VT | Setting up a project and simplifying your editing

Concept: Basic VT-Edit – Set up a project and simplify your editing
Module: VT-Edit
Assets: None
Time: 5 minutes

Basic video editing within VT[3] is quite simple, thanks to the real-time nature of the included nonlinear editor, VT-Edit. VT-Edit allows you to quickly set up the order and duration of clips in a project. In this short tutorial, we’ll set up a project and learn about different ways to view clips.

Launch VT[3] and bump the top of the screen with your mouse pointer and right-click. This will bring up the main menu. Select VT-Edit in the Menu's Edit Suite column.

So you can monitor your progress, open a Program Out monitor as well by opening the main menu again and selecting VT-Vision. VT-Vision affords a full 50 field-per-second PAL monitor right on your desktop. Of course, anything done in VT-Edit is simultaneously sent to your hardware output in composite, Y/C or component.

In VT-Edit, you're presented with a split-screen window. On each window, you have three tabs that let you choose or change the view of your project: Storyboard View, TimeLine View, or File Bin View. The fastest way to begin projects is to set the top window in File Bin view, and in the bottom view, click on the Storyboard tab. In File Bin, navigate to your video drive and you will see the files and folders as thumbnails. Holding the mouse over any file will play the file there in the bin if you wish to clarify which files to select. If you double-click on any clip, it will play back both in VT-Vision and on your physical monitor, letting you quickly decide which clip you need after viewing it in full resolution. You can selectively click on video files and drag them into Storyboard if you hold down the CTRL key while you are viewing the File Bin. Your clips will be ready to play, in the order you have selected. This is half the battle of quickly setting up video projects – and VT-Edit makes it super easy. If you need a larger view of the storyboard thumbnails, or “croutons,” you can left-drag the magnifying glass in the lower-right corner to scale all the clips in the window. You dynamically see the In, Out, and time-code in the crouton as you adjust it.

VT[3] also simplifies another mundane edit task: setting in and out points on each clip. In Storyboard View, hold down the ALT key while placing the mouse over the left half of a clip, and you can now left-click and drag to adjust the in point. The same procedure, over the right half of the crouton allows you to quickly adjust the out point. Holding CTRL+ALT lets you shift just the audio, and once you have duration of the clips set, all operations are visible in both VT-Vision and your program monitor. In this manner, setting the order and duration of clips in a project can be accomplished with amazing speed.

Tutorial Ideas? Email vt2tutorials@newtek.com