Using the Video Thumbnails pane

At the top of the Track view in Sonar is the Video Thumbnails pane, which displays individual frames of your video at certain time intervals of your project. The time interval between displayed frames is determined by the zoom level you choose. If you zoom in far enough, you can view each individual frame of your video.

Note 1: If you’re playing back a highly compressed movie (not many keyframes in the file), it can take about a minute to redraw video thumbnails when you’re playing the movie or resizing a window.

Note 2: Some Windows Media videos do not report their frame rate to Sonar. Sonar can play these files, but cannot create thumbnails from them, so no thumbnails appear in the Thumbnail pane.

Figure 88. The Video Thumbnails pane.

A. Show/hide frame numbers button B. Show/hide thumbnails button C. Video track strip D. Splitter bar E. Frame number

Here are the various commands and functions of the Video Thumbnails pane:

You can show or hide the pane.

You can show or hide the video thumbnails.

You can display absolute frame numbers.

You can resize the thumbnails while preserving the aspect ratio by dragging the splitter bar.

The video track strip at the top of the Track pane has display fields for Video File Name, Start Time, Trim-In Time, Trim-Out Time, Duration, and Current Frame, as well as a toggle buttons to show/hide the thumbnails (without hiding the Video Thumbnails pane), and to show/hide frame numbers on individual frames. You can edit the Start Time, Trim-in Time, and Trim-Out Time fields.

Sonar saves the size and state of the Video Thumbnails pane on a per/project basis.

The Video Thumbnails pane zooms horizontally when you use the standard Track view commands for horizontal zooming. You control the height of the Video Thumbnails pane by dragging the splitter bar up or down that’s at the bottom of the Video Thumbnails pane.

For step-by-step instructions, see the following procedures:

To hide or show the Video Thumbnails pane

Do one of the following:

Drag the splitter bar that separates the Video Thumbnails pane from the Clips pane.

Click the Track view View menu and choose Video Thumbnail Show/Hide.

Press the V key.

To turn Video thumbnails On or Off

Do one of the following:

Right-click the Video Thumbnails pane or the Video Thumbnails track strip and choose Show/Hide Thumbnails on the pop-up menu.

Click the Show/Hide Thumbnails button in the Video Thumbnail track strip.

To hide or show frame numbers on frames

In the video track strip, click the Show/Hide Frame Numbers button .

To open the Video Properties dialog

Double-click the video track strip.

To open the Video view

Double-click the Video Thumbnails pane.

To move the Now time to a thumbnail

Click the thumbnail.

To change the Start time

Do one of the following:

Click the video clip header and drag the clip left or right to the desired position.

In the video track strip, click the Start field, type a new number in Measure/Beat/Tick format, and press ENTER. The start time is the time in your Sonar project at which your video starts to play.

To change the Trim-In time

Do one of the following:

Drag the left edge of the video clip.

In the video track strip, click the Trim-In field, type a new number in SMPTE format, and press ENTER (you can press the SPACEBAR instead of typing colons, if you want, and you can type single zeros instead of double zeros). The Trim-In time is the time in your video file at which you want to start video playback.

To change the Trim-Out time

Do one of the following:

Drag the right edge of the video clip.

In the video track strip, click the Trim-Out field, type a new number in SMPTE format, and press ENTER (you can press the SPACEBAR instead of typing colons, if you want, and you can type single zeros instead of double zeros). The Trim-Out time is the time in your video file at which you want to stop video playback.

To use the Video Thumbnails context menu

1.	Right-click the Video Thumbnails pane or the Video Thumbnails track strip.

2.	Choose any of these options from the pop-up menu that appears:

Show/Hide Thumbnails

Display Absolute Frames

Open Video View

Insert Video

Delete Video

Export Video

Video Properties