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Sony Vegas Midi Controller?
Hi!
I’ve been googling this around a lot now and can’t find a proper answer; Is it possible to use a midi controller, such as a piano keyboard, in Sony Vegas? If so, which is the best one you recommend?
The primary thing I want to do is to assign audio samples to the piano keys and use knobs and rotaries for editing and navigation in the timeline.
Would help me a lot with my audio post production projects!
Thanks in advance!
//Anton
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7 Replies
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What do you mean by “assign audio samples to piano keys”?
Using a sampler controlled by a MIDI keyboard, yeah?
Ideally, you could just use one of the many VST Samplers that are available, and use it inside Vegas, but Vegas doesn’t have MIDI tracks so I can’t see how this is possible.Maybe ReWire works? If ReWire works with Vegas, you use Vegas as a mater program and an audio program could be the slave, and your MIDI keyboard would control the slave program, and the audio would be played/recorded in Vegas, and the MIDI could potentially be recorded in the slave program.
I just had a quick play with controlling Vegas with MIDI, and had no luck at all. I could get Vegas to recieve MIDI messages, could assign MIDI to actions such as Play and Stop, but doing this didn’t seem to have any effect at all.
I hope that was somewhat useful!
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Oh alright! Well as you might have guessed I’m not that good this 😉 But thanks for a quick answer!
What I meant with assigning audio samples to the piano keys is that i want to, when im editing a video in Vegas, press the keys for sounds to pop up in the audio tracks while it’s on playback. Is this even possible somehow?
Maybe this is a lost case and I should turn to another software, but I’ve been using Vegas for the last 7 years and learning a new program would be quite a pain in the ass, haha.
I’ll take a look at ReWire 🙂
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[Anton Louthander] “What I meant with assigning audio samples to the piano keys is that i want to, when im editing a video in Vegas, press the keys for sounds to pop up in the audio tracks while it’s on playback. Is this even possible somehow?”
Nope. Not possible. Sorry. 🙂
I just play the footage on the timeline and hit “M” for marker every time I need a sound effect, then I put them in manually, in exactly the spot they need to be. Using a MIDI keyboard with assigned samples could potentially speed things up a bit, but it wouldn’t be much, as most of your time would be spent getting your sounds in the precise spot, and edited correctly.
I looked into ReWire with Vegas, but it is not supported, unfortunately.
The normal workflow would be to render your video in a low quality(but with the same frame-rate!) and then open it in a Digital Audio Workstation. There you can do midi assigned samples to your hearts desire……….
For you, I would recommend using Sony ACID Pro 7, just because it is incredibly similar to Vegas. The shortcuts and icons are largely the same. The program has a bit of a bad rap from audio nerds(like me!) but I have used it for years to teach kids, and I find it incredibly intuitive and easy, and it does all the important things a DAW needs to do, plus many more.
I have even used ACID Pro as the DAW in a professional studio, which elicited some weird looks from the in-house engineer, but it worked as well as Pro-Tools.
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I can confirm what Ryan said about Vegas Pro not having MIDI Instrument nor ReWire support, both of which are found in ACID Pro 7.0 or even ACID Music Studio 10.0.
You can use a MIDI keyboard to control Vegas Pro but you need to build your own device map to assign MIDI controller messages to Vegas. If you want a nice inexpensive MIDI controller that works out-of-the-box, look at the PreSonus FaderPort. I use one of these for audio editing in Vegas Pro and it works great. It sits right next to my keyboard and doesn’t take up much room at all on my desk and the fader is motorized so it snaps to position when you change tracks. Very nice piece of kit.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Great advice about the Presonus FaderPort. I got one and it works great with Vegas Pro. I’m just a home video hobbyist (doing graduation & sports videos for family & friends), so this was my first foray into a ‘real’ control surface, rather than the just the software faders and buttons. Love having a real fader for the audio.
One question, though. How can I map commands in Sony Vegas that aren’t in the Presonus FaderPort Driver host function commands ‘list.’ For instance, I have the VASST Ulitmate Pro S plug-in, and for multicamera projects, rather than use the VASST switch pad, I’d like to use a few of the buttons on the FaderPort. It looks like I can custom map keyboard presses for the “View.VASST UlitmateS Pro 4.Camera Change.Cam1Cut” and the “….Cam2Cut” commands. I’d like to map the FaderPort ‘Punch’ button to do the Cam1Cut, ‘User’ for Cam2Cut, ‘Shift Punch’ for Cam1Dissolve, etc.
Is that doable? I tried adding the ‘Generic Control’ and learning the different buttons, but I didn’t see anywhere where I could type in the above “View.VASST UlitmateS Pro 4.Camera Change.Cam1Cut” command as a host function.
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Yes you can use just about any MIDI interface as a control surface.
See:
https://vegaspro.helpmax.net/en/how-do-i/configuring-a-generic-control-surface/Read the instruction and program it yourself.
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Not to your issue, precisely, but I use a Mackie Control (or Logic Control) and works very well for mixing or soloing tracks, and the JOG wheel is boffo. But a good controller with a Jog wheel could be found elsewhere, but those are the two MOST practical uses, for me, solo buttons (and mute) and jog for transport zipping around the timeline. Also, a second play/stop switch, which also comes into play when you have edit window open, for some reason.
You CAN sync to an external editor, especially by way of editing of existing files (you can creat a dummy file) in a selectable 3rd party editor, and edit and that would come back at the same time space, you would need an added element, an editor WITH a video track, and you would provide a rough cut, maybe, to serve as your video reference/guide. All of that is DOABLE, BUT…
You should probably leave that sound design for the end, produce a rough cut, open that rough cut in your preferred audio program, (inclusive of MIDI,VSTi-‘s etc. ) and really fine tune that, export that audio track, or tracks, or mixdown, etc. and IMPORT that into Vegas (probably using a Zero reference/start time, in both programs for ease of timeline alignment – though not absolutely imperative)….and then go for an audio inclusive render.
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