Sony Vegas Movie Studio Getting Started in Fan Videos

Converting music from iTunes to a WAV file for editing.

If you want to use some music you got from iTunes in your fan video, you need to convert it to an uncompressed format before using it in Vegas. Vegas (and all other video editors) DO NOT LIKE TO EDIT COMPRESSED MUSIC FILES. Do not try to import an MP3 (or m4a) file directly into Vegas. It might recognize it, but you're risking quality problems in your finished video. This tutorial shows you how to convert iTunes music to a format better for vidding.
In Lesson One you also learned how to rip a WAV file directly from your CD into Vegas, so that's another way to acquire your music for fanvid projects.

Importing music and placing it in the timeline.

You have learned how to do this in the last tutorial. Select your music, and place it on an audio track in Vegas. If you've forgotten how to do this, review the info from Lesson One.

Setting up your video project in Vegas

If the clips you're using are widescreen (odds are they are, but review this tutorial and this short YouTube tutorial to confirm) then you should set up your Vegas project to be widescreen as well. If your clips are boxier (fullscreen) then your project should also be fullscreen.
Go to Project >> Properties. A Properties window will pop up, and under the "Video" tab will be a drop-down menu, where you can select from several different "templates."

You will choose from four different options: PAL Widescreen, PAL Fullscreen, NTSC Widescreen, and NTSC Fullscreen. (Like we learned in Lesson One, DVDs from the UK, Europe and Australia will be PAL, while North America and Japan will be NTSC.) You should know whether your clips are fullscreen (4:3) or widescreen (16:9) and select the proper template.

This is particularly important if you are uploading your finished video to YouTube, as YouTube now is all in Widescreen. So if your source DVD is widescreen, why not make your finished video that way too?

NOTE FOR THOSE EDITING WITH DV AVI: If you couldn't get the clips with MJPEG compression to be recognized in Vegas, you had to follow this special tutorial for making AVI files with DV compression. Remember, when you start editing your DV AVI clips in Vegas, you have to right-click on each clip in the timeline and make sure its settings are correct. Failure to do this will make all the clips look distorted (oval moons, people with squashed down or too-skinny faces, etc). Please review the DV AVI setup tutorial now to make sure you know which settings to give each DV AVI clip in the timeline.

Importing your clips into Vegas and starting to edit Your project.

In the last lesson, you learned how to import all the video clips you converted into Vegas by using the "Import Media" button. (Review that tutorial on this page if you've forgotten.)
Import the 20-30 (or however many) clips that you made from your ripped DVD.
Select one of the clips in your Project Media area, right click on this clip, and select "Open in Trimmer."

As soon as you do this, your clip will show up in the Trimmer area:

What is the Trimmer? It's an area where you can dig down really deep and select just the short scenes (or even few frames) that you want to use in your video.

If your video clip is more than a few seconds long, you're going to want to Zoom In Time (get closer up) so you can trim to just that snippet you want for your video. You do this by clicking on the "+" key (circled in pink in above screenshot) until you start to see "notches" that are on the bottom of the previewed clip. (Red arrows point to "notches.") These notches mark each frame in the clip.

Close-up of "notches."

Scroll through the clip until you find the scene you want to use in your video. In order to get to just the spot you want (down to frame-by-frame accuracy), you can use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard (located just to the left of your number pad) to tap, tap, tap forward and backward through each frame, one at a time, until you get to just the spot you want your selected clip to start. When you've got to that spot, press the "I" key on your keyboard. This will mark the "in" spot of your trimmed clip. Then scroll through to find the end point of your selected clip. Then press the "O" key.
When you pressed the "I" and "O" keys (standing for "In" and "Out"), Vegas places a small yellow triangle thing on the top edge of the clip, right where you marked these spots. It'll also highlight the selected part of your clip (everything between the "In" and "Out" marks) in blue.

The green arrows show the "in" and "out" points of the "trimmed" scene.

Now that you've selected your trimmed clip, click and hold your mouse button over the selection and d-r-a-g it to your timeline.

Remember how you were strongly encouraged to make your video clips with NO SOUND? Well, you'll notice in the Trimmer that your clip has no audio track. If you did make clips with audio, you'd have to right-click on the clip (after you'd chosen in and out points) and choose "Select Video Only" from the pop-up.

Congratulations! You've placed your first trimmed clip into the timeline. You'll continue to do this with all the clips you'll be editing in your first video.

OPTIONAL: Adding timing markers in your video.

You do not have to use markers in your first project, but since it's so easy to do (and can be so convenient) here's an overview.

Markers can be used to mark the beat in music, or else to mark where certain lyrics begin. To easily mark spots in your video's timeline (so you can make your clips' placement in the timeline match up to the music's timing or lyrics), click on the "Start from beginning" button (not its real name, but that's what I call it) to move your playhead to the beginning of the video.

Your chosen music will start to play. As you hear it play, tap, tap, tap on the "M" key to the time of the music. Each time you press the M key, a marker will show up in your timeline. They look like little orange "flags" and each is given a number.

The audio waveform (audio track at bottom) can give you hints of where a strong beat in the music is going to occur.

You can move your markers around, delete them and start over, and you can re-start your music to get the markers in just the right spot. But remember that you do not have to use markers yet, if you don't want to.