|
Jimco Software Reviews - Sony Vegas 6 (continued)
The Tab Window
The Tab Window is a label that we coined for the
multiple tabbed part of the Vegas interface. The Tab
window actually consists of several different windows and the
windows that appear there can be easily chosen via drag and
drop. By default, the Tab Window contains the following
windows:
-
Explorer
-
Trimmer
-
Project Media
-
Media Manager
-
Transitions
-
Video FX
-
Media Generators
Let's go through each one of these briefly.
Explorer
The Explorer window is just like a Windows Explorer window.
It contains a treeview of your drives and a detail view on the
right. There's really no need to waste much time on it.
Trimmer
The Trimmer window is a mini-editor window. When you
are working with video clips, you frequently don't want to use
an entire clip in your project. Instead, you often want to
use just a snippet from a clip. The Trimmer window gives
you a convenient place to locate the video you want and insert
only what is needed into the Tracks window.
Project Media
The Project Media window is where you'll find all of the
media that you have added to your project. In version 4,
Vegas added the ability to separate your media into bins
(folders) so that you can keep everything organized. In
version 4, that functionality was a little buggy and items
frequently would end up in a bin other than the one it was
placed in. Version 6 handles bins flawlessly (we never
used Vegas 5) and we use them extensively when working with
video.
Media Manager
The Media Manager (shown in figure 5) is a new
feature in Vegas 6, and it's a powerful way to keep track of
media. Media Manager uses Microsoft's MSDE (Microsoft SQL
Server Desktop Edition) to maintain a catalog of your media.
You can then use Media Manager to perform powerful queries.
Figure 5 - Media Manager
In order to use the Media Manager to its full
potential, you will need to catalog your media using Tags.
In figure 5, the Tags appear in the left of the dialog.
By applying tags to each piece of media, you can locate exactly
the media you need for a particular point in your video.
We have found the Media Manager to be extremely
useful even in small projects because it allows us to create our
own Tags so that we organize our projects media any way we see
fit.
Transitions
The Transitions window is where you will find all of the
video transitions available to you in Vegas. Vegas comes
with a whole slew of transitions, and each one is customizable.
You can also key frame transitions so that you can control them
in detail. Figure 6 shows the dialog while editing
a 3D Blinds transition effect. The result of applying this
transition is visible in this short video clip.
(By the way, the guy in the background on the first scene of
this clip is Jim Cheshire of Jimco Software.)
Figure 6 - 3D Blinds
Transition
The timeline that you see at the bottom of the
dialog in figure 6 is the key frame area. You can
insert any number of key frames here and each key frame can
apply specific settings to the transition.
|