Merging multiple project clips

[Ian Stark]

I have distilled around 17 hours of footage down to around 2 hours and tomorrow I have a session with the client to whittle that down to around 30 minutes or less.

The clips I have to go through are currently in around 15 different veg files, all of which are for a specific element of the production. Each veg contains ALL the footage for that segment in the media pool, with the desired clips being on the timeline, edited for length etc.

What I would like to do is to create a single project containing all the desired clips.

Here's how I propose to do it:

1. In each veg, use Clean Project Media to remove all unused clips. Save each file with the trim media option (with an appropriate head and tail).

2. Create an appropriately named bin in each project and move all remaining (now trimmed) clips to that bin.

3. Open a second instance of Vegas, create a new project, drag bins from each of the other projects into the new project.

Is my workflow sound? Is there a more efficient way of achieving the end result?

Opinions and advice welcomed. Cheers.

Ian . . .

[Seth Bloombaum]

Well I'd be the first to say that I'm less of a finesse and more of a brute-force editor... but first I'd try copying all clips on each segment timeline and pasting them into the new master timeline.

What's good about this is that you get the opportunity to preserve the overall sequence of clips (if there is one).

If you've applied track level efx then it's not so good... but then neither is copy/paste between bins.

[Ian Stark]

Actually Seth, I'm with you on the brute force style!

To be honest, there's no sequence per se in the different segments and I need to find a way of retaining some logic to the grouping of each project topic - that's why I'm thinking bins might be best for me.

Raw material-wise and structure-wise, this is the most complex project I have worked on to date. At this time, all the footage is purely 'do I want it or not' and I haven't tried to confuse myself by doing any ordering or assembly. That starts tomorrow!


Thanks for the input.

Ian . . .