When you overlap clips, you automatically create a dissolve. When you delete a clip, the remaining clip still has that dissolve (which is now a fade). The "fade offset" is the length of the fade. Making the fade offset longer will cause the fade to last longer. Making the fade offset shorter will cause the fade to last a shorter period of time.

When you play the timeline you should see the period of time in which the dissolve occurs change as you change the offset. However, you will not see this until you actually play the timeline.

I messed around it with some more and I found out that if you don't overlap the two clips, then nothing happens even if you change the fade offset. Only after you overlap the fade offset will go into effect and then the length of the crossfade will change, right?

What are the light bluish and dark bluish tickmarks on the corners, do you know? What's the difference of them?

& I still can't get back the color correction screen with the Video Output FX, I can only seem to click the effects and drag into the tiny boxes of the clips.

It's also the length of a fade. The dissolve length is changed by changing the amount of overlap. A FADE length is changed by changing the amount of "fade offset".

Ok, but it doesn't fade if you don't overlap right?

Right-click the clip and choose "Media FX". That will bring back the chain of effects added to that clip and allow you to edit them.

Can you post a picture of the blue marks so we can understand exactly which marks you are referring to? All of my clips seem to have small blue triangles in the two upper corners when there is no fade or dissolve.

Not automatically. The fade offset is how you manually set the fade.

I'm very confused at the moment, but I managed to post a pic. Now I have two questions, for some reason whenever I click the Media FX/Video FX, all I get is this with no options. In the help, I see you can edit lots of stuff, but all I get is this. This blank timeline thingy applies to all the effects I try to edit also! Like the text media generator, I can't edit it! It just gives me that.

Also, you were right, they aren't tick marks, but the triangles, and for some reason some are dark and some are light blue.

http://server6.uploadit.org/files/ShadowAcid-image.jpg

You can also check out the demo 4.0 by going to the Sony site

I mean, my fade offset doesn't do anything if I don't overlap it the two clips.

I think I fixed the problem. I had to drag the window outside to an external window to show ALL the options... but why is this?

Could it be that I am editing in 800x600x32 resolution? Should I switch to a higher resolution?

Any tips on working with several Video sources?
 

Hi,

I'm starting to get my feet wet with Vegas 4 and am going to be editing live music and interviews that will have two audio tracks and a minimum of 2 video tracks. I've got a couple of questions.

First, once I time synch the separate tracks up, is there a way to lock each track down so accidental moves can't happen at a later date? Or can I push a Vegas based timecode to all the tracks so that resynching isn't an issue later?

Next, how do most people deal with the separate video clips? Should I mainly be cutting all tracks at the point that I'm going to crossfade and swap the video tracks, or should I cut the clips and adjust the opacity of the one that needs to be faded out?

How will the different methods effect cross fades? It seems to me that I will need to cut and move the tracks if I want cross fades to work properly, but then crossfades that I want to lead to 50/50 (or other ratio) opacity shots for solo-type effects then become confused.

These questions make sense to me but if it's not clear I apologize. I'm starting to really like much of what I'm seeing in Vegas and I believe it's making me reconsider my decision to switch to MAC for Final Cut.

Any help/comments/pointers appreciated,

Kevin

Take a look at the article in my newsletter that discusses editing multi-camera projects. http://www.jetdv.com/tts

No. 800x600 should be fine. However, it MAY have been sized too small to see the entire contents (which is why your solution may have worked)

It better create a fade in or a fade out. Can you elaborate on "doesn't do anything"?