Video Effects Difficulties

[John Kilderry]

I purchased Vegas 10 a couple of weeks ago and have been having trouble with the effects levels being difficult or impossible to control with the edit tool. Same problem with pro titler. It's like the whole box is dead. Any suggestions?

[Adam Stanislav]

Can you be more specific, i.e., give us a specific example of what you are trying to do?

[John Kilderry]

Thanks, Adam. I can't adjust the effects levels of anything. I click the curser on what I want to adjust and nothing happens. Sometimes the curser is an inch or 2 below what I'm trying to adjust and I can get something to slide. Not what I'm trying to slide, but at least something above is moving. It's like the curser is off target when it even works that well..

I am not unfamiliar with NLE software and this is just plain odd.

[Mike Kujbida]

Can you give us a screenshot of your problem?

[Jeff Harper]

John, Adam asked you for specifics because your post is too vague. If we were sitting there with you we could show you instantly what to do, but that is not the case. You are unfamiliar with Vegas and you are having trouble articulating what we need to hear from you.

When you drag an effect onto a clip, a box opens that has controls in it. It is within that box you adjust levels. If you are having trouble accessing things in that box, you must resize it.

I don't know if this is your problem or not. You're experience in NLEs is great, but all NLEs have very different ways of doing things. It seems to me you are trying to use Vegas in a way that another program does things. I have had that problem learning Premier, for example.

For me, Adobe Premier is very confusing because I expect it to behave or have similar characteristics as Vegas. My experience with Vegas has actually made learning Premier Pro more difficult.

That I suspect is the underlying issue with your problem. Try assuming you know nothing about Vegas or NLEs, and then go to Vegas help. For example type in effects in the help search and see what is says, it might help get you started.

Get back with us and let us know if that helped.

[John Kilderry]

Thanks, Jeff.

I was selecting event effects from the timeline. I'll give dragging an effect to the timeline a try and see what happens.

I wasn't trying to be vague on purpose. Sorry, folks, if I was causing headaches.

[John Kilderry]

Well, that didn't work. The best way to describe this is the cursor doesn't work in any effects box. The screen has similar function as Sony Acid Studio, which I am familiar with, so there is no problem resizing boxes or any of the basic stuff.

A screen shot is a good example. If you put your cursor on a slider in a screen shot and nothing happens, that is like what I am experiencing.

As odd as it sounds that is what's happening. I can open an effect, I just can't adjust it.

[Jim Schuchmann]

Is the Split screen view turned on in the Preview screen? With it turned on you can click on the preview and set the screen area to see the change that an effect will have. Sometimes this split screen gets adjusted to where the entire screen area shows the "before" and you therefore can not see the "after".

[John Kilderry]

Thanks for answering, Jim.

I can't adjust anything to have a before and after. From watching tutorials, I know that the slider adjustment highlights when clicked with the cursor.

[Jim Schuchmann]

Sorry' I read your post to quick and didn't catch the fact that the effects sliders and controls are not responding.

I'd try remove and re-install.

[John Kilderry]

I think it has come to that, Jim.

[John Kilderry]

Still didn't work - there comes a time when the wishing doesn't work. I have upgraded to Adobe Premeire Pro and good luck and best wishes to Sony Vegas users. I'll still use Vegas/Excalibur for multi-cam edits I suppose.

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Jim Schuchmann

Is the Split screen view turned on in the Preview screen? With it turned on you can click on the preview and set the screen area to see the change that an effect will have. Sometimes this split screen gets adjusted to where the entire screen area shows the "before" and you therefore can not see the "after".

John, your post above is a perfect example of the problem of your not understanding Vegas and how you are simply unfamiliar with it. "Sometimes the screen gets adjusted to where...etc." Do you mean it just spontaneously adjusts by itself? You said "Gets adjusted" I don't understand what that means.

Your problem isn't the effects, it is likely your settings for the preview window are confusing you. If you changed the settings for the preview window from the default values, then you might not be seeing effects, so no matter what you do it will appear your adjustments aren't doing anything.

Your problem seems to have changed a bit from the original: First, you couldn't adjust effects and now you're talking about the preview screen and it's adjustments. The preview screen has thrown off many people before who thought the effects were not working.

I gave up on Premier Pro the way you have quit Vegas. I quit Premier because of the increased number of steps to achieve the same things Vegas would do in half the time. For example, in CS3 I could not drag clips from a Windows folder directly to the timeline. Since that is how I'm used to bringing video into my projects, I found that, among many other things, too awkward to perform in Premier.

What is ironic is that adjusting effects in Vegas is simple and straightforward. If you got hung up on that and couldn't work through it, it might be that you will understand Premier better.

Premier is very popular, I'm sure you will do great things with it.

[Jim Schuchmann]

Jeff,

I think you made the same mistake I did and didn't understand his original posting in which he was trying to say that none of the controls inside of the effects window(s) were responding to his attempts to drag them. The effects window appears but is "dead" to any attempts to use it.

I'm not a computer guru, but sounds like a bad registry key and would require a complete SCS wipe of the registry and re-install. From what I have read elsewhere, A complete SCS wipe of the registry is complicated as some of the keys are not the easiest to locate.

Could maybe do a system restore from before the V10 install and then try to install a "new download" of V10.

[Jeff Harper]

Maybe you're right Jim, but that just didn't feel right. It may be exactly as you say, but it would be the first time I've heard of this issue being caused by non-responsive adjustment tools in the fx box. That doesn't mean it isn't happening, of course.

Of course he is using Vegas 10, and this could be a bug I suppose.

It's unfortunate at any rate.