ST v21.05.18. Occasional user. Work in progress project.
SETUP: Timeline has 1 x video tract + 1 x audio track where audio track has a longer duration than video clips currently laid in. 1st vid clip is some seconds in from the start of audio track, meaning from time 00:00:00 to the start of the 1st vid clip is null video, not inserted black video. Was working down the timeline fiddling start of 1st vid clip with a feature in the audio track and vice versa. Now I notice that start of audio track is some distance in from timeline 00:00:00. The vid track is just null for some time past the start of the audio track.
PROBLEM: Want to trim the leading null video up to the start of the audio track, meaning not otherwise loose the relative positioning of vid track to audio track content that I worked so hard on and the audio track starts at 00:00:00. All the usual cut then remove or ripple trim mechanisms don’t work because they all assume you are cutting a laid-in video signal, black screen or not. This video track is currently null at the start of the audio. There is no mechnism to “select” a stretch of null video for some operation such as cut or trim. A right-click in the null video area presents a Remove operation but it is not clear what will be removed - since there is no selection outline probably the entire track. So not doing that. Summary, I have leading null video I cannot cut with the playhead or otherwise select as an object to do something with like you can select a video clip. The functional lack would seem to be that leading null video needs to be a selectable and cuttable object, and likely similar for any trailing null video beyond the end of the furthest A/V clip.
POSSIBLE WORKAROUNDS?
Lay in a dummy clip at 00:00:00 longer than the duration to be trimmed. Then the usual ripple cut functions work, then delete the remains of the dummy clip WITHOUT ripple, or
Timeline to playlist then attempt to trim in the player. However, player timeline cannot be zoomed like the Timeline on can, so very awkward to use the player as a fine trim tool.
I’m not sure this answers your question, but if you right click on a blank part of the track (“null video”) and click “Remove” it will remove only that blank part by moving the following clips to the left by that amount.
You can always use CTRL Z to undo that if it is not what you wanted.
Elusien, thx for your response. Your method does remove the leading null video - I got the nerve to try it and was able to back out of it. However, the ripple left of the video track violates my stated constraint - that the relative position of video and audio clips must not change because the video is placed against features in the audio track. What is needed is to, in effect, perform a cut through both the video and audio tracks, both of which have null content at the cut point, then ripple delete the left-hand pieces, thus rippling BOTH tracks the same duration and maintaining relative position.
Ultimately I used my proposed workaround of generating a dummy video clip using Open Other->Color Bars then placed that clip (in OVERWRITE mode) at 00:00:00 to span the leading null video duration past where the audio track starts. Then the SPLIT tool will work as expected and do a multi-track cut. Then the left-hand pieced can be dropped with ripple of both tracks in sync left to 00:00:00, thus maintaining relative position.
Hudson55x thx for your response. But look again at the illustration vid you posted. At the playhead location where the cut is made, the V1 track is NULL but the A1 track is NOT NULL - it has audio content, so the SPLIT works multi-track as expected. In my case, ALL tracks have NULL content at the needed cut point. SPLIT does nothing. Set up a test and you will see what I mean.
shotcut Leader, thx for your response. Alas, ripple functions only work when something to the left is dropped, either some existing non-null content clip or a non-null clip to the left created but a cut, the problem then being you can’t cut null content. However, via experimentation, I have discovered that Elusien’s method (right-click Remove on a null-content block) can be made to work with the Ripple buttons active. The catch is that it must be done on the track having the earliest starting time AND the resulting synchronized ripple left may not actually reach 00:00:00 in one action. The ripple-left distance seems unrelated to playhead position. One just has to repeat the action until the track with left-most content bumps againist 00:00:00. If you do an Elusien action on a track having a later non-null start time then ripple results in ALL tracks rippling un-synchronized to 00:00:00, which destroys any original time relative offsets among the tracks.
Elusion, see my reply to shotcut leader. From experimentation I discovered your method can work (with ripple behaviors active) but there is a gotcha - which track you do the right-click Remove on makes a diff.
Exactly. In your new screen shot the playhead is now located in an area where both V1 and A1 are null-content. In SC 21.06.29 null-content “clips” or blocks are not objects that can be selected or split (cut), etc. for the usual delete clip operations. But see my dialog with Elusien for a method to remove that leading null-content that does work (care for the gotcha) within the constraint I set of no change to relative position a V1 to A1.
Yep, you can’t cut/trim what isn’t there.
But you can move everything to where you want it with Ripple.
Both Ripple trim drop & Ripple edit across all tracks need to be on.
And it seems to respect maintianing relative track position when moving A1 to the right. See there the issue is Ripple is generally only talked about in terms of ripple left, never ripple right.
