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Old 01-24-2006, 09:37 PM   #5
Rednroll
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 1,992
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Yep, I concur with Ben's suggestions. The Slip and Slide Editing features are what has kept us on the Vegas band wagon for a long time. Slip=Alt button, and works on the Head or Tail event depending on which one the mouse is over. Slide Edit Point= Cntrl+Alt. No problem changing the key assignments to something else.
Also, very useful in the editing department are the Vegas Numeric keys 4/6, 1/3, and 2/8.

You have to put the NUM/LOCK on the numeric keypad in Vegas. 4 and 6 nudge events an amount depending on the current Zoom level that you're at, which I actually don't care for in Vegas, since I'm always zooming in and out and never have an indication of what that "nudge" value is. I wish it was a user definable nudge amount that is independant of the zoom level.
I usually use numeric keys 1 and 3 because of that, 1 and 3 will ALWAYS nudge the event 1 frame at a time independant of the zoom level, which is pretty good for most editing. This is particularly useful when setting a loop section and then nudging the event until the edit sounds right.

Numeric 2 & 8 allow you to move an event onto another track without moving it's position on the timeline. I prefer this method rather than dragging with the mouse, because I always have a tendancy to move the event right or left when trying to drag it to the track above or below it.

I feel like I might be missing some of the keyboard short-cuts on some features at this point, since this is my first test drive. You probably haven't had a lot of time to work on the Help file, but it would be nice to see just the keyboard short-cuts for now, so we aren't making suggestions on stuff you have already done and we can take some of the guess work out of it.

Other things I miss:
1. Event ASR- Currently I see Event Volume envelope, but it seems to be missing the ability to do a fade IN and Fade out on the event.
2. Event Reverse for reverse audio playback
3. During playback it will auto-scroll with the cursor position. But if you click your cursor on the track view during playback then the scrolling stops like it should. The problem is that I don't know how to get back to the current cursor position so that it starts scrolling again. This is Vegas keyboard short-cut "\"

Like Ben mentions regarding the Vegas Media Pool and Trimmer window these are very useful when doing V.O. type of work.

Example of typical workflow:
You record 20 plus takes of a V.O. and record them all on the same track consecutively. All these individual takes get numbered consecutively and get placed into the "Project Media Pool". The producer says, Let me hear Take#10. Instead of scrolling the track view along the timeline, you just go to the media pool and playback the take labeled "Take 10". They then say, ok I liked take 5 also, can you play that back. You just click on take 5 in the project media pool. The producer then says, Ok I like the first half of Take 10 up to the word..."whatever". You double click take 10, and it loads into the trimmer window. You select everything in the trimmer window up to the word "whatever", then drag that onto a new audio track, which will be your composite edit track. The producer then says, I like the second half of "Take 5". So same thing, double click on take 5 in the project media pool, and then loads it into the trimmer window, and then select the second half of take#5 and stick that onto the back half of Take#10. Then you playback that composite edit track. The Producer says, I didn't like how he said the word "Blah". So you edit out the word "Blah" on your composit edit track, then goto your media pool and start double clicking on each take to load it into the trimmer window, where you can quickly jump to where the word "Blah" is located. The producer says he likes the word "Blah" from Take#2. Again in the trimmer window you select that section and drag it onto the composite edit track, where you previously edited the bad "blah" out. You do a little slip and nudge editing if necessary to make the new "blah" fit.

Ok, now you've done all this composit editing. It's for a 60 second radio commercial. The final composit edit comes in at a duration of 64 seconds. Your next step is that you go to the composit edit track and do what's called "de-breathing". You basically cut out wherever the V.O. person took a breath and then nudge those events closer together. So back to the Split, Slip and Nudge editing. At this point you have the time cut down to 62 seconds....F**K!!!! It's still 2 seconds too long and now you've spent all this time editing and the producer loves how it sounds. Another Vegas feature to the rescue. Select all events on that composit edit track, and do a simultaneous "time compress" of all the events. 60 second V.O. edit perfect....Now let's edit the background music and Sound FX's.

Thanks for listening. Don't worry, I understand some of this will probably take some time. It only took the Sonic Foundry guys working with me as a Beta tester from v1.0 up to Vegas v4.0 before they got it all done.

Last edited by Rednroll; 01-24-2006 at 09:45 PM.
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