snapping in Vegas 8
 

Is it just me or can you not entirely turn off snapping in Pro 8? With snapping disabled (either from the options menu or by holding shift) my cursor will snap to video frames. I remember vegas 7 allowing for completely free positioning allowing you for instance to move a video frame to the first sample of audio (to sync exactly to a beat for instance).

Anyone else noticed this?

Could this be something to do with "quantize to frames"?

marks

Hi Mark,

Yep that solved it, many thanks!

Hi,

Even if Vegas freely allows you to drad video clips around without snapping - or even locking to frames, I would suggest that you always drag around your VIDEO clips with the "quantize to frames feature" enabled. This is not necessary - but advisable.

Feel free to move your audio around even at the sample-level (quantize to frames disabled), when you need to sync audio to video events. Audio can start or end at any sample interval -there are no frames in audio.

During final rendering Vegas has to determine at wich frame to start each clip. The framerate is fixed as we all know, and a freely placed clip must be resynced to the project's frame rate. If there are video clips that are not placed "frame accurate", then Vegas must decide at what frame to start, and that depends on the position of the clip. I rather be in control of that myself. You can end up in a situation where clips start one frame earlier or later - compared to what you had intended. Vegas does a good job herer but I have stubled over some single black frames in the final render, when dragging by mistake some adjacent clips out of position.

I just wish that the status indicators (buttons showing snapping, autoripple etc.) would be more clearly drawn (active/not active). These buttons are quite small anyhow.

Regards,

Christian

I agree with the principle of quantize to frames will ensure better accuracy and less chance of black frames. It was a quick and dirty project I was working on trying to sync video up to a score and I just wanted to get the video starting right on the beat. In all acuallity I don't think anyone would notice if the video was one frame out of sync for a butt edit from the music but I always tended to work that way.

When rendering out many short segments for stock footage if I don't turn on the quantize to frames I end up having the clips rejected because of black frames so I can sincerely agree with it's merits!!

James, I'm with you - I can see a one-frame sync error!

Best procedure in this case is to turn off "Quantize to Frames" and slip the music track to match, then turn quantize back on for more video editing. If you've not explored the numpad shortcut keys of "4"and "6" for this work, check it out. Zoom in and slip the music very finely.

OTOH, if there are timebase errors (not uncommon, especially if you received an audio CD of the music track), or multiple cameras, it can be a little trickier, and then you do have to slide video tracks around. I've always kept quantization on and accepted the 1-frame errors. Especially for "quick and dirty" projects!

(BTW, all audio CD should be converted to 16/48 outside of your vegas project before use)