Critical Newby Vegas Question
 

I'm thinking of buying Vegas. I used Vegas 4 many years ago a little bit. The one thing that was SO annoying on the earlier version was there was no thumbnail view of clips stored on my HD. It was impossible to identify which clip was which out of a hundred or so differnt clips that had been captured from a shoot, other than randomly click on the files. Has that changed? Is there a thumbnail view or an album so a user can ID a clip from a thumbnail? I don't want to bother downloading the demo until I know I can easily ID clips visually (plus I'm in the process of looking for a new PC)..

Thank you,

Mark G

You can see list, or thumbnails.

From the explorer tab in vegas you can also preview(play) them.

The explorer tab does not show thumbnails. However, the project Media tab does. As was mentioned, you can preview from the explorer tab. Or you can add all needed clips to the project media and see thumbnails there. This was also true in Vegas 4.

Could someone take a moment to explain the workflow of using the Explorer tab vs the Preview tab? How do you go about selecting a clip from a large library of clips to add to a project. For example: Let's say I'm working on a project. I know there is a clip from a previous project on my H drive (perhaps archived from a year ago) that would be a perfect fit at this point in the project. I want to find and add this clip to the current project. In the folder on my H drive is where this clip resides, but there happens to be at least 100 other clips from a project within this folder. Ok, I know about where the clip is located among the 100 clips but not exactly. So, what process would one use, in Vegas, to find and add that file?

Can I go to the preview tab and just see a thumbnail of each of the 100 clips (without playing through each clip) which should, in theory, help me ID the clip I'm looking for? And once I find it, can I just drag it from the preview window to the project timeline? Or, do I have to find the clip from the Preview window, then remember the file name and then toggle back to the Explorer bar and add it from there? This is the part in Vegas 4 that I had trouble with. I couldn't figure out how to identify clips easily and add them without using a back/fourth method. I thought it was very awkward and quit using it. But maybe I didn't understand the workflow. Please help me out if you can.

Thanks in advance,

I think you are making this more difficult than necessary. That's actually a throw back to the more rigid requirement that other NLE have placed on us in the past. The nice thing about Vegas is there about 5 ways to accomplish any task. Explorer from inside Vegas does not show a thumbnail, true.

But one way you could handle it is if you know what group of files you are looking in, you could open a bin for dropping the group of files into. You could then display that group in thumbnail format.

Another way to handle it is to open Windows explorer outside of Vegas, leaving Vegas open in a smaller window, go to the folder you know the particular file to be, look through the folder using thumbnail view, and when you find the file, drag and drop it to the Vegas time line in the open window.

Thank you for the quick response. Please allow me to ask a follow-up question: Lets say I had several files from a previous project I wanted to sift through and drop a few of them in a "Bin", as you say, to find and add to a project. Let's say there are 200 video clip files within this particular folder. These files are various clips acquired from a previous project shoot. Do I highlight all 200 clips and put them in the Bin, then sift through the thumbnails to find what I am looking for? Let's say, there are 5 clips I find I want to drop on the timeline, do I just drag them from the bin to the timeline? How long does it take for the Bin to recognize those 200 clips? Is it instantaneous, or is there a 40 second (or so) wait for these to be pulled in. Let's say there are 30 gigs of video clips? Once I have them added, do I then delete the Bin? I do travel videos so we often need to hunt for clips from previous shoots.

I really found the process of going from Explorer to Vegas 4 (back/fourth) really cumbersome. Unless I wasn't getting it, it didn't seem to make any sense why thumbnails couldn't have been added to Vegas' Explorer tab. I don't know if I knew about the Bin process. I did use the Explorer process and to me that was a lot of unnecessary screwing around. While I want to go with Vegas, I don't want to 'fight' the UI all the time. Any additional help or suggestions you can offer would really benefit my decision-making process. Like I say, I want to use Vegas if I can be sure it won't be a bunch of goofing around to fnd files. I plan to set up a new PC which I may be able to download a demo copy.

Thank you agan,

Mark,

Vegas can't do what you are asking. Really, that's all there is to it. However, the sometimes flaky media manager can allow you to store metadata and seach your clip library. This should allow you to do what you want, and give you searchability.

Now I say this as someone who's used Media Manager some years ago, but abandoned it for one reason or another. Maybe it wasn't the right tool for me back then. But it's certainly worth a shot for someone who needs to keep a database of video selections like you seem to want to do.

I can certainly understand your need based on your intended use, and I can understand your frustration at what really should be a part of the program. I am trying to think if this has been a part of other NLEs I've used, and I honestly cannot remember.

Mark, if you want to use Windows Explorer, try this:

Open Vegas, then open a smaller Windows Explorer on top of Vegas. Now as you find clips in Windows Explorer, simply drag them to the Vegas timeline (it doesn't matter where). Now the files you want will be part of the project. You can delete them off the timeline and they'll still be in the project Media tab where you can now add them back to the timeline however they need to be added.

I think Ed nailed it in his comment here.
From the Project Media window, when you click "import media" from here, you can select thumbnail as an option when the explorer window pops up to browse for your media to add (import). The Project Media window is also where you create your "bins," so you can organize them immediately as they're added (imported).

I noticed that when browsing to import, my previously rendered mpg2 files did not provide thumbnails of their video (only an MPEG icon), but that the captured avi's did use frame shots as thumbnails. However, this reflects Vista's explorer limits rather than a reflection of Vegas, because once imported into the Project Media window, even mpg2 files have thumbnails available.

God bless!