What's the best way to insert video without ruining timing?

[aj327]

I'm making a video slide show that's a mix of video and photos set to various pieces of music. The issue I'm having is that every time I make an upstream change, I have to worry about downstream effects. Now I know that with ripple editing engaged I can avoid messing up the pictures/music of the next song/photo sequence, but ripple editing doesn't help if the downstream stuff you're trying to protect is part of the same song.

For example, it would be great if there was I way I could mark a 9.13 second segment that I wanted to take out and then insert another piece that was exactly 9.13 seconds and not have to worry about accounting for the way a transition etc might mess up the timing. I could then play around with the editing of that video as much as I wanted but no matter what I did the software wouldn't allow me to change the downstream timing. And any slack that might be created would automatically be accounted for with a longer or shorter transition or something to that effect.

Am I being clear with my question? If Video Studio does not allow you to do this (and I really don't think it does) what are some creative ways you guys work around this? Are there any video editing suites that do allow you to do this? I'm debating learning After Effects for example.

[lata]

Hi

I am not sure I fully understand what you are trying to do, obviously adding audio and video clips can cause problems with synchronisation?

If you wish to replace 9.13 seconds of video then you should be able to do just that.

Turn off Ripple Editing
Cut the video using the scissors
Delete the clip. (top timeline will move left)
Add the new clip (top timeline will move right)
-------------------------
You could use the overlay track
Add your video to the overlay track, shows as a smaller frame in the preview screen.
Right click preview screen and select Fit to Screen
Then keep Aspect Ratio.

Cut the top track above the new clip, mute the audio

[aj327]

it doesn't work because if you delete something you have to delete their transitions or if you want the transitions deleted it will affect the downstream pics/videos. And so it's an inexact science splicing something in there. And then afterwards I always have to readjust the timing for all the downstream stuff I just messed up. You have to be super careful not to disrupt the timings on things. It would be great to say Ok - everything for here up is pefect. DO not allow anything we do to *** that up. ANd then you're allowed to play within certain confines until you know what you want to insert and the program will automatically add all the transitions you may need etc to make the timing work. I just spend sooo much time touch up areas that I've already gotten perfect but had to redo because of some stupid error I made upstream

[canuck]

Welcome to the real world of video! Things do not always work the way you want them to work.

Because of these timing problems I never have everything in a single project. I break up the projects into smaller projects and work with those. When editing etc is done I output them to a video file. In the end I combine or whatever the smaller video clips. This way it is a lot easier to make some changes without having an effect on the whole project.

[aj327]

I like the idea of using the overlay track as a workaround to keep the timing right but unfortunately there's also a bug in VSP that doesn't allow transitions of overlays to work. The overlay transition affects the whole project, not just the overlay track causing some unexpected behavior. Though I suppose if I'm not using the video in the main track at all perhaps it'll work. I'll check it out. Thanks for the input.

In terms of breaking things up into smaller clips that is something that I've figured out recently and it has helped a lot. I don't see why they couldn't design software to overcome this problem though. Like if I have a 3 minute slideshow for instance and I'm happy with everything from 1:58 on up then it would be cool if you could join all the tracks from that point on into a single flattened piece - kind of like photoshop does with layers. But the audio track would still be whole and uninterrupted proximal from that joining. You could flatten any part that you thought was done in the beginning, middle, or end, and then there would be holes left for you to fill. The computer could also help you fill these holes by lengthening or shortening transitions. And if you needed to you could also unflatten certain parts if you needed to work with them again. It seems a doable thing software wise and would probably make my workflow easily twice as fast.

Does anyone know if there is software out there that does this?

[ianwoody123]

Have been using Pinnacle Studio 15 Ultimate for a while because I could not get the result from avchd footage that I wanted (I have since found settings in Corel that have overcome that and it does give a slightly clearer end result) and it does have a feature whereby you can cut a segment out of a clip (it does not have the multi trim feature Corel has) and then you can right click on the segment to be deleted and it offers you the choice of deleting it and leaving a space or just deleting it. Nothing around it is then moved or altered (other than a neighbouring transition which presumably you could re-insert). I have to say that I have not found Pinnacle as quick to use as Corel and it is very memory hungry. Having said that it does have some nice features. It might be worth downloading a trial version and see if that does what you need.