Order of the P2 clips in the project media window

[hjrt]

Hi there!

I just upgraded from Vegas 8.0 to 11.0, and, using Raylight, the clip order of a certain P2 card is a bit (but not totally) mixed up in the project media window. That is, if it is displayed as 'icons'. If I go in there and say I want to see a detailed list and choose to arrange/order the clips not on name but on timecode, then the clip order is OK; if I go back to icon display mode, things are mixed up again. Is there any way to work around this? Vegas 8 always handled it well...

Thanks a lot

[David Jimerson]

In what way are they out of order?

[Barry_Green]

It's probably due to the alphabetical sorting of the names, rather than the numerical sorting. P2 clips are made of four numbers and two random digits -- example, 0001QR.mxf. But sometimes the random digits are also numbers, and sometimes that's okay (0002T8.mxf for example) but sometimes it causes alphabetical sorting problems (like with 00011R.mxf). See, look at that one carefully -- it's not clip 11, it's clip 1. It's 0001 1R.mxf. But visually it looks like "11", and that's where the sorting can get out of whack.

If you had three clips (0001, 0002, and 0003) with random letters/numbers in their names, so 0001RR.mxf, 0002Z8.mxf, and 0003TU.mxf, you'd expect them to be sorted:
0001RR
0002Z8
0003TU

But say the random characters were randomly different, and instead of "0002Z8", it came out "00028Z". In that case, the bin would likely sort them as:
0001RR
0003TU
00028Z

And that would be wrong. But the bin doesn't know how to process it differently. Same thing happens in Premiere.

[hjrt]

Thanks for the explanation. I forgot that the last two digits could also be numbers. That explains a lot. However, Vegas 8 always handled it well and Vegas 11 doesn't. I know the same thing happens in Premiere as well, but there you can change the order to timecode start or something even in 'icon mode'. Seems I will have to live with it. Or are there any solutions?

[David Jimerson]

It's not really a Vegas or Premiere thing in that sense; it's just a computer alphabetizing. The same thing will happen if you arrange by name in, say, the Windows folder.

Premiere (CS4 and later) has a leg up on Vegas because it will refer to clips by UserClip Name instead of the file name. Raylight will put the UserClip Name in one of the info columns, and you can sort on it, but of course you lose the sort if you go back to icon mode. This is something worth changing in Vegas.

[hjrt]

I get the principle of course. A Windows folder does it correctly, actually. It seems to me that Vegas 11 (and also Premiere) do 'remove' all the zeros at the beginning of the number and then start to order the clips (in case they are ordered on 'name'). Windows and Vegas 8 don't do that': 001 and 002 come before 0013 and 0021. Well, anyway, so be it, can't change a lot about it at the moment, just slowing down the work a bit.