Thread: Split function missing in the toolbar

Is there anybody using Vegas, that miss a Split button on the toolbar.
I have used FCP before, and I liked to have the razor-tool on the bar without going to the menu or use a key. (Many will say that using a key is the best thing.)
I will have to get used to it ...

Many of the kb functions are represented by icons. I'm not with Vegas at the moment but I'd be jolly surprised if you can't add Split to the Toolbar, if that's what you want.

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I go to Options, then to customize toolbar, then to available toolbar buttons - but no Split ...

Just to confirm, you're not going crazy.
The only two choices are 'S' key and edit -> split.
No idea why they didn't include a button option.

Why anyone would want to place the cursor on the timeline at a place they want to split and then move the cursor up to the button bar to click a button is way beyond me. Sony were right to leave out that option!

My assumption, not knowing FCP, was that Amato wants to be able to turn the cursor into a razor, such that when she clicks on an event, the event is split at that location.
If that's the case, Vegas has the answer, but it's not available as a button.

Simply hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift and click where you want the split.

(And I never would have known we can do that if this thread hadn't prompted me to look it up - thanks all)

> Why anyone would want to place the cursor on the timeline at a place they want to split and
> then move the cursor up to the button bar to click a button is way beyond me

If you don't use these complex programs on a regular basis, you tend not to learn the shortcut keys very well. If you can't remember exactly what a key does, it makes you nervous to try it - sometimes a key seems not to have done anything, but then you check the 'undo' list and find out it actually toggled something important that needs undoing.

Nicer, but admittedly slower, to have a button with an icon, a mouseover description, and a reminder of the shortcut key.

Thanks for posting the key-combo. Good find.

Yes, Tim, thanks for the key-combo which I hadn't come across before but wouldn't it be easier to just use S on the keybpard? It's just as accurate and involves only one finger!

Richard

It's just two different ways of working.
The 'S' key requires the timeline cursor is placed where the split will be, whilst
the key combo works with a mouse cursor click (so called 'razor tool' behaviour).

The timeline cursor can be scrubbed into position for accuracy, whereas the razor tool
behaviour might be more useful for a few rough chops to break up a long event (clip).

In Pinnacle you can cut a clip and or paste clips together. Can you Paste two clips together in Vegas ? I know you can Group clips but if you group two clips would it add an FX to both clips as though it was one clip etc.

> Can you Paste two clips together in Vegas?

No, I don't think so. Just 'ripple editing' and 'grouping'.

> if you group two clips would it add an FX to both clips as though it was one clip

No. In fact the way the effects work seems truly awful to me; there doesn't appear to be a nice way to link effects across split events. I haven't tried to work with them properly yet, so maybe I'm wrong, but it appears to me that you'd better add things like colour correction and levels BEFORE you start splitting events. And you need to get it correct first time, because if you need adjust it later you'd need to edit all the split events separately!

EDIT: Event attributes (effects) apparently won't paste from one event to another if they are grouped. You have to ungroup the events before pasting. Very strange behaviour - completely subverts the entire point of grouping IMO.

EDIT: I've just discovered that you can apply effects at track level, but that's pretty useless really, because transitioning events in different tracks is harder, and you'd end up with too many tracks anyway.

Regarding event splicing, I don't understand why Vegas doesn't allow you to join events like Pinnacle. It seems a no-brainer to me that if you're happy with a sequence but it contains 100s of events, transitions, envelopes, effects, etc, that you should be able to make one large event from it for the main track, and keep a muted copy of the original split sequence in an unused track. When I trialled Pinnacle, I used that feature *all* the time.