Downside to multiple tracks?

iHartVideo

iHartVideo

Well-known member
After reading a post here and seeing that the member uses one track with many individual clips I began to wonder if there is any downside to using multiple tracks? Ive seen a couple other screenshots & instructinal videos where people seem to use a single track instead of multiple ones.

Here is a pic from my latest project - 39 tracks for a 3 minute music video. I separate into individual tracks in order to apply effects etc. on all clips in a track as opposed to havinf to do each clip individually. Then beyond that I can also add effects to each clip if I need to.
This pic is after I have cleaned up the project - usually there is lots of overlapping clips.

4235137243_4e45f22c7c_o.gif


Is there any downside/upside to either method (other than the scrolling I have to do)?

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The downside is keeping track of all of that. I would think copying clips and using "Paste event attributes" would be much more wieldly.
 
To me, that is one of the downfalls of Vegas. It sort of encourages this "edit on the timeline" kind of layout. I got into that when I first laid out my documentary. With audio, I was staring at 70+ tracks. It was just poor organization and bad editing practices. I am now rebuilding that documentary now that I have many more years of experience, and I doubt I'll exceed 5-8 tracks total. And that includes music and titles.
 
PerroneFord said:
that is one of the downfalls of Vegas.
Click to expand...

.. not just Vegas - it's the "modern way".

It's like when we shot on film we had to be careful about shooting ratios because film and processing cost money. Then along came tape and everybody was shooting twenty times as much!

Same with audio. Using four or eight tracks meant that you had to carefully think about what you recorded and how you arranged it. Now the sky's the limit. The final result doesn't necessarily sound better though.

Video editing is no different. From film to 2" tape to 1" tape and so on you had to think about what you were doing before you did it. Now most everyone just slaps stuff on the timeline all over the place and wonders why they get lost when they have to make a change.

Oh dear .. I'm getting old ..
 
Most of my videos document events. My videos typically include 6-10 short segments where I have 3 or 4 clips showing simultaneously in individual portals. Sometimes the portals animate into position. To do this in a single project would require 50 or more tracks. Instead of that nightmare, I use a single project for each segment. Each sub project typically has 4-6 tracks. Then, I nest these in my main project which typically has less than five tracks. Nested vegs can really be your friend for the types of videos I do.
 
My general rule is use as little tracks as possible. most videos I make are within 10 tracks (audio and video) - 3-4 of them are muted garbage tracks where I hold un-used footage or sequences. If I'm compositing within vegas, I use a few extra tracks.
 
So there are no real performance impacts? That is the main thing I am concerned about.
As I get my lighting more consistent I will reduce the number of tracks but, for now, I am fine with having to manage a high number of them.

If anyone is interested here is the final product: http://www.vimeo.com/8507541
 
If each of those tracks had video in it all the time, then yeah, it would bog you down -- but if it's one piece of video at a time, you shouldn't see much of any performance hit. But then, it IS taking up RAM, and I've never had that many video tracks in a project before, so I can't guarantee anything. I wouldn't think so, though.
 
Usually there are multiple tracks overlapping - the screenshot is after I have gone thru and cleaned all overlapping tracks out.

So Vegas loads each track into RAM and it stays there? I have 12 GB so it may not be a big deal, but I want things to preform as good as possible.
 
My photography work was bogging down my 4gb machine for months, so I finally had enough and upgraded to a Core i7 with 12 gb & Win7 64bit.
 
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