[Arthur144]

Yes, Movie Studio does allow one to vary the resolution of the preview window so I assume it works the same as in Vegas Pro.

Intuitively, I would have thought that the snapshot was taken at the resolution of the timeline not the preview window. I keep the preview window at a lower resolution to conserve CPU when editing. In any case, I will change the preview window resolution, retake the snapshot and see what happens.

[Arthur144]

I had a similar situation where I had a group of two clips that I reuse across projects. I simply selected the two clips with the selection tool and rendered the selection as an avi. I keep the avi in a global subdirectory outside any projects.

Bear in mind I use Vegas Movie Studio, which meets my needs for the time being. In Vegas Pro I suppose the answer would be to create a .veg file as it is possible to nest .vegs, a capability I do not believe is supported in Movie Studio. Likewise, the Media Manager would be more appropriate than my simplistic external directory.

[Arthur144]

Batch capture is possible in Studio. I believe the capture application is the same or very similar.

You can log ins and outs and have them capture as individual clips. What I would like is to be able to capture one long master clip and then have either the capture program or Vegas recognize the timecode breaks and create the subclips.

Final Cut actually works this way. Apple’s terminology is slightly different, but you can specify one in and out marking, for example, a duration of 20 minutes and it will capture a single master clip. Then Final Cut has a menu option to find DV “starts and stops” and then it creates “segments” in the project bin as subsidiaries of the master clip. I’d like to see this workflow in Vegas although its not a big problem. Vegas is still my preferred editor in the PC realm.

[Arthur144]

Yes, I noticed that the snapshot file appears in the project media bin, which makes sense.

What I also noticed is that the resolution of the snapshot is 327 x 240 which is not what I would expect. Shouldn’t the snapshot be 720 x 480? Is there a setting or something that I am not doing?

– Arthur

[Arthur144]

Thanks for the advice. Certainly I could have used Vegas (Studio) rather than Audacity to multitrack the audio. My first thought was to took for an audio filter so I ended up in an audio editor. In addition, I was interested in audio way before becoming interested in video, so my tendency is still to edit audio in an audio editor. In fact, that interest in audio led me to Sonic Foundry which subconsciously led me to find Vegas as a preferred editor. I imagine many Vegas users came to Vegas this way.

– Arthur

[Arthur144]

After digging around a bit on solving this crowd conversation problem, I found two ways to deal with it. One was with a multitrack sound editor, specifically Audacity, where I overlaid normal “good” crowd noise on a separate track where the conversational noise was occuring. I then enveloped the conversation down and let the overlay track come in.

Another approach was to use Goldwave which offers a “Reduce Vocals” filter amongst its tools. This actually worked fairly well, requiring a bit of volume boost to complete the edit.

Both solutions are a bit tedious, requiring some manual effort to mask the offending audio and then to save out the audio file, bring it back into Vegas Studio, and then synch it to the original video track. I’m still interested in an easier way to deal with this, but the bottom line to avoid conversation in the background in the first place if at all possible.

[Arthur144]

Tha’s a good suggestion. I could just take some “good” crowd noise from another parth of the timeline. Still, I tend to believe there is a way to make the audio unintelligible through a filter or noise generation function.

[Arthur144]

The response to my basic Avid question definitely qualifies as a “sticky” if that facility exists on the forum. Regardless of what editor(s) I end up using, I am glas I asked the question as apparently the answer is involved.

Thanks again for the support you guys provide.

– Arthur

[Arthur144]

Thanks again, Mike.

One of the things that drew me to try Avid was that while I have both a PC and a Mac, I wanted to favor editing on a Mac. I am also looking for an intermediate level editor so, without getting involved with some of the Open Source efforts, that pretty much leaves Avid and FCE as the options. Imovie is a nice throw-in with OSX, but a bit too simplistic. If they would made Imovie in the spirit of what Garageband is for audio, that might hit the spot.

In any case, since Avid cleverly offers Free DV to experience their interface I figured why not? Evrn in its limited form, I can see what you mean by Avid being a “deep” program. From my also limited Vegas (Studio) experience, Avid seems more “granular”. What I mean is that there seem to be more steps in the overall editing process, offering more media control at the expense of complexity.

Also ironic is the fact that, as a Mac owner, I am leaning towards a PC for editing. I am also considering at the moment Premiere Elements versus Vegas Studio, both of which seem to have the intermediate capability that I am looking for. I originally thought the Premiere Elements was also simplistic, but apparently it has really matured. Vegas Studio, which I learned when it was a Sonic Foundry product with a different name is my fallback position. Whatever I know about video editing I learned from Vegas Studio, so I have a special allegiance to it. However, since I would like to find a native solution for the Mac, Avid remains in the picture.

Logically, I should just pick an editor and run with it rather than spend time evaluating software. My intent though is to learn more about editing as merely opposed to needing to produce full length video.

Thanks again for your “tutorial” on Avid. I otherwise may have dismissed Avid right away.

[Arthur144]

Thank you for a very comprehensive answer to my question. That is exactly what I was looking for.

Avid seems to work a bit differently from what I am used to. Its not entrely intuitive as your lenghty response suggests. Its great that Avid puts a free version out there that is relatively faithful to the more function versions, but without documentation explaining what just explained, evaluating Free Dv can be a time consuming exercise in frustration.

I’m not sure that Avid will be my first choice editor, but your answers will allow me to evaluate further.