An explanation of why a 'feature' is beneficial

[bjtap]

Can someone please explain why the feature of ... on the main track... having a clips automatically move to the left when deleting clips, is an advantage. I personally would rather the clips remain where they are placed or at least be able to set whether the ripple takes affect myself. If I am missing something here please advise... both on whether I can eliminate this behavior or the advantage of this behavior.
Thanks,
Barry

[pvreditor]

I'm guessing that is a holdover from the early days of VideoStudio (back in the Ulead era), when it was designed as a consumer product with only one video track. None of the "professional" editing software that I've tinkered with works that way -- they all leave a space in the main track when you delete a clip.

I've had to do a minor work-around when I needed to replace a clip on the main track: I bring in a suitable replacement clip and park it on an overlay track, size it exactly as long as the undesired clip on the main track, move the new clip onto the main track in front of the undesired clip, then delete the undesired clip. If you have ripple on and other clips that overlap this new clip's location, then ripple will tell you there's a problem. If you override ripple, it can get ugly. If that happens, I turn ripple off first, make my clip swap, then turn ripple back on.

As I said, it's a minor work-around, but it is a bit of an annoyance. It would be easier if the main video track didn't automatically "collapse" when a clip is deleted.

Bob

[AussieTX]

Holding down the Ctrl key before replacing a clip with another will automatically adjust the new clip the length of the old. But of course it may not be the part you necessarily want that the new clip is trimmed to.
I primarily use the feature for replacing photo's in the timeline with others and keeping the effects and not having to worry about messing with ripple editing.

Pat

[Ken Berry]

If I am missing something here please advise... both on whether I can eliminate this behavior or the advantage of this behavior.

You can't eliminate the behaviour as it is the way VS has always worked, and probably will continue to do so.

However, you can avoid it simply by not using the main timeline. The program works equally well if you place all your video, photos etc in the overlay tracks. And those allow spaces as you would be aware.

[Troy at TheGTAMblog]

Can someone please explain why the feature of ... on the main track... having a clips automatically move to the left when deleting clips, is an advantage. I personally would rather the clips remain where they are placed or at least be able to set whether the ripple takes affect myself. If I am missing something here please advise... both on whether I can eliminate this behavior or the advantage of this behavior.
Thanks,
Barry

If I may pop in amongst all of this other helpful information with a Suggestion, another way you can deal with this is:

You can create a transparent image/panel in Paintshop Pro (or whatever your preferred image editing application is) and when you want to remove a clip in the Main Timeline, instead of Deleting it, Right-Click it and go up to Replace Clip and choose Photo. Then, simply select your transparent image, as VideoStudio will resize [change the duration of] the photo to make it fit in with your other clips. This way, you will have left a 'placeholder' in that spot, with the exact duration, that you can overwrite (or 'cover up') with whatever material you desire, at a later point in your workflow.

[As a note, if what you 'placehold' with the transparency is not replaced or 'covered' by something down in the Overlay Tracks (that is, you have left a 'transparent' section of video in your Project), when you Render, VideoStudio will produce that section as "black" (nothing on the screen... because...there is nothing there haha).]

Just another idea, is all.