Relax Tony. We were all newbies once upon a time :-)
First of all, do as Spot suggested and, in the text window, set the frame size to 1440 x 960.
Now open up the pan/crop window and change the width value (under the position tab) to a large number (it'll go up to a maximum of 11,520).
The height value will adjust accordingly.
The text should have shrunk in size a lot.
Change the smoothness value (under keyframe interpolation) to 0.0
Now create a key frame in the timeline at the bottom of the window at the beginning by clicking the + key.
Go to the end of the timeline and enter a new width value. Something around 100 will probably work but you'll have to experiment here with a value to get the text to the position you want.
That's it. Exit and play it to see if it's what you want.
If not, go back into pan/crop and experiment further.

With auto-scene dectection many folks don't really get a feel for what they've got until they play their clips. I keep the trimmer as a small window with only a single frame visable.

Now one can double-click a clip into the Trimmer and set IN and OUT points exactly. You watch the Timmer media in the monitor. The Timeline remains undisturbed, with the cursor waiting at the end of the last clip you inserted. (This is a very safe way of editing since you aren't putting anything you haven't previewed into the Timeline.).

Of course, if you need to place a clip precisely in another Track, you can place the cursor at either the IN or OUT point. Now click ADD. Done. You have performed one type of 3-point edit.

Alternately, place the Timeline cursor to the END of where you want a clip to go. Use the alternate ADD. This is the second type of 3-point edit. (Although, normally a Mark is used, not the cursor which keeps the point in place while still being able to view the Timeline.)

Both of these are both very common ways of using the Trimmer.

The other two 3-point methods use 2-points in the Timeline and either an IN or OUT point in the Trimmer. In these cases you will use IN and OUT points in the Timeline. The Timeline cursor isn't used. These two techniques use the Trimmer and Timeline TOGETHER to perform very accurate edits. With all but Vegas, this is a one click/key operation that requires no dragging. Nevertheless, it can be done with Vegas -- it just takes a few more steps plus one drag.

There are many good reasons for the Trimmer -- especially when used in close conjuction with the Timeline.

Thanks Boss!! Your the Man!!!

Not a "Boss". Just someone who was also a newbie once and, with the help of lots of folks here and elsewhere, have picked up a lot of useful tips.
Happy editing :-)

Correcting Auto-Iris Mistakes...
 

I have a rather tricky situation and I'm hoping someone here can advise me. In short, I messed up some video footage that I unfortunately can't re-shoot.

The setup: A martial arts location shoot using two JVC DV500U miniDV cameras (rented gear, and first time using these model cams). I then Capture/Edit using Vegas6, which I am fairly well versed in using for basic editing functions/corrections.

The problem: The otherwise well lit footage has been marred by the fact that both cameras were mistakenly set to Auto-Iris. The resulting harsh "starcasing" of the exposure up-and-down back-and-forth over about a 1.5 fstop range during some close-ups and zooms has rendered the footage essentially unusable as-is.

NOTE: There's some good news: At no point is over/underexposure a factor. Also, both cameras had appropriate white balance set manually. It's just those darn harsh exposure change stairsteps.

Is anyone aware of a fix for these exposure shifts, other than correcting them totally by hand using the appropriate plugins (brightness or color corrector gain) in Vegas? These shifts often occur in rapid succession so I would be days-and-days correcting them all manually if I could even pull it off smoothly enough (matching the ramp time, ramp curve, and ramp amount for each occurrence).

I have found nothing available in Vegas to help me auto-fix this situation. Am I overlooking anything there? Or as another alternative, are there any third party plugins for Vegas (or After Effects) that could assist me in correcting this?

I'm hoping that there might be some sort of solution in the form of a video plugin that is analogous to a compressor/limiter for audio. Am I hoping in vain?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

You could try MSU's Deflicker plug-in for Virtualdub.

HD Image Artifact for 'Good'/'Best' Quality
 

I downloaded some HD footage, shot by Kaku Ito, to check out with Vegas 7.0b and noticed during playback that when the image quality is set to 'Good' or 'Best' a dragonfly, flying through the scene, is duplicated so two twin dragonflys appear. However when the image quality is set to 'Draft' or 'Preview' only one appears.

Does anyone know what causes this, if there is a fix, and if other NLEs have this sort of artifact?

It occurs at frame 318 (and elsewhere) in the following clip.
http://media.dvinfo.net/canonxh/60itrpdjameszmin2.m2t

Links to images of this frame at each quality level follow.
Draft: http://www.io.com/~smg/DragonflyDraft.jpg
Preview: http://www.io.com/~smg/DragonflyPreview.jpg
Good: http://www.io.com/~smg/DragonflyGood.jpg
Best: http://www.io.com/~smg/DragonflyBest.jpg

You're seeing the two fields of each frame. Usually you see a "comb" effect when the picture is being displayed at a 1:1 pixel ratio, but since you're looking at a scaled down image, it's blending alternate lines as it scales down and the two fields are not distinctly separate anymore.

In other words, nothing is wrong or broken. If this still doesn't make sense, do some reading about fields and DV on Adam Wilt's site.

Yea, I was looking at (and posted) half-size images. When I view them as full-size in Vegas I see the comb effect of the separated fields. Thanks.

http://www.mikecrash.com/modules.php...showpage&pid=6
auto levels from mike crash may help.

Auto-Iris problems FIXED thanx to this forum!!!
 

Excellent suggestions, and in record time! DeFlicker did the job with a minimum of tweaking and now those exposure change points are imperceptable. You guys have literally pulled this one out of the mud for me. Wow.

Thank you also for introducing me to VirtualDub and the Mike Crash plugins! I can see I will be having fun exploring all the available goodies out there for quite some time. This has been a real eye opener.

Thanx again...
...Steve Cox

Help with two questions please
 

I have two questions I could sure use some help on.
1.I put several audio clips on the time line. How can I send them all to audion as one clip?

2. 2nd camera was accidently set to 16:9 instead of 4:3 . I know I can turn off aspect ratio and it will make it a 4:3 but the people dont look right. Thought I could do a pan/crop but the black lines are still there... any suggestions?

1. Render to a WAV file.
2. Open pan/crop, right-click, and choose "Match Output Aspect".

AC-3 Encoder problem..
 

Not sure if there's anyone here that knows alot about Vegas's AC-3 encoder, however, I built a new computer and installed 7.0 on it, and updated all the licenses. They all worked except for the AC-3 encoder one. When I put my activation key in, it's saying invalid. I think I might know why perhaps. In the screen for the AC-3 Encoder registration, it's showing the computer ID missing a -2D as is shown under the main Help -> about on the main screen. Does anyone know why this is ?

Correcting Chromatic aberration?
 

I shoot with a JVC GY-HD101E (in 720p25) and edit with Sony Vegas 7.0b (with intermediated Cineform codec). Some shots have really exceptional value, and I would like to use them, but they have serious chromatic aberration on some parts of the image, that kind of irritates. Any ideo how I could fix that in post?