Hi Guys and Gals,

New to the forum and tried the search facility but couldn't see what I was looking for.

I basically have an interview video with someone talking about a product, while they talk I want to cut away and show footage of the product while the person is still talking in the main video clip. Can someone explain how to achieve this in Vegas 8 please.

Sorry if it's a newbie type question, I'm trying to learn as fast as I can!

If you add new video track above the existing one, you can then insert your cutaways at the approriate points.

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Using Cutaways, because this is essentially WHAT you are doing, is one of the most basic forms of impactful editing there is. It allows the onlooker a type of "invitation" into and be part of the film/video experience. And in Vegas I achieve this in one of 2 ways:

1] Track obscuring - Pros; Quick and immediate Cons: Takes up a further track; Can become messy very quickly; any colour correction or Fx has to be managed so that you deal with ALL the events on the 2 separate Tracks. But this can sometimes be an advantage . . Need for Auto Ripple to introduce "earlier" events

OR

2] The "L" "J" cut - Pros: ONE TRACK! Whatever you apply to that track gets done to ALL the video material too; adding additional material prior to this edit will mean that the material is shuffled downstream far easily than the use of Auto Ripple; crossfades and transition are far more easily managed this way; tweaking and sequencing I find is easier. Cons: Not much really. - It does take a wee bit more time to get the hang of it, but again once mastered its value in having the sequence rolling on one track alone is far better.

Either one have their value and at one time or another, I have used both.

1] Track Obscuring: Vegas lays out tracks in the form of LAYERS, from the TOP most layer - Track 1 - downwards. So Video Track 1 will obscure/hide any Event directly under it on Video Track 2 and Video Track 2 will obscure/hide any Event directly under it on Video Track 3, and Video Track 3 will hide/obscure . .. . and so on and so on.

So:

i) Place interview/chat video on Track 2

ii) Place/Start/Place actual "product" cutaway on Track 1 so that it starts/appears at the point where it is being discussed by the "commentary" from the video of Track 2

DONE!

Seriously, that's about it. Yes you can tweak this and place markers at the point you WANT to cut away TO the product, you can use the Trimmer to extract from the product material the exact time you want - but really, you are done.

2] The "L" "J" cut: In essence what we do here is cut out a visual section of a video and plop into the space created the cutaway/product or B roll material. It could be video or it could be a still! - But it takes the place of the slice you have removed.

So:

i) Place Interview/Chat on Track 1 - the Audio WILL automatically appear on the audio track 2

ii) Highlight the Video Event hit the Ignore Event Group icon on the Toolbar OR use CTRL+Shift+U to separate the link between the Video and the Audio

iii) Carefully place the Cursor at the point where you wish to "cutaway" TO the product and hit the "S"plit key (S= split)

iv) Carefully place the Cursor at the point where you wish to "cutaway" FROM the product back to the interview and hit the "S"plit key (S= split)

What you SHOULD have now is a small section of the interview that is split from the rest. Click on this small section and hit the Delete Key. It should vanish!

v) RE-ENGAGE Grouping! - oh yes . . .

vi) Place the B-roll or product cutaway in the gap and peel back from the front/back or just the front OR back of the product Event what you need to fit within the Gap.

DONE!

And again that's about it. I find this method intuitive and keeps the narrative alive. Over the past 3 years I have being using and mastering the use of the trimmer to do exactly this "in-fill" of gaps. I like having the B-roll Event within a separate tool to be able to "edit-down" what I want. And using this I am now pretty fast at doing it.

Other things to experiment with are Regions, and with Regions you could name a section of a the Product Event to be used time and time again - you would just recall it!

In deciding which method to use, and in all honesty, I use a bit of both. Often I will quickly place B-roll above the main video JUST to get a sense of how it will work or not. Once I'm clearer, and more confident then it is EITHER carry on OR go through the Trimmer process. Also through Trimmer there is an option to sync the Timeline cursor WITH the Trimmer cursor so I can get a filled gap too.

So to recap: Obscure OR Gap Fill

Why "L" and "J" ? Well, if you do the Gap fill method you will notice that the combination of tracks of the split Video and with the continuation of the Audio UNDER the B-Roll starts off in the "shape" of the letter "L" and when the Video "rejoins" its audio part it takes the shape of the letter "J" !!!

HTH,

Grazie