Whats the Trimmer for?

madgenius wrote on 10/22/2003, 12:47 AM
Ok, I'm a little new to VV. I love the speed of this software, it's like why didn't anyone think of this before? Pretty much all of the time when I edit, I just slap the clips straight to the timeline, then just use draging the points to do all the transitions, length, FX, and speed. Whats the trimmer? Just an extra way of doing things.

Oh, and is there any way to move the timeline?

-S

Comments

Grazie wrote on 10/22/2003, 12:58 AM
Ho! Do a search for Trimmer here. . . . loads of stuff on it. I too didn't immeadiately recognise the value of it when, as you quite rightly say, you/I can whizz along the T/L and get what we want to do - just like that!

I now regard the trimmer as a type of pre-T/L edit option. Not to just think of trimming for THE cut I want, but also to manage my stuff. Within Trimer you can create Regions and then have these Regions listed within the V4 Explorer. NOW this IS very useful. Others have other opinions. I guess it depends on what type of project you are doing - quick 'n Dirty OR long with many differnt cutaways and loads of "ooo that would be good to keep AND that bit too AND that bit too . . . ?" type of project where you wanna to have some form of management to all that - yeah? Then going back into Exporer and selecting that AVI you then have the option to just drag and plop that piece onto the T/L.

Being a messy editor, Trimmer and Regions has provided this NumbNutz with a bit more tidiness? And it has vastly improved my workflow. Others see this whole process as a work creation business and stay editing on the T/L . . my advice, try it out . . if you like it and get along with this way of working at least you will have had the option to experiment and then when something appears in the futerue which is quite complex you could in a sense fall back on it . . . not all projects require it . . not all editors will have the same approach to the editing process . . .

Have fun,

Grazie

Grazie wrote on 10/22/2003, 1:00 AM
"Oh, and is there any way to move it from the postion it's in?" - sorry missed this last part. Answer, big YES! See the very fine grey vertical line on its own window on the far left? That's a place you can use the mouse grab option. It will undock and you can stick it anywhere! Neat eh?

G
madgenius wrote on 10/22/2003, 1:15 AM
my bad, I meant the timeline. Is that moveable?

-S
Grazie wrote on 10/22/2003, 1:26 AM
Well . . . no, not really . . if you got 2 monitors you can stretch it across the 2 . . I've seen it stratched across 4 x 17" flatties! Now THAT's impressive - wow! But no. It stays where it is. You can zoom elements of the T/L, making tracks larger or smaller. But what are you finding difficulty in doing? No, the T/L stays in the top half/section of the screen . . . .

. . .ps you're not bad at all! It was ME BAD - you did say Timeline - sorry ;-)

G
PAW wrote on 10/22/2003, 2:38 AM

I use the trimmer for long clips that will contain several events to be used within the project.

by default the trimmer is docked over on the left. I click on the small < button on the top left which expands the trimmer to cover the bottom of the vegas window

Using this with preview to external monitor I have a big second timeline to name regions as grazie mentions and then click the > arrow to change the trimmer window to it's original position and use explorer to drag the named regions to the timeline.

Works best for me on long clips where I will want several events, rough cut with the trimmer regions then accurate trim on the timeline.

Hope that helps, PAW
madgenius wrote on 10/22/2003, 3:19 AM
(TIMELINE) I'm not really bothered by it, in fact, I've noticed that it's in the most optimal place it could be. Requiring less mouse movement back and forth and postioned at eyeline with the monitor.

-S
Sol M. wrote on 10/22/2003, 5:48 AM
It's funny, but coming from other NLEs, I would never even think about going straight from media to timeline. In fact, I would not even have adopted Vegas if the Trimmer didn't exist in Vegas. The trimmer acted as an integral part of the editing process to...well...trim the media to precisely what you want to include in the timeline. This allows you to focus on just the specific media file you're working with rather than the media file, plus everything else that's on the timeline.

I can't say whether the Vegas' timeline is much better than any other I've come across, so I can't really say why so many Vegas users bypass the Trimmer. However, I can say that Vegas' Trimmer does add many useful things that other NLEs don't (such as markers AND regions). That's why I would recommend all users whether you see a need for the trimmer or not, to change your preferences to have media you double click on (in the bin) to open in the trimmer (instead of the timeline), and explore its use.
DGrob wrote on 10/22/2003, 6:21 AM
The trimmer can be very useful when you're capturing analog. Playing analog tapes in through a converter to digital video for capture to your computer loses device control of the tape device, among other things. You hit play and capture and stop.

Dropping that single, longish clip into the trimmer allows you to create the multiple slips/regions which you can then use efficiently in the media pool/timeline.

DGrob