[Trevor Asquerthian]

WE DONT DO LINEAR EDITING ANYMORE TOM

You and Tom may not, but I just finished a nice little earner linear session. Hey those are the only gigs where no-one says ‘I can get an intern to do it for less’.

Mind you the DVW developed a lovely head clog that meant that one of the masters was unusable. Thanks to the BVE-god for the fact that one can have 2 records in a linear suite.

Oh and we gave up worrying about SC-H when 1″ died. Well actually the first place I worked had Sony 1″ decks, so we didn’t have to worry about SC-H there much anyway.

[Trevor Asquerthian]

[rob mack] “Trevor, yes Vegas needs an overwrite and insert feature, it’s true”
OK – now where do Vegas feature requests go?

[rob mack] “you’re probably giving the one example where Takes actually addresses the problem. Since you’re just talking about replacing a clip you can right-drag from the trimmer over the existing clip and then choose “add as takes”.”

but it’s not really a 4 point edit is it? (i.e. In and out on timeline and nowline on timeline = nowline on clip). Presumably I then have slip the alternate take to get the new clip in the right place?

[rob mack] ” You approach is simpler but it adds another track, which is inelegant.

I find that I work with extra tracks all the time in other edit systems. Typically I’ll be doing my rough cut on V2, tighten everything up then drop it down onto V1. That way I can look at the top V track and know where I’m still not happy with the timeline.

[rob mack] “Both are awkward and would be solved by a proper 3-point edit, even if there was no overwrite feature. The overlay would work (except that you might actually want the underlying clip to be split, in which case overwrite does the splitting.”

Thanks Rob, didn’t think I was asking for too much!

Funnily enough I was in a dept. store yesterday (buying a coffee machine, naturally) and found myself by the big Sony “HD editing” computer. Unfortunately they seem to think that Premier Pro is the HD editing tool for the masses. I guess it keeps their tech support signal to noise ratio down, but surely it makes sense to ensure that Vegas makes it onto their demo machines somewhere. Especially as running PP resulted in BSOD!

[Trevor Asquerthian]

[John Kert] “It is based on a Drag, Cut and Paste principle as opposed to the OLDER NLEs (FCP, Premier,etc). which are based on the capturing from tape and carefully marking In and Out points and the carefully inserting it onto the timeline.”

And it would have killed them to have allowed this functionality for older editors? I think this editor would stand a chance in the broadcast world if it had the trimming and src/record functionality of its competitors. Both of them lack decent audio toolsets, avid more so than fcp.

[John Kert] “With Vegas I operate on cutting film metaphore. I Cut, Glue, Shorten, Lengthen the “FILM” all on the timeline. Plus of course do transitions, title etc. on the timeline.”

I LIKE the vegas timeline functionality A LOT (handles to drag fades, ctl-drag to change speed, alt-drag to slip-trim etc). But when I have cut my :30 of glory, with fx, music, sync, vo etc all nicely balanced on the timeline and need to replace ONE shot… how nice would it be to line the sync point in the trimmer and the timeline – then overwrite a clip. Is this possible in vegas?

Or do I need to drag and drop it onto a new video track, line it up for sync, trim its in point, trim its out point then drag it down onto the shot that needs replacing?

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Many thanks for the prompt response… Please understand that where I am coming from here is not to knock Vegas – I love its audio capabilities and am trying to figure out if it is usable for me for video.

[DSE/Spot]
Source/timeline monitoring is more or less a thing of the past. Many editors today don’t trim source footage in the source window at all; they merely drop the footage on the timeline. However, the Vegas preview window can be EITHER source or timeline preview.

Hmmm… Avid & FCP (not exactly underused in this market) both have source/record relationship.
I have since found the ‘trimmer’ which is, as you say, a way of toggling source/record viewing in preview window. I haven’t found it to be too user-friendly yet.

[DSE/Spot]
Nesting is possible in Vegas. Do your selects cut, save the selects in a veg file, then drop that veg file on a new Vegas timeline, if that’s how you want to work. However, this isn’t the fastest workflow in Vegas, IMO.

No it doesn’t seem that way to me either 😉
There is no other way of having more than one timeline in a project? (i.e. I guess a *project* is really one *sequence*?). Seems to me that nested projects are ‘flattened’ down to one video/two audio tracks?

Here’s an example of why I want to edit from (uncollapsed) sequences:
Have cut multiple music montages of previous games with 8 audio tracks and 3 video tracks. Need to use material within those sequences in my current sequences – mostly from V1, sometimes all 3 V – sometimes from A1/2 (sync) sometimes from A3/4 (fx).

In Avid/FCP I load sequence in source monitor – find in/outs and patch required tracks to timeline – then overwrite/insert This is a similar workflow as a tape suite really. Alternatively I can load those sequences in record monitor – mark ins/outs and make subsequences of just the elements I want.

I guess the best way in vegas is to load the sequence, select (or group) the required clips, then copy them to clipboard – load new sequence and paste, trim as necessary. This seems a convoluted workflow – is there an easier way?

[DSE/Spot]
Is there any way of assymetric trimming?

“Sounds like you’re describing J and L cuts? Very easy, and one button-doable in Vegas 4-8. Or, you can disable event grouping, and do a slip edit between two files if that’s how you’d prefer to work. Hold ALT with the cursor at a cut point to perform a slip edit.”

This is trimming edits to create split edits (J and L-cuts) but the problem arises with lots of audio/video tracks and decisions later in the timeline that need to stay in sync. On my current systems I can do trimming in different directions on multiple tracks simultaneously – I realise there are ways of grouping clips and moving them but there is no way I have found of trimming different sides of edits on different tracks. But I’ll look a bit harder 😉

Here’s a link on it https://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_asymmetric.html

but Larry doesn’t really ‘get’ assymetric trimming… the beauty is the ability to tighten an edit and *know* you are keeping everything else where you want it on the timeline.

Anyway, all in all I want to hear different ways of working – carry on telling me I’m wrong to want to work the way I do and I’ll be happy to change if you’re right!!

Cheers

Trevor

[Trevor Asquerthian]

I have had some success in the past, when dealing with a mix (inc voice) and m&e track (i.e. mix without voice) in isolating the voice only.

Mix the full mix together with the phase inverted m&e – thus where the content of the two sources is the same they cancel each other (because of the phase inversion) and where they are different there is no effect (i.e. on the voice).

This does require that:
a. the mix=m&e (no extra compression, eq, delay etc)
b. you actually have the m&e (which may be more of a problem).

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Does the Color Finesse 2.1 SD plugin for FCP work in 10bit ? What about the CF 2.1HD ?

AFAIK – CF (and all plug-ins using AE architecture) pass bits through RGB matrixing that result in the head and toe room being chopped off. Thus any detail in your whites or blacks that exceed the 16-235 range (in 8 bit) will be rounded up to 16 or down to 235.

CF recommend using their standalone app, which works like FT via xml and deals with media files direct, to circumvent this issue. (See posts in their forum on the cow).

I’m working (in 10bit uncompressed Pal) at a house next week that has FT running with, I believe, FCP5.1.2. It did work, with caveats, with earlier versions of 5. I’ll let you know if it still works 😉

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Another solution is the EVS-XT.

This can record 6 streams (at variable compression) per box.

They do have a workflow that enables you to take their files to FCP. Last time I looked you needed an XFile to do the conversion.

Of course once you have recorded your isos onto the EVS you can take the server to your post house and digitise them at baseband into your NLE.

Regards

Trevor

[Trevor Asquerthian]

The BBC have a white paper on something they did on Linux:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP133.pdf

I don’t think you’ll have much luck with multiple streams on a mac until the board manufacturers take in multiple streams per card (I think I heard that was in the Decklink roadmap, depending on demand)

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Are you sure it’s only in FCP that you experience the ‘slowness’? Go to the desktop and open a folder – does it open instantly or in a jerky fashion?

If the latter then you may have one of the early ‘bad batch’ of Kona3 cards. Make sure by removing the Kona drivers from the system and restart – if the computer has the spring back in it’s step then get your card swapped out for a good one.

HTH

[Trevor Asquerthian]

[John Pale] “You can resize the tracks individually. I do it all the time.”

You are SO correct. I think it’s only possible by dragging with the mouse though, right? I was referring to the ability in avid to ctl+k/ctl+l vertical zoom individual tracks.

I betray my lack of day-to-day FCP experience 😉

Trevor