Solved Seemless editing in Vegas Movie Studio 15

HI all I am after some assistance, I am trying to bring together to video clips so when the play it looks like they were filmed all in one take. I have tried two methods, First being the two clips together which you get a slight jump between clips, the Second is the bring the second clip together slightly over the first which gives a ghostly look.
IS there a better way to do this to make it seamless. I am currently using S.V.M.S ( Sony Vegas Movie Studio ) 15.

Thank you for you help

I dixie,

Is my assumption correct that you are working on a new project, not the sample project that loads when you first install Movie Studio? BTW, Movie Studio 15 is not Sony. Some where between version 13 and version 14 Magix (a German company) purchased Movie Studio and Vegas Pro, and are now branded as Magix Vegas Movie Studio 15, which of course has absolutely nothing to do with your question!

I'm going to also assume there is no blank/black frames between the two events you have in your timeline and they are both on the same track. Also would I be correct assuming there is considerable difference in the end of the first event and the beginning of the second event? If so, that would be a scene cut and without some complex motion graphics to blend/morph the end of event one to the beginning frames of event two, it will not be seamless, and even then it would still be noticeable. If the end of 1 is close in apperance to the beginning of 2 morphing them together may work, but again it complicated and require a program feature outside of Movie Studio.

If the beginning of event 2 is the same scene and same take as the end of event 1, you may have cut a short section out, you then have a jump cut and they are very usually considered to be annoying, we normally try to fix this with footage from a another camera or another related scene referred to as camera B or B cut footage. Without that technique, instead of trying to hide the jump, perhaps it would look acceptable if you used a transition other than a dissolve/blend (as you get when overlapping the events). Maybe something like a gradient whip from left to right, or center out to edges, there are a bunch to choose from.

There may also be something in color correction that may help if the lighting or colors of the 1st event and considerably different than the 2nd event.

Also, if you can provide more detail about the events you are working with, other members here may have better ideas. A really big help in understanding your issue would be to post a screenshot of the last frame of the 1st event, and the first frame of the second event, so we can see the difference (if your source isn't copyrighted and would be appropriate for posting here).

HI Eagle Six,
Thank you for your help and suggestions,
explaining is more complicated than understanding so I will simplify it as best I can.

What I have is one long film recording of about 3mins or so. Instead of re recording every time the actor made a mistake I just kept on recording , the actor got things right in the end and all I had to do was cut out the bloopers and put together the footage I wanted.

The problem I have is the is a unavoidable jump its small and noticeable, unfortunately a transition would not work due to gap the actor left when correcting himself and as it is suppose to look like a continuous conversation with the audience, re recording would have solved a lot a problems unfortunately time was not on my side with this one. I was just simply asking if there was a was to avoid the jump, which I think there is no way.

The forage is appropriate however because there are children involved I won't unload.

thank you

chris

I don't know an easy way to fix this but if it really needs to be improved you may be able to minimise the impact by using slow motion effects in either Vegas or a third party program (eg Twixtor) create a few “in between” frames for you:

• Make a selection including a number of the end frames from first clip and start frames from the second clip, and render to new file
• In the new file delete first 3 frames (more if required) from the second clip.so that the last frame of the original clip is followed by the fourth frame of the second clip.
• Apply slow motion to the new clip (in this example hold CTRL and drag end of new clip to x4 its original length. Would need to be x5 if four frames deleted, etc). In this example Vegas will generate 3 “in between” frames.
• In the original Project, add a new video track above the originals. Place the Vegas generated frames above the first 3 frames of the original in the second clip. These new “in between" frames should smooth the transition from the last frame of the first clip to the fourth frame of the second clip.[Edit: Use only the video from the new frames - keep the original audio. As George suggests below, you may still have an audio glitch at the jump point to consider

The attached image might make it a little clearer. Probably not the most elegant solution but the best I can think of.
Cheers, Robbie

Hi Chris,

You have what is referred to as the typical 'jump' cut which is very annoying. There are a few things I would suggest when a re-due is not possible.

First, I would like to comment on Robbie's suggestion, which after all these years I had never thought about. Interesting technique that I think would work in some applications that I will have to try sometime. Seems that it might require some audio work as well. Maybe you can make it work for yours.

Suggestion #1 - Audio -- if the reason we want to cut a small section out is, something like a 'clearing throat', where the sound being made is not visible by their lip movement, but heard, we can just cut that part out of the audio without cutting the video. When we cut a part out of the audio, it also cuts the background ambience out as well and leaves a dead silent section (very noticeable). We then find a part of the audio anywhere in the take without voice but with background ambience noise and fit it into that audio cut section. A very short overlap dissolve on the audio track will hide the joints.

Suggestion #2 - B Roll -- B roll footage is something about the story line, often whatever the speaker is talking about that we can use for a short 1-3 seconds which covers the jump cut(s). For example if I have a repeated 'and' or 'ah', I will cut the section out of the video and audio. I will then lay a 2-3 second section of B Roll video (no audio including in this) on a track above. So you see the person being interviewed, and while he is still talking the scene goes to something else for a few seconds, then comes back to the person being interviewed. It's a common technique and avoids the jarring effect of the jump cut. How long and how often and what scene is used for the overlay is of course up to your creative approach.

Example -- You are filming a car show, you want to interview the owner of a pristine restore 55 Chevy, one of the iconic muscle cars. Before or after the interview you have shot closeups of the engine compartment, the interior seats, dash, truck, some low shots of the sides, maybe even under to show the frame and exhaust. As the interview starts, the owner throws out a lot of 'and's', 'ah's', some coughs, and repeating stumbling, all of which you would like to cut out. These are perfect opportunities to avoid the jump cut and at the same time add interest to the interview, so you are not constantly looking at the interviewers face, but switch the scene to the object or the subject for which the interviewer is talking about. The B Roll can be used for just 1-3 seconds or even 10 seconds or longer, depends on the flow of the interview and the subject.

Suggestion #3 - B Roll Footage -- I always, even if time is short get some B Roll, either during the event, before or after, or make B Roll out of what I have! If we don't have B Roll, which is probably your case for this project, there still may be resource in your clips to use. Sometime we can use a part of a scene that doesn't include the interviewer and we could use a 2-4 second section of that (even if that part is repeated from before or after this interview section), or we may want to grab a screenshot still from a different clip to use for 2-3 seconds to hide the jump cut.

Suggestion #4 - Short Dissolve -- Using a dissolve as you have tried by overlapping the beginning of clip 2 over the end of clip 1, usually doesn't look as good, but have you tried playing with the frame count? In some scenes where the person being interviewed is very close to the same position in the preview, a very short dissolve of just a few frames is enough to ease the eyes at the junction of the jump. For this we usually use the mouse wheel to drill down deeper in the track so we can see the frames when pulling the 2nd event to overlap the previous event. If you overlap by a second, the dissolve is very noticeable, but if you overlap by just a few frames, not so much and there may be a happy medium there you can live with. Remember we cannot see the full effect unless we can preview at normal speed. If our project speed is 29.970 fps and out preview is lagging at lets say 20 fps, then that section is going to be more apparent. If that is the case it is best to ore-render that section so we can preview at the full 29.970 fps to judge how it will look in the final render.

The theme is be creative and try different techniques. We can do wonders with switching out the audio in small sections and for larger sections finding or creating a B Roll alternative. Then sometimes it's not bad to have a few flaws, none of us are perfect, but in the end you are the director and producer and your best judgment will usually turnout something that you are proud of. And, sometimes we just cannot turn crap into diamonds and are stuck with doing the best we can with what we have. Good Luck with your project.