[Matt Crowley]

Progressive frame display on a PC screen (or flatscreen TV) is basically instantaneous, and even faster than a film projector shutter opening. Frames are displayed complete, and there is normally no transition time between frames, no shutter blanking, nothing. Just one complete frame instantly replaced by the next complete frame 25 or 30 times per second.

You might be seeing the results of frame blending as part of a frame-rate change/mismatch or deinterlacing. That can create intermediate frames where you see the “ghost” of the previous frame blended with the current frame (or fields in the case of deinterlacing).

[Matt Crowley]

Ctrl-Click multiple events to select them, then just drag, or optionally group them and drag.

You can also select multiple adjacent events by dragging over them with the selection edit tool. Its icon looks like an arrow in a dotted box. I think the default shortcut key to cycle through the tools is “D”.

[Matt Crowley]

Check that you haven’t mistakenly docked one of the popout windows like (video FX) and the window is now tucked away in one of the docking areas.

Also check to see if the popout windows are appearing underneath your taskbar. You can unlock the taskbar and shrink it down to a flat line at the bottom of the screen – and maybe see your window under it…

[Matt Crowley]

Dave beat me to it… Good stuff in that reference.

[Matt Crowley]

You might find that the Vegas preview is using the 0-255 “computer RGB” system to display video that uses the 16-235 studio RGB range, so it will look less contrasty and a bit brighter.

Your player is probably expanding the 16-235 “studio RGB” video to to full computer RGB 0-255 before displaying it, so it’ll look darker and more contrasty.

I don’t know if there’s a way to make the Vegas preview handle “studio RGB” the same as most hardware-accelerated media players (and real TVs). A workaround while editing is to add the levels plugin with the “Studio to PC” preset to the output FX. You must bypass it when rendering out.

[Matt Crowley]

You need to add keyframes to your track motion, so that you can have different track motion parameters (eg position and zoom) for different sections of the track along the timeline.

Get your first effect positioned correctly with track motion, then add a keyframe immediately after it (don’t change any settings for this keyframe – it just keeps the position static during the effect.

Then add a new keyframe just before the next effect, make sure that keyframe is selected, and adjust position to suit. Add another keyframe after that effect. Do this for each effect if you have lots of them.

You may find that it helps to have “Sync Cursor” emabled, but be careful that you don’t mistakenly add lots of keyframes. Ensure you select an existing keyframe before adjusting track motion parameters to avoid creating new keyframes unnecessarily.

If you only have a couple of effects like this in your project, just use separate tracks (and therefore separate track motion) for them if you can spare the tracks.

[Matt Crowley]

First, make sure that your computer detects your camera when you connect it – you may need to install a driver. You should also be able to see the camera as a removable disk drive in Windows Explorer.

If you have Movie Studio Platinum, you can try using its built-in Device Explorer (on the View menu) to import camera footage directly from the camera over its USB port. It should automatically detect the camera and give you a list of clips to import.

The other option is using Panasonic’s software to do the import. You should have received a software disk with the camera. I don’t know what the prosumer/pro cameras come with, but consumer Panasonic cameras come with something called HD Writer which doubles as a capture/import utility and basic editor/converter. It will copy the AVCHD footage from the camera and give the files sensible time-stamped names, and you can then use them directly in Vegas.

[Matt Crowley]

There’s a handy feature in the pan/crop window that does exactly this, and it’s called “Sync Cursor”. At the bottom of the pan/crop window are some keyframe control icons. The one on the left is Sync Cursor – looks like a I beam cursor and padlock. Activate that, and the main timeline cursor will move in sync with the pan/crop cursor.

Remember to deactivate it afterwards so you don’t accidentally create unwanted keyframes or move both cursors when you don’t want to.

[Matt Crowley]

If you get reasonably smooth preview of your project with the image sequence then just stick with that.

If the preview is really slow, then make whatever major adjustments you need (mainly pan/crop) on the image sequence, then render that to a high-quality format (preferably lossless, or Cineform or similar) at your desired project resolution, then replace the image sequence with the rendered segment and continue editing.

[Matt Crowley]

The same playback rate features apply to preview playback and trimmer playback, and as usual in Vegas there are a bunch of ways of doing things.

You can set the play rate by dragging the small orange triangle below the “rate” slider, which is below the track headers panel. You can also right-click this triangle to set the rate.

You can also click in the trimmer to give it focus, then drag the double-headed arrows of the “rate slider” shuttle control.

If you use the JKL shuttle keys, try holding K while pressing L or J, and you’ll get playback rates if 0.25 and 0.5 instead of only 1 and greater. You only need to hold K while pressing J or L to start playback, then you can just press L or J to increase of decrease the playback rate.

Alternatively, get an external controller like the Contour Shuttle.