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fine-control in time-line
Hello folks. This is my first post and I’m a newbie to media production. I just recently bought the Sony Vegas Platinum Pro Pack and I’m feeling my way through as best I can. I have managed to produce several simple productions with multiple video clips and simple transitions in this Vegas Movie Studio 9. I made a couple others with inter-bedded stills and video using a trial copy of Corel VideoStudio. Corel was simple and very intuitive but ultimately I thought I’d outgrow it, and so chose Sony instead.
There are a number of things I’ve tried to do in Vegas but have yet to figure out how-to. Last night I came up against the following that I could not manage. I am trying to sync a video clip with terrible audio to a beautifully recorded and mixed audio clip and then of course transition the audio from the bad into the good at an appropriate point:
–splitting an individual audio clip inside the time line area without splitting the video/voice clip above it (synchronous with it). I know where the Edit/Split feature exists from the drop-downs and have used it successfully when I only had video/voice in the time line.
–volume transitions (fades, increases) in the middle of an audio or voice clip. I found the horizontal “bar” to graphically lower the volume of the entire clip but I don’t know how to put “slopes” inside a clip. Do I want to split the clip and then just end-transition the vol?
–fine control when syncing the audio/video. I’m zoomed into the time line area and I can see exactly what I need to line up for a perfect sync, but the clips drag in discrete jumps–it never lands right where I want it; always fore or aft. The audio clip is a .wav file and video is a .avi. This is the one I thought I would not find easily in the tutorials and need your help with most.
–moving whole sections of clips/transitions. On occasions, I want to grab a section of work I’ve done and slide it out of the way, thereby opening empty time. I saw the Insert/Time in the drop-down, but have not experimented with that yet. Can’t you just highlight (for example) the entire rear-end of your production and drag it out to the right?
Thank you.
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11 Replies
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Mark, welcome to the group and to a great NLE too 🙂
The following steps work with Vegas Pro and I think Platinum Pro Pack can do them as well but I’m not 100% certain.
“–splitting an individual audio clip inside the time line area without splitting the video/voice clip above it (synchronous with it).”
Ungroup the audio event from the video event by clicking on it and pressing the ‘U’ key.
Click on the audio event and press ‘S’ (Split) as desired.“–volume transitions (fades, increases) in the middle of an audio or voice clip.”
Click the audio event to highlight it and press the ‘V’ key (Volume Envelope).
You’ll now see a line that runs the entire length of the audio track.
You need to add four points to raise or lower the volume over a specific time period.
Double-click it at the beginning of the segment to add a node (point).
Double-click it again to add another point just before or after the first one.
Repeat these steps at the end of the desired segment.
Place your cursor on the line and raise or lower it as desired.
The two outer points ‘anchor the volume level while the two inner ones are your new level.
You can also right-click each point for more options.“–fine control when syncing the audio/video.”
Options > Quantize to Frames to enable this feature.
You can now slide your audio track at the sample level (i.e. MUCH finer than a frame at a time).
Remember to disable this feature when you want to edit video as video must start and end on a frame boundary.“–moving whole sections of clips/transitions.”
Enabling Ripple edit is the easiest way to do this.
Turn it one, click on the the first event in the section to be moved and slide it as desired.
Remember to disable it when you’re done with it. -
Thank you, Mike. I’ll play with all these tonight.
Is there a list of the hot keys (U, S, V, etc.)? I assume those functions could also be initiated from the drop-down menus too (had I known about Ungrouping). Sounds like the hot keys will be faster once learned.
I knew there must be some way to drag the audio with greater precision. I know the sample rate is far finer than the jumps I was experiencing. I’m not yet thinking in terms of frames, etc. Makes sense now.
Mark
P.S. what’s NLE?
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Vegas Pro has a list of keyboard shortcuts in the online help menu and it should/might be there in your version as well.
NLE = Non Linear Editor
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I am having better results after setting Quantize to Frames. Again, thanks. I believe I’ve got the the audio replacement clip and video spot-on in-sync up front, but they get off-sync PDQ. I have read about the ability to compress or extend in time the whole clip (I’ll look into that next), but what I’d like to do is anchor key sync points within the clip and have the software do a linear stretch between the points. I have this sort of functionality in my professional geophysical software. Can Pro 9 do this?
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“I believe I’ve got the the audio replacement clip and video spot-on in-sync up front, but they get off-sync PDQ”
My guess is that the new audio and the original audio don’t match and this is what’s giving you grief.
Is there any way of adjusting the video (clipping segments of it) so that things match?“what I’d like to do is anchor key sync points within the clip and have the software do a linear stretch between the points”
Pro 9 has a new audio feature called “Elastique” that may help you to do this but I haven’t had a chance to play with it so I can’t offer any suggestions.
Page 126 of the new Pro 9 manual explains this feature.
You could also try posting this question in the other Vegas forum here on the Cow as there are several audio folks who hang out there. -
I’ll look for Elastique in my SVMS9 (rem I don’t have Pro, but wanted to see if it had something).
Yes since last post, I began to think about whether I should manipulate the video rather than the audio. It’s a poor-quality video, with horrendous sound, and the audio mix I am trying to sync is the jewel here. I’m thinking it should be just a matter of duplicating or removing a few video frames here and there to keep them in sync. Any pitfalls to that?
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“I’ll look for Elastique in my SVMS9”
My apologies. You did tell me that.
You probably got some form of Sound Forge as part of your package so look into pitch shifting and time stretching.“I’m thinking it should be just a matter of duplicating or removing a few video frames here and there to keep them in sync. Any pitfalls to that?”
Not unless it’s a really critical shot where every single frame MUST be used and that’s extremely rare.
Use this video as an experiment and have some fun with it.
Save different versions as you’re going along so that you have something to fall back on if you really mess up badly 🙂 -
If you want to manipulate the video track to sync to an audio track, You can split the video track into smaller ones, and strech, slow motion or shrink, fast motion to sync each section of video to the audio track. You will still be using every frame this way. Be advised to much streaching can cause jittery looking video, Pro allows you to force resample to make filler frames to minimise this. I as well dont have platimum but I thing these features are in it. Hope this helps, Danny Hays
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Opps, I forgot. Hold down the cntl key while you put the curser over the beginning or end of a video event, then drag the edge to a length that is in sync with the audio. Danny
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Thank you both for the tips. I did not have a chance to play with it last night–will try tonight.
Apart from Danny’s great suggestion about splitting/stretch-squeezing/slow-fast motioning the video, IF I were to delete or duplicate video frames to effect the sync, what’s the easiest way to do that? I assume one way to duplicate a frame is to zoom in, ungroup, split, copy and paste it in an inserted time space right next to the copied frame–or is there an easier way? Is there an easier way to delete a single frame like a point-to-the-frame selection followed by a “delete-and-close time” option?
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