workflow

mtb123 wrote on 5/21/2008, 7:29 AM

hi

as a relatively new user of movie studio i'm looking for any help i can on improving workflow or general tips. the project i'm working on at the moment is basically a series of interviews of schoolkids, asking each kid 10 questions (e.g. what's your favorite food?), then
cutting the answers together (so you get a 25 kids going pizza/spaghetti/pizza/chips etc).

the end result is good, but involves a lot of laborious cutting/splitting/shuffling etc. i started out using the trimmer to edit, but found it way too inefficient, in addition to which only the first clip (from a larger file) would bring sound with it, the rest going in without.

what i ended up doing was bringing 25 separate interviews on to one video track, splitting each one into 10 separate parts (or responses) using the S key to split them on the fly, then dragging the first parts of each to another track, dragging them to form one unit and then dragging them into position on the main video track.

are there any ways in vms platinum to create macros, whereby several commands can be automated in one keystroke?

another question- when i have several clips on one track separated by gaps, is there any easy way to bring them all together- to eliminate those gaps?

any help would be appreciated.

Mike

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/21/2008, 11:47 PM

I understand your 'laborious' situation. Vegas Pro allows scripting, but not VMS. You"re now using 2 video tracks; you could increase it to 4, but it will still involve the same numbers of splits and drags.
I'm afraid editing often requires laborious, repetitive, mind numbing hard work, but the result will be great, and people will compliment you on it ... hopefully!

OhMyGosh wrote on 5/22/2008, 10:20 AM

Hi mtb123,
Afraid Ivan is right about there is just a lot of time and labor involved, but for your second question on gaps, make sure you understand how the 'Auto Ripple' button works. It can really be your best friend if you understand it, or a pain if you don't. Let us know if this helps. Cin

mtb123 wrote on 6/26/2008, 9:18 PM

Hi omg

I know how the auto ripple button works, but it seems only to apply to gaps created immediately, not pre-existing ones. My dilemma is this- I have twenty video clips arrayed along one track, all separated by gaps- I want to elimanate all these gaps at once, rather than butting each clip to the next one by one- auto ripple will only fill the closest gap, not all the pre-exisiting ones if I'm not mistaken.

Is there a short-cut to bring all clips on one track together?

Tim L wrote on 6/27/2008, 5:17 AM

Try this: zoom in so you can see an empty gap. Double-click in the gap (on the track where the gap is) and it should select the empty region. With Ripple edits (all tracks and markers) enabled, hit the Delete key.

I think this will delete the empty gap area, and shift everything over. However... I'm not at a computer with VMS installed, so I can't test this...

Also, in the trimmer, you can optionally have it set so when you drag from the trimmer, you drag just the video to the timeline, just the audio, or both. Drag something into the trimmer and mark your selection, then press the TAB key several times. You will see it cycle through the selections of just video, just audio, and both. While this might seem odd, it is very, very useful to be able to select between one or the other or both. Also, you can right-click and drag to the timeline, and the popup will let you select video only, audio only, video and audio, etc.

Tim L

Chienworks wrote on 6/27/2008, 10:08 AM

I seem to recall there's also a preference or option somewhere that sets the default drag behavior. This may have been set to 'video only'. If you can find it set it back to 'both audio and video'.