybe it's something for Sonic Foundry to shoot for!

(Does ripple editing work differently in Vegas?)

Actually, it looks like MS will insert a clip and move all the other clips to accommodate it -- but only on the layer where new material is being inserted!

(From what I see in the manual, this is how Vegas behaves too.)

Is there an advantage to this? It drives me crazy since I've got three layers of audio and three layers of video all carefully choreographed -- and then I drop in a new clip and only one audio and video layer extend and everything is knocked out of sync!

I've not experienced this in any other editing programs. And, if there's a good reason for it, I just wish I could override it and move all the layers at once.

My two cents anyway.

Thanks!

From what I see in the book I reference, Ripple is a lot more powerful in Vegas. It does a little in MS. In the helps on ripple, they have examples of using it with and without time selection. I don't understand what's meant there. Grisetti's experience with ripple editing in other movie edit programs is what I think should be a defaul -- clips to the right move over when adding a clip. I believe this happens in Vegas.

When pasting from the clipboard Paste Insert (ctrl+shift+V) on one track will move all of the tracks to the right. Vegas has the same thing. Do you want a preference that turns on paste insert? We can add it to the list of requests -- no promises.

But, am I misunderstanding what you want? Do you want ripple across all tracks when you're dragging clips from the media pool? You can do this in Vegas by enabling auto ripple across all tracks. This will move all tracks where the events have been split -- if it isn't split it doesn't move. At least that's the best I can figure out. Vegas has a lot of ripple edit options (manually; automatically; tracks only; tracks+markers+regions+bus tracks; all tracks+markers+regions -- you get the idea)

In MS help, time selection is the same as loop selection and the examples all have insert at the end of the selection.

Finally, the green square is to identify Sony employees.

Phew. I hope some of this helps,

Suzan

Suzan:

Thanks for the explanation of the square :)

I have to say that its GREAT to see sony employees in the forums! Keep up the great support!

Suzan - let me also add that it is great to have you as a regular participant.... it seems like this forum is slowly picking up some steam - must be all that extra time we have on our hands in the winter months! :o)

Look forward to your continued, and frequent, contributions!

=Don=

How do you do the paste insert from media pool? Ctl-Sft-V will do paste insert from items cut or copied on the time line, but I can't get it to work when moving clips from the media pool (it strictly overlaps), and I there's no command to put clips in the media pool into the clipboard. Paste Insert is something that is commonly done, and a way to turn it on would be great. Getting it to work from the media pool would be wonderful!

Addenda - earlier on this Forum someone clued me in on doing a ripple insert from the media pool using right click to drag the clip, which then gives the option to do ripple insert - which works. It would be well to add this to the manual and the help screens, since it is not mentioned anywhere that I could find. Also, I still like your idea of adding paste insert as an option to be able to set it as a default

I had 100% absolutely no idea that would work. As you can see I'm still learning -- thanks to everyone all for all the help.

Suzan