Precise alignment of video tracks?

[Eldor]

What's the best way to micro-move a video clip? I'm talking specifically about a video clip in the overlay (1) video track. I use a Wacom tablet and also a Logitech trackball. And it's very hard to make really really small changes to the position of a track. Is there a good way of doing this? My goal is to set up multi-camera editing (yes, I've checked the threads here and looked at the Youtube videos that were linked) and I need to align the clips just right. I'm a total novice with this stuff so chances are I'm missing something.

I wish there was some way to view both video tracks (as we can do now with the overlay showing in a rectangle on top of the first track) that would allow very precise movement of the overlay video track so that it could be very carefully aligned. I was hoping that the left/right arrow keys might move the entire clip left and right a frame at a time, but that doesn't work.

Suggestions would certainly be appreciated.

Thanks.

[asik1]

Moving clips precisely relate to the "zoom" or resolution of your time line.
If you will be in a single frame time resolution you will get your best precision.

[BrianCee]

just above the right hand end of the timeline is a horizontal slider with a plus sign at one end and a negative at the other - if you click on the plus sign then the timeline will expand to it's maximum showing single individual frames - now when you click on a clip and start to slide slowly it will jump along in one frame increment.

depending on where you are in the world that will be 1/25 or 1/30 of a second - which should do what you need.

I am not sure I fully understand what you mean by the second point - if you do not expand the overlay image fully you can see both videos and when your happy just use 'fit to screen' on the overlay image. are you seeing all frames in the timeline like my image below.

[Eldor]

Thank you Asik1... I've got the timeline zoomed to 1 frame, but when I try to move a clip it seems to move by TWO frames. At least the the divisions go from 0 to 30, and since my video clips are 60 fps, that would mean 2 frames. Right?

With the highest zoom (set to 1 frame) the notches on the time bar are hh:mm:ss.decimals. The decimals go from 0 to 30. And there's a "snap to" that forces my clip to one of those 0-30 positions. Each one would would be two frames, right? (If the video clip is 60 fps.)

[Eldor]

Brian (thanks again!) my second point was based on my ignorance... I was trying to find a way (unsuccessfully) to move a video clip that's in video track 1 (the overlay track) left/right one frame at a time. And I hadn't been zoomed in enough.

Now I understand that at the highest zoom it SHOULD BE possible to move the clip one frame at a time, but I guess I'm not quite understanding this. It looks to me that since my clip is 60 fps and if the highest zoom shows me 1/30th's of a second, each "notch" on the time scale would represent TWO frames. Is this right? And is that accurate enough for alignment, or is there really no way to move such a clip by ONE frame at a time?

[BrianCee]

at 60fps two frames is still 1/30 of a second as I said.

[Eldor]

at 60fps two frames is still 1/30 of a second as I said.

But you also said...

...and start to slide slowly it will jump along in one frame increment.

Please forgive me for being so dense, but am I correct that with a 60 fps video clip, you CANNOT move the clip in ONE FRAME increments, only in 1/30 of a second which is TWO FRAMES at a time.

I guess at that speed the human eye couldn't even detect that it's two frames instead of one, so it probably doesn't matter. I was just confused by your and Asik1's comment that it should be one frame at a time.

Thanks for your patience.

[BrianCee]

Because when we said that you had not mentioned that your videos were 60fps - we assumed you were using standard 30fps video