After some fiddling I think I got the same "problem" as you have.
I couldn't find a way to reset it back to factory defaults, although
an uninstall/install will probably do this for you, there is an easy
way to get the preview out of there.

This is what you do. Select the Video Preview tab. Now on the
left side of the preview area is a small vertical line that starts
under the close and maximize buttons and runs down to the
left side of the preview information (resolution / frame rate etc.).

Now left-click and hold on that line and drag it to the far right of
your screen and let go. It should move the preview outside of
the tabbed area now.

To the best of my knowledge this is not possible in the capture
tool. It might be possible in Vegas itself if you arm a track for
record that has track effects in place? But it wouldn't suprise
me at all if it simply ignores this for performance reasons. Try
it out!

Rob
Thanks very much - I'll try that.
Duncan

a few workflow findings and questions
 

In the last few weeks I edited a few short films with Vegas, the last 2 consisting of multiple cuts taken from the same scene/source. I felt that the workflow I used worked ok for short projects but would not work for something longer. Below is a description and questions.

Logical approach:

1. Capture tape onto big drive
2. Create new project, name it and save it
3. Open a scene into trimmer, mark the rough cuts
4. Take cut from trimmer, move it to timeline,
5. fine adjust cut/add envelopes
6. go to step 4
7. watch, readjust cuts till happy or time runs out
8. add text
10. add timeline effects,watch, adjust till happy
11. render

What I ended up doing however was copying an existing event and paste it repeatedly on the timeline, readjusting [alt-drag] the content within it and then readjust the length. This was possible because the cuts were coming from the same file.

Q1. I believe there is a more effective way to work in trimmer. How do YOU do it?

Q2. Also, I noticed that markers createdin trimmer remain in the "cut" when moved to the timeline, but for some reason I can't read their labels. How can I access that info?

A few more questions:

Q3. Technical tip/question: I am using a 160Gb external drive to capture and edit. Initially I would render on the same drive. This however leads to the drive reading/writing small chunks of data from and to itself. Not optimal. Next I started rendering onto another physical drive and it worked much smoother.

Any experience with this? What is your setting? 1 drive for everything or A for capturing/final storage and B for rendering_to.

Q4. I found it hard to manage alternate entries for the same cut. Say I want to see the timeline with cut A and immediately after that with cut B in order to make my mind of which one to keep. What's an effective way to do this without moving everything around? Duplicate timeline?

Q5. How do I move a cut to a different place quickly? Insert Time? How do you do it?


Thank you all!
-- Andre
-- See Tim O'Gara's music video at http://dv.instantclassic.org/sometimes-andre-512.mov
-- 3 short films coming soon to my signature!

render vs. ptt
 

Once i render a full AVI file, if i want to do a print-to-tape it apparently needs to re-render the entire project....

would it not be better to just pull in the already fully rendered AVI file into a new project with all the transitions, etc done already or would this cause degredation of video quality?

It seems silly to have done an AVI render for close to two hours and then run a PTT and have to wait another good bit.

It shouldn't need to do this. Are you sure you haven't changed
anything (for example having a 60i source and having the project
set to 30p)? Everything must be set to the exact same thing
(project settings, event settings and export settings).

i didnt change anything...i just rendered a project overnight...woke up and set a PTT with options: smtp bars 10 sec...lead black 5 sec...trail black 15 secs so i can keep a copy on DV tape for backup....no file settings or any changes were made on the timeline or project settings.

I capture my footage with scene detection so that I get a new
file for each take/shot/scene instead of one or more big files.
These I then arrange into folders (one for each scene).

1) I and a lot of other people it seem don't use the trimmer at all. I basically play the footage from the explorer (space bar) and then drag it to the right place. I trim it by slicing pieces of (s key) and removing those from the timeline

3) That's normal and is indeed preferred. I try to do the same, but that's not always possible due to space reasons on my other drives

4) I basically play the footage from the explorer and when I'm done with the current clip I highlight the other and hit the space bar. This is more easy for my approach ofcourse. In your case a seperate preview track might be handy?

5) I simply change the size of the timeline (by using the scroll wheel of my mouse) then move the piece to the correct place (you might want to use ripple editing with this), position the mouse on that place and zoom back in.

changing project settings post editing
 

I shot in 24p (dvx100A) but used a default vegas project settings (which I presume are 60i). I have already edited the footage.

How do I change the project to 24p?

Should I

A. just change project settings and rerender OR
B. Open new project and somehow re-import the old project OR
C. create a new project and do everything from scratch?
D. ?


Thanks.

-- Andre

Did you leave it on the timeline with all of the rest of the clips and stuff?

Explorer window glitch?
 

Just started running across this recently. Sometimes the footage in my explorer isn't the correct icon. For example it's usually the windows media player icon beings it's my default player for avi/mpg etc. Just tonight I opened up Vegas and the icon was the one I assigned to my desktop link for Displaymate. Now...the footage is able to be brought to the timeline ok and plays completly fine....just the oddity in the icon it's showing to represent footage?! Usually shutting down Vegas and reloading it fixes it. Anyone else ever encounter this?

Trey,
I'm curious why you're rendering a complete project to AVI then printing to tape. Unless you need the AVI for something else I find it much easier and less time consuming to finish my project and go straight to PTT. Please understand that my project might have a bunch of AVI's in it but I don't render it back out and then PTT.
What's your thinking for doing that?
Don

A. Just change the project settings.

Hold down CTRL and SHIFT while starting Vegas and all windows will be reset to their original positions.

After you render to a complete AVI, start a NEW project and add the new AVI file. Then do a PTT with only that file on the timeline. It sounds like you are trying to print with the original project on the timeline instead which would require the changed sections to be rendered because it doesn't see the new AVI file.