One Time line or ?

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
What is better - editing your feature film in one Vegas file or break up your Vegas files by major scenes?

For an example - You have a scene that take place on the beach, in the forest, in a house, in a car.

So would you edit all these scene on one time line or a group of different time lines in the same Vegas file

OR

would you have a new Vegas file for each of those scene and edit them in their own file and when all is done CUT and Paste all those scene onto one time line.

I hope I made some sense here :-)
 
I haven't done that, but I can only imagine that it's a hell of a lot easier to manage things scene-by-scene...
 
I've cut two features and 40 shorts in Vegas so far. Even with the features, I did it all in one timeline. I like having access to each scene instantly without having to open another instance of Vegas. I haven't had any problems on my seven year old computer. Then again, I'm a fan of offline editing. If you're going to try to cut an HD feature at online quality, multiple scenes may work best. But I personally recommend offlining with one timeline.
 
I think you're playing with sharp knives if you try to edit long form in one Vegas project file. Some people get themselves all the way to the end of a year's worth of editing and then find that they can't render the thing.

Edit sequences in individual Veg files. Then either render them or nest the veg files in a master veg file. Do composites in their own veg files too. The idea here is to keep each part as simple as you can manage so that you don't find yourself trapped a year or so down the road after you've put loads of effort into a faulty workflow.

You might find that everything is fine in one monolithic project but do you really want risk painting yourself into a corner?

Rob Mack
 
Ignoring the instability issues that may arise, another benefit of using individual scenes is if you accidentally leave ripple editing enabled or if you forget to unlock a few tracks before changing somthing, you can't put the entire film, or a section of the film further along the timeline out of sync.

It also gives you a bit more flexibility with grading/effects. Eg if you have a 'dream sequence' (cheesy example, I know!) you can edit it in a seperate project and apply your 'dream effects' (glow, blur, vignette, etc) to the project output FX. OR you could import that scene into your master timeline and apply the effects to the nested project. If you were working on one big timline, you would have to either apply each effect to every clip in that scene (can be slow), or apply them to the track FX and make sure there are no other clips on those tracks (which can lead to confusion of large, projects with huge amounts of tracks.
 
I've never nested files but that is the perfect solution for my current project.

Can you have all 3 projects open, play around with one and your changes are reflected in the master? Or do you have to edit each project in isolation?
 
I think you're playing with sharp knives if you try to edit long form in one Vegas project file. Some people get themselves all the way to the end of a year's worth of editing and then find that they can't render the thing.
Click to expand...
My last two features were standard def and it handled them fine. My current one is HD and we'll be mastering the film in AE anyway so we'll just render from there. Point being, if you prefer to have it all in one timeline, you can if your workflow supports it.
 
I've come from a Final Cut background and I nest everything, I would nest three or four timelines deep if I thought Vegas could support it reliably. My theory is to cut everything down to the smallest possible unit and tweak it there, I mainly work in scenes, but may break a scene up if its long or complicated. It may take a little bit of extra work in order to pace things correctly and to transition between scenes but the idea of working on a short, let alone a feature, on one timeline seems like a nightmare.

I'm only a recent Vegas convert and am still getting on top of all the little tricks but when you need to tweak the timing of a shot early in a film do you simply adjust it, and then rely on the ripple delete key to work? Or do you select everything and move it.

I'm guessing you have a whole lot of regions.
 
I tried nesting for a music video I'm working on and it was terrible. I have two 'streams' - one is the performance (lots of tracks, lots of quick cuts), the other is an intertwining story. With nesting I can't quickly & easily add time in areas to accomodate the song flow.

I've combined it all into one project and things are going much better now. I could see nesting working for discreet scenes, but not that well in the music vids I shoot.
 
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