Vegas - Where Do I Start?

You’ve purchased and installed Vegas 6. Upon opening the program, the question becomes, “Where do I start?” I recommend to start by familiarizing yourself with the various areas of the screen.

As with most windows programs, there is a menu across the top of the screen. Similarly, there is a toolbar immediately below the menu. Using the toolbar and menus, the various aspects of Vegas can be found and modified. For example, if you want to turn off ripple editing, you can either click the ripple button on the
toolbar, choose Auto Ripple from the Options menu, or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-L as shown on the menu.

Below the menu is the main timeline area and the track headers. The timeline area is where the video and audio clips are placed for editing. Just under the timeline are the Play, Pause, Stop, and other timeline controls. The track headers allow you to specify options that affect the entire track. For example, Track Motion is found on the track header since it affects an entire track while Pan/Crop is found at the clip level since it only affects that one event. By using the solo and mute buttons you can easily view individual tracks or combinations of tracks.

One track setting to watch is the Opacity on video tracks. Be careful this setting does not get accidentally lowered below 100% unless it is needed for your project. Below the track headers is the tabbed tool area. There are several windows available arranged in a tabbed format. Shown is the explorer window but other tabs show transitions, effects, and generated media. The tabs can be turned on or off from the View menu and may be “undocked” from the tab area so they float freely on the screen.

Beside the tab area is the master audio bus area. Shown is the master volume for the entire project. If additional busses are added to the project, they will appear in this area as well.

The final section is the preview area. This screen will show the video from the timeline, trimmer, or previewed from the explorer or media pool windows. Buttons above the preview window allow external preview via firewire, setting the preview quality, setting global effects, generating snapshots of the video, showing safe area lines, and allowing split screen color correction.

Note from the Editor: Now that you understand the basic layout of the program, check out our more in-depth articles on the subject:

1. Vegas for Final Cut Users - While designed to explain Vegas to FCP users, it covers a lot of the basics of the program for anyone.
   
   
2. Customizing Vegas - Basic ways to make Vegas look more the way you would like it to look, including reversing the docking of the program.
   
   
3. Color Correcting in Vegas - Learn the basics of correcting footage that has color and contrast issues using Vegas.

The programmer of Excalibur for Sony Vegas and the author of Vegas Tips, Tricks, & Scripts newsletter, Edward Troxel is an expert editor. You can read his newsletter and look at what new things he's got in the works at http://www.jetdv.com.

 

(This article was reprinted with permission from Edward Troxel from his newsletter,
Vegas+DVD Tips, Tricks, & Scripts, found at jetdv.com.)

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