Vegas scrambles files when dropped on time line

[Jim Snow]

I am attempting to drop 263 sequentially numbered clips onto the time line from Vegas Explorer. These clips are numbered from 119_0143.MOV to 119_0306.MOV. When I select them all and drag them to the timeline, their placement on the timeline doesn't remain sequential. Why!? Do I need to drop each clip one at a time to prevent this? I have had this happen before with far fewer clips. I just shrugged it off and dropped each clip one at a time to insure the clips remained in proper order. Come on guys, this is Rev, 10. There still shouldn't be this kind of problem in the product.

[Chris Barcellos]

Jim:

I had this happen before. Try this just to humor me. Rather than highlight your videos from Icons or thumbnails in Explorer, in your folder, change the folder view to have the files in the folder viewed as a detailed list. Then make sure they are ordered by name, first in sequence at the top of the list. Then highlight the folders starting from top down. Drag to time line. Does that work ?

Second thing to try is to drag and drop into project medial, then from their be sure list is made dequentially, then high light all files, and drag and drop.

Let us know if this works. I think it matters about the order of selections you make in Windows Explorer.

[Jim Snow]

Thanks Chris, I won't be able to look at it until tomorrow. I'm rendering another job right now. FYI. I didn't drag them in from Windows Explorer, I dragged them down from Vegas Explorer. The files were in numerical order in Vegas Explorer. Why can't Vegas keep them in order when the entire group of files is selected and moved to the time line?

[Iker Riera]

i usually drop them in the Vegas Project Media window first and arrange them by name there.

From there i drag them into the timeline and they maintain the file name order and numbering.

[Jim Snow]

Thanks, I appreciate your suggestions. I will try these tomorrow. The mystery to me is why would they not stay in numerical order when they are in numerical order in Vegas Explorer. The only thing I did was to select the whole group of files and drag them from Vegas explorer to the time line. I selected them by first selecting the first file and then pressing shift and clicking on the last file. This results in all of the files being selected.

[Gerald Webb]

Had this a couple of times,
Every time it happened to me if I looked into the file numbering I could see where it was "tricking " Vegas.
it just meant I had to drag 100 clips on at a time to keep them in order.
try 143-199 in one go,
then 200-299 in one go etc

[Jeff Harper]

Would it work to bring them in from a windows folder? I admit I've never used Vegas explorer to introduce clips onto the timeline, I've always just brought them in from a Windows folder.

[Michael Wisniewski]

I've run into this as well. Apparently this is because you can select a single file within a selection of files. If you look carefully when you've selected a bunch of files in the Vegas explorer you'll see that the last file you selected has a grey dashed box around it, that's what Vegas will use as the first file and everything will be out of order at that point. I'm sure there's some sort of logic behind it but it's beyond me. Basically you have to maneuver that grey dashed selection box so it's on the first file you want.

1. Try selecting in the reverse order. Click on the last file you want, then scroll up and shift-click on the first file.

2. Or click on the first file in the Vegas explorer and then hit CTRL+A to select everything.

3. It gets tricky if you need to ctrl-click to select individual file into a selection, good luck with that.

[Edward Troxel]

First of all, Windows will always take the image you actually drag and place it FIRST. All images after that should be in order. So always make sure that you drag the FIRST image.

Secondly, is that an actual image sequence? If yes, you should go to File - Import - Media, select the first image, and then check the "Open still image sequence" box. Then it will appear as a single event on the timeline.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Edward, I've been thinking about this for awhile now: Instead of exporting my animation clips as AVI files I would export them as image sequences and import them into Vegas the way you described above. The advantage for me would be that if I needed to redraw just a few frames I wouldn't have to rerender the entire AVI clip but just the changed frames.

My question is, what do you see as the disadvantage/advantage of using image files versus avi files in Vegas? I am particularly concerned about playback speed; not so much file sizes. Should I expect any differences?

[Edward Troxel]

The best thing you can do is try it on a short clip and see what happens. I can see how it would be more flexible in your case. I do suspect the playback rate will be slower than with the AVI file but I've not really had a need for image sequences to use them extensively in the past.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Thanks, Edward. The first thing the test of 144 JPEG frames (720p) shows is that the image sequence file is 15.1 MB versus the AVI's 379 MB; wow! Does that make sense to you?

Otherwise they both look identical and I had no trouble importing the sequence from the Menu's File the way you described (I'm on 10d). The clip is too short for me to compare the playback speed so I am going to experiment further.

[Paul Fierlinger]

You made a good guess, Edward; the image sequence plays back at almost half the speed of real time so it makes no sense for me to further pursue this.