Use basic maths to do this. How long is the clip? Take the time, halve it, put a marker in and rubber band to that. Job done.

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Hello,

I recently purchase Vegas 7 and after playing around with the velocity envelope for a few days, found it to be excellent. I now have full control over speed within each frame so I can speed up and slow down footage as needed. I have found that every time I adjust the speed, the frame length remains the same, but the start and end points of the footage within that frame change.

For example, for a clip of a guy jumping on a bike: I originally adjusted the frame so that the clip ended with the guy stopped in mid-air. Then I slowed down the clip with the velocity envelope. The frame size did not change on the timeline, but when I looked at the footage in that frame, it now ended with the guy preparing to jump, so I had to stretch the frame to get him to the mid-air point again. Conversely, if I sped up the clip, it would end with him completing his jump, so I'd need to shrink the frame to get him back to the mid-air point. In other words, when you change the velocity, Vegas adjusts the footage to fit the original length of the frame - you'll need to manually shrink or stretch that frame each time you change its velocity properties to get the footage to the start and end point you want.

Now, for my question. I love how my video looks here:

http://www.dirtsurfer.ca/en/canadiandream.asp

but then I rendered it to mpeg-2 and authored it to a DVD and watched it on my TV. On the TV, all the slow-motion parts have major trail effects (like the video is shaky and you see 3 or 4 ghosts of the subject). Is this avoidable? This is most noticeable at the 3:03 to 3:19 portion of the video. It is a bit hard on the eyes on a TV. Any suggestions?

More info: the DVD was authored with Sony Architect 4, the software bundled with Vegas 7.

Thanks, but that seems like too much troube for such a simple thing. In both Ulead Media Studio and Adobe Premiere you just right click and select speed, and tell how many percent you want the speed, and that's what I am looking for. I wanted to try out Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

The velocity envelope thing sounds cool, but I can't find anywhere to use that, what so ever.

Dsjez - vegas fills in the gaps when you do slo mo to make the motion look smooth - if you dont like it I think you can turn this off by rigght clicking on the track - properties - disable resample.

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JVC DV5001e (big cam), Sony PC6E (tiny cam), Vinten pro5, PAG light, SM58, Sony ECM50, Sony C-76, 0.5x convertors for sony, Rode video mic, Vegas 7.

Thanks Mark - I'll try that.

Jelleoelle - its actually as simple as you are looking for:

(1) right-click on the frame you want to change.

(2) select "Insert/Remove Envelope". Then, select "Velocity" from its options.

(3) This puts a green line horizontally through the center of your frame. Left click on the green line and hold down the left mouse button while you drag the line up or down. It will tell you what percentage speed you are at while you do this.

(4) let go of the mouse-button and you're done.

Mark, strange thing is that the video looks exactly how I want it in vegas' preview window. However when it is rendered the ghosts appear. No matter what option I change it looks good in the preview window, so I guess I don't know what it will look like without rendering it with this option changed?

Problem solved. I read it on another forum. I highlighted the clip that contained a slow-motion velocity envelope, then clicked on "selectively pre-render" in the "Tools" drop-down menu. Once this was done I rendered the whole project again and it was perfect! No ghosts, no trails, just slow moving footage. For anyone interested the footage was slowed down to 31% and I used the following other settings although I don't think they were as important as the pre-render. Without the pre-render it looked like crap no matter what other settings I had.

-Best

-Lower Field first (Interlaced, bottom field first)
-Gaussian
-Interpolate fields
-Variable Bit Rate

Made sure each clip with a velocity envelope had "Smart resample" switched on.

DID NOT turn on the "reduce interlace flicker" switch.

DID selectively pre-render every clip that contained a velocity envelope.

I can't stress that last point enough! I worked on this for about 4 hours switching things on and off, trying different combinations of variables suggested on about a dozen forum threads regarding Vegas Slow-motion and did not achieve any positive results/improvements until I pre-rendered.

The wmv on our website is not updated, so you can see the trail in the slow-mo scenes, but trust me the DVD came out perfectly.

I am having some issues with slow motion. I read through this and I understand how to stretch a whole clip slowing down both audio and video. I also understand how to use the velocity envelope to slow down the clip.

What I am trying to figure out though is how to slow down the audio when using the velocity envelopes. I tried grouping, didnt do anything, the audio alway stays the same. Only way I can get the audio to slow or speed up with the video is by messing with the whole clip. All I want to do is slow down a section of the clip along with the audio.

I am on vegas 6 btw.

just a possiblity, try using the velocity for the video and with the audio add a plugin called "time strech". play around with those two and see what you come up with