Can auto ripple work with moving events around on the time line?

[Stephen Mann]

On the ripple, click on the small down-arrow just to the right of the button and select “All Events”.

[Paul Peck] “**Why does Sony call these events when everyone else in the world calls them clips? A clip is a clip is a clip….”

Everything on the timeline is an event because you can have many copies of an event on the timeline each with the same or different in-out points, but it’s only ONE copy of the media. Other editors, and I am mostly guessing because Vegas is all I’ve used for ten years, actually create copies of the clips just like a film editor. If a film editor wants two copies of a film clip, then he needs to make a copy from the negative. Thus two clips.

Here’s another benefit to the event structure. If you discover that you need to make a minor tweak to, say the white-balance, of a clip that is represented by many events on the timeline. Sure you could go into each event and use event FX to adjust the WB on each event. Or, since all the events on the timeline are just pointers to one copy of the media you just make the adjustment once on the clip in the Project Media window. (It’s properly called a clip in the Project Media window).

Steve Mann

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Paul Peck]

Thanks Stephen (love the name of your business, btw) I’m afraid I still can’t get this to work. Under the auto ripple drop down menu there is no selection entitled “all events”. I have, top to bottom, (1) “affected tracks” (2) “affected tracks, bus tracks, markers and regions” (3)”all tracks, markers and regions”. That’s it. To review, this is SVP 10. Perhaps the menu is different in other versions?

It would make sense the last item, “all tracks, etc.” might equate to “all events”, but it’s not working for me. Again, with auto ripple activated, this works perfectly well when I drag an event from either the trimmer preview window or the media list. All events downstream (to the right) of the event I drop into the timeline move to the right. But moving events around within the timeline just won’t behave like this. Very frustrating. Here are the details –

I’m practicing on a simple string of three or four events, lined up end to end with snap-to active. When I activate auto ripple (icon is white) with “affected tracks” checked, then begin to drag a particular event to a new place in the timeline everything to the right of the event I’m moving goes along with the event as if they’re now grouped.

With auto ripple activated and “affected tracks, bus tracks, markers and regions” checked dragging and dropping an event gets really screwy. Events to the right of the selected event move with it as if they are all grouped and remain that way until I deactivate the auto ripple.

With auto ripple activated and “all tracks, markers and regions” checked my practice string of events stick together as if they were grouped. So when I click on any event trying to move it every &$#*@ event moves along with it as if they are grouped. I have to deactivate auto ripple to ungroup them. Not exactly what I’m looking for.

What am I doing wrong? Is there another setting I’ve overlooked?

– p

[Stephen Mann]

[Paul Peck] “So when I click on any event trying to move it every &$#*@ event moves along with it as if they are grouped”

That’s they way ripple works. Just turn off ripple if you want to move a single event. (I rarely turn ripple on in my workflow).

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Paul Peck]

Yes, but it doesn’t work the way I would like. With ripple off the moved event “pastes” over the top of the event that sits in that spot rather than making a hole for itself. I have to drag a bunch of stuff down the timeline to straighten everything out. I want the event that’s getting covered up and everything to the right to bump over when I drop in the event I’m moving. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Well, good news. As it turns out there is a solution for my predicament. After some hours of search I finally found an answer on a somewhat obscure web site called sonytalk.com. It appears to be oriented to teenage girls judging from their avitars in the various forums. From a 2006 thread (yes! that far back!)here’s the solution –

Right click and hold on the event you want to move. Drag to the new location. When you release a little pop-up menu will appear with three options. Click on the last one labeled “shuffle events”. That’s it. All events to the right now bump over that way I expect them to and the moved event creates a hole for itself where I want it to now reside on the timeline.

Some things Sony needs to consider –

This right click, then click something else method is clumsy. Why not a button, similar to auto ripple, to click in the edit menu that makes this a default setting to suit my workflow preference? That would be a far more elegant approach to this. Dumb, just plain dumb.

Calling this “shuffle” is a poor word choice. Hasn’t anyone at Sony ever shuffled a deck of cards? Shuffle means to scramble stuff up so they’re arranged randomly. That’s not what we’re doing editing video, is it? Dumb, just dumb. It turns out this is described in the help menu but if you don’t know to look for “shuffle” you’ll never find it. More dumb.

So, thanks to some teenagers I found the solution but I’ve got a gripe with the Vegas Pro development team on this one. Hope they’re reading this. If any of you know someone on that team please pass this on.

Again, Stephen, thanks for helping.

The thread that finally offered a solution to my problem is found here https://www.sonytalk.com/move-clip-then-ripple-t32253.html

[Matt Crowley]

I use shuffle occasionally (I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere in the help, but somewhere you probably wouldn’t expect), but it almost never does exactly what I want.

If you drag an event back in time (towards the start) the events in between the old and new positions all move forward in time, and vice versa. The events in between sometimes end up butted together or split apart.

I just enable ripple, make a space for the event to move into, then disable ripple and do the move.