5 steps to understanding Sync Link in Vegas Pro 11
by Gary Rebholz
The new Sync Link feature in Vegas Pro 11 gives you a flexible method for creating a relationship between events on your timeline. It enables you to "tie" events together much like the grouping feature but, unlike grouping, Sync Link also gives you the ability to easily adjust these events independently of the others. In this article, we'll take a look at 5 steps to using this new feature effectively.
Step 1: Reviewing the grouping feature
Vegas Pro has always included a grouping feature that enables users to group related events together on the timeline. Grouping can make the editing process more efficient and error free. For example, grouping a video clip's audio event to the event that holds its video component ensures that when you move one, the other moves with it so that you never inadvertently place the audio out of synchronization with the video.
To review the grouping feature, open a project and add six text events to three different tracks so there is at least one event on each track. You can see in Figure 1 that I've given each of my events a unique number and background color so you can easily distinguish between them. For the rest of this discussion, I'll proceed as if you've created this same project and are using it to follow along.
This project contains several events that we can use to explore grouping and Sync Link.
Hold the Ctrl key and click events 1, 2, 3, and 5 to select each of them. Right-click any of the selected events and choose Group | Create New from the menu. You've now grouped these four events together. Click away from any event in the timeline to deselect all of the selected events. Now drag event 3 to a new location. As you do, events 1, 2, and 5 move along with it since they're now grouped. Since you didn't add events 4 and 6 to the group, they maintain their original positions.
Now drag event 1 to a new location. Again, all of the other events in the group move with it. You can see how this protects you from accidentally knocking these events out of sync with one another. Many times, grouping is a very important step in the editing process.
Now, trim the left edge of event 3 toward the direction of the left edge of event 1. You can trim events independently of any other event in the group until the trimmed edge matches the same vertical location on the timeline as another event. As you drag to where the edge of event 3 lines up with the edge of event 1, you see that you also start trimming event 1 since the two events are grouped.
As you can see, by design, grouping is very restrictive and many times that's exactly what you want. However, there are other times when it would be nice to create a relationship between two or more events that isn't quite as strict as grouping. For example, reset your project so that it's arranged as it was back in Figure 1, but leave the events grouped. Now, say you have a video event on your timeline (represented by event 3 in Figure 1) and throughout the course of that event you have several audio events on other tracks that contain sound effects which enhance the video's natural sound track. Maybe you drop in a door slam sound effect or the sound of screeching tires and other traffic noises to lend realism to a scene.
While you want these sound effect events to be related to the video they go with, you might also need to tweak their position on the timeline in order to make them sync up more effectively with the video. Say you want to move event 2 slightly so that it properly syncs up with the video in event 3, but you don't want to move the other events. Since you've grouped the sound effect events to the video event, you'll need to either remove event 2 from the group or engage the Ignore Event Grouping button to move event 2 independently. Let's go over both methods.
First, right-click event 2 and choose Group | Remove From from the menu. Now, move event 2 to a new location. Since you've removed it from the group, you can now move it independently. However, the fact that it's no longer grouped means that you run the risk of knocking it out of sync if you move it, or the video, later. To prevent this, you'll have to group it again. All of this grouping and ungrouping gets a bit cumbersome. Click the Undo button as many times a necessary to return to the state where event 2 is once again grouped with the other events in their original positions.
The ignore event grouping option gives you a simpler way to achieve your goal. Click the Ignore Event Grouping button. Now, drag event 2 to a new location. Since you're ignoring event grouping, the event moves independently of the others even though they are all still grouped. This is a handy technique, but it can still result in numerous mouse clicks if you need to use it a lot. You also run the risk of absent-mindedly leaving the Ignore Event Grouping function engaged, which could result in inadvertently ruining your synchronization.
Move event 2 back to its original position and then click the Ignore Event Grouping button again to turn the function off. Now moving any event in the group brings the rest along for the ride.
So, we've seen that grouping can be very restrictive. That's not a bad thing, it's just not the right thing in every case. Sometimes you need a bit more flexibility. That's where the new Sync Link feature in Vegas Pro 11 comes into the scene. Right-click any of the grouped events and choose Group | Clear from the menu. The events are now completely independent of one another again.
Step 2: Creating a Sync Link
Sync Link is similar to grouping in that you can create a relationship between two or more events. However, with Sync Link you define one event as what I call a control event. Let's create a Sync Link and explore how it works.
Your project should be back in something close to its original form. Select the same events as you did earlier — events 1, 2, 3, and 5. To create the Sync Link, you must first decide which event you want to use as your control event. Since in our example, event 3 represents the main video track and the other events represent sound effects, we'll make event 3 the control event.
With your events selected, right-click event 3 and choose Create Sync Link with Selected Events from the menu. In Figure 2, you'll notice a couple of graphical changes to the events that serve as your indication that these events belong to a Sync Link.
A Sync Link has been created to make event 3 the control event for events 1,2, and 5.
First, the events in the Sync Link have a purple outline around them. Contrast that to the blue outline that appears when you select an event that is grouped to another.
More significantly, notice that while the control event (event 3 in our example) maintains its full height, the other events in the Sync Link no longer occupy the full vertical space of a normal event. For example, compare the height of events 1 and 2 to event 4 on the same track. Event 4 is not part of the Sync Link and remains normal height, while 1 and 2 are shorter. Now compare events 5 and 6. 5 is shorter than 6. But when you compare 5 to 1 and 2, you notice that while they are the same height, the extra space in their respective tracks lies in a different location. This indicates the direction in which the control event lies. You can imagine it almost as if the control event is a magnet that draws the linked events toward itself and thus leaves the extra space on the opposite side of the linked events.
Step 3: Moving the events in a Sync Link
When you move the control event on the timeline, every other event that you've linked to it also moves so the spatial relationship between each of the events is preserved. That's exactly the way we saw grouping work earlier. Try it; move event 3 to a new location. Events 1, 2, and 5 come with event 3 to maintain their synchronization.
However, with the exception of the control event, you can move any of the events that are part of the Sync Link independently of all the other events in the Sync Link. Drag event 1 to a new location. All of the other events in the Sync Link are unaffected by this move. Drag events 2 and 5 and see that you can move those independently as well.
If you decide you do want to move the control event without moving the Sync Link events, you can still engage the Ignore Event Grouping button which also ignores each Sync Link. Then disengage the button again to reestablish the Sync Link behavior.
The Sync Link relationship also enables you to trim the events of the Sync Link independently of the others. Earlier we saw that when we trim the edge of an event in a group, we can affect the edge of other events in the group too. This isn't the case in a Sync Link. To see this, trim the left edge of event 3 as you did earlier. Notice that as you move past the left edge of event 1, nothing happens to event 1. The trim operation on event 3 is completely independent of that on event 1.
Step 4: Selecting all events in a Sync Link
Sync Link gives you an easy way to quickly select each of the linked events. This makes it a handy tool for selecting a bunch of related events quickly. For instance, say for some reason during the editing process you'll need to repeatedly lock and unlock the events in this Sync Link. Right-click any of the events and select Sync Link | Select All from the menu. Now that you have each event in the Sync Link selected, right-click any of the selected events and choose Switches | Lock from the menu. This locks all of these events. Deselect the Lock switch to unlock the events again.
Step 5: Remove the Sync Link
If you decide you no longer need this Sync Link established between these events, right-click any one of them and choose Sync Link | Unlink from the menu.
And those are 5 simple steps to understanding and using the new Sync Link feature in Vegas Pro 11. The extra flexibility that you get with Sync Link makes it useful in situations where grouping isn't quite the right tool. Sync Link is not better than grouping — it's just different than grouping. It's the right tool in some situations, but you'll still want to use grouping in others. Sync Link gives you one more tool to use for getting your job done more efficiently.
For more training resources including article archives, training videos, books, webinar archives, and more, visit the training section of our website at www.sonycreativesoftware.com/training.
Gary Rebholz, is the training manager for Sony Creative Software. Gary produces the popular Seminar Series training packages for Vegas Pro, ACID Pro, and Sound Forge software. He is also co-author of the book Digital Video and Audio Production. Gary has conducted countless hands-on classes in the Sony Creative Software training center, as well as at tradeshows such as the National Association of Broadcasters show.
