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. | 
