[Gary James]

Hi guys. Since I’m the author of the Timeline Tools Vegas Pro extension, let me assure you the program contains nothing malicious nor destructive.

This tool started out as a learning experience to familiarize myself with the basics of designing a Sony Vegas Extension. The more I progressed with my design, the more I added to the design to help make editing my Vegas projects easier. Eventually I ended up with something I thought might be useful for other Vegas users. So I took the extra step and made it more polished and easier for non geek programmers to install and use.

It was my intention to provide my fellow Sony Vegas Pro users with a useful tool that would make editing large projects much easier. I’ve created several large video slide-show projects, each containing well over 1,000 slides. Before I wrote this utility it was a huge P.I.T.A. to re-arrange my slides after I’ve made adjustments to them. I think I’ve made a tool that others will find helpful.

Gary James

[Gary James]

Jeff, I’ve placed version 1.0.4 on the web site. This uses the Wingdings font, instead of the Wingdings 3 font for the left / right arrows. I know that Wingdings is definitely a standard Windows font. I’ve used it since back in the Windows 95/98 days.

I also moved the labels around a bit to accommodate displays that are configured to use a non-standard font size.

Thanks for the feedback.

Gary

[Gary James]

Hmmm … interesting. It appears the Wingdings 3 font I’m using for the Left and Right buttons, is being substituted with another font on your PC.

Do you have Wingdings 3 on your PC? I’m using Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit, and I thought this was a standard font.

One other question, are you using a non-standard font size (other than 96 dpi? Windows 7 sets this in the control panel under:

Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsDisplay

The standard size is called Smaller. There are also choices for Medium and Larger. This is a long standard issue in Microsoft Windows. Selecting a non standard font size can really mess up the layout of tightly packed form displays.

[Gary James]

I just placed an update on the web site. This is version 1.0.3.

I added a couple new features that optionally displays a column in the Event table that shows any plugins associated with the Event.

[Gary James]

Ed,

You are a lifesaver. Thanks ever so much. This was exactly what I needed to figure out a solution.

Your example code gave me 99% of the answer.

CustomCommand myCC = new CustomCommand(CommandCategory.View, "ccname");
myCC.DisplayName = "ccname";
myCC.MenuItemName = "ccname";
myCC.IconFile = "{path}\\ccicon.png";

All I needed to do was replace the {path} reference with some real code:

using System.Reflection;
string path = Path.GetDirectoryName ( Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly ().Location ) + @"\ccname.png";
myCC.IconFile = path;


Now I can place my .PNG file in the same subdirectory as my extension dll and everything works perfectly.

Gary James

[Gary James]

Thanks John. I suspected this to be the case.

[Gary James]

John, just for the sake of curiosity I tried a little experiment with the Sony DockableControl.

I put some conditional compilation statements in the code so while using the Debug project configuration setting, my UserControl was the DockableControl (and not editable in Visual Studio). But when I switched to the Release configuration, my UserControl behaved like my original design.

I wanted to see if there would be any difference in Navigation and Appearance of the controls in the Command Extension dll. Specifically, would my UserControl gain any benefit by being the only DockableControl.

It turns out there was no difference. In either case Tabbing around the controls isn’t supported. Nor is the appearance of a focus rectangle on the active control. Even if I override code to navigate the active control myself, I still don’t see a focus rectangle.

In your experience, is this what I can expect as Normal behavior in a Vegas Pro Command Extension dll?

Thanks,

Gary …

[Gary James]

Thanks Ed. I came to the same conclusion just after I made my last reply. But it’s comforting to see that a Vegas script maven like yourself concurs.

Gary …

[Gary James]

Yes, I do. But I can’t depend on the state of the Ripple Edit setting to make my script work or not.

That’s why I was curious if Vegas had an euivalent to the method calls in Windows Grid controls that suspends firing events or refreshing the UI while items are added or removed from the control.

In the VS2010 Object browser I see a method called “Sony.Vegas.TransportControl.Suspend()” but I cn’t find any compatible Resume() method. So I doubt this is what I’m looking for.

If such an animal doesn’t exist, I’ll just have to find a work-around to using indexes while I’m moving Events on the Timeline.

Thanks.

[Gary James]

Worked perfect.

I can see the biggest obsticle to writing scripts for Vegas will be getting familiar with the quirky coding requirements that aren’t very obvious. It’s nice to have a forum of experts that are both skilled programmers and willing to share their experience.

Many thanks.

Gary …