Sony Vegas Tips & Tricks: My Top 10 Vegas Tips, Part 1

EventDV By David McKnight

Over the next 2 months, I’d like to offer a few tips I’ve picked up for using Sony Vegas. They may not be immediately apparent if you use Vegas, but they can be useful and save you time in the edit. We’ll start with five this month and then add another five in the December issue.

Extended Mouse Wheel Functionality
If you’re a Vegas user, you most certainly already use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the timeline. This function allows for a finer granularity of editing, including milliseconds and frames. But did you know that you can add some helpful functionality by using the modifier keys Ctrl and Shift (Figure 1, below)? Ctrl + the mouse wheel will scroll the timeline up and down, while Shift + the wheel will scroll left and right.

Instant Color Correction Layout
Vegas has had the ability to save and recall multiple layouts for a while, but with the introduction of Vegas Pro 9, Sony Creative Software has designed a few useful layouts for us. One is the audio mixing layout, which you can access by using Alt + D and A. But my favorite is the Color Correction Window Layout, which is accessed via Alt + D and C. It loads up the scopes and levels window, so you can view these windows when you need to adjust color and get them out of the way (by choosing another layout) when you don’t. read more...