Updated 6/29/2011 with notes about the “Remove from Project and Delete Files” command

As I prepare and edit a video in Sony Vegas Pro, I tend to get a bit disorganized, bringing in source pictures, video and animations from various places on my hard disk.  I’m especially bad about saving pictures temporarily on my desktop.

Sometimes, I do a bazillion takes of voiceover audio, and end up with countless unused wave files in the project.

So, in order to eliminate those unused takes, and to consolidate the files into a single location, ready to be backed up, here’s what I do.

First, Make a Copy of The Project

Before continuing, save a uniquely named copy of the project so that you can use it later in the final step for deleting all the mess.  Choose Save As from the File menu, or just make a copy from Windows Explorer.

Removing Unused Media From Project

To remove audio and video clips which are referenced by the project but no longer used (e.g. discarded audio or video takes):

1. Open the Project Media tab in the Sony Vegas project window.
2. Click on the Lightning Bolt in the Tool Bar
3. All unused media will be removed from the Project Media folder (but will not be removed from the hard disk) 

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Well, part 2 of the tone video took waaaay longer than I anticipated!  I spent a ridiculous amount of time editing, and animating illustrations of the tone circuit.

Here I present a tutorial on how to read cap values, an explanation of how the capacitance and resistance work together as an RC filter in the tone circuit, and some audio examples to help in selecting a useful cap value for a tone circuit.

I play through a series of Orange Drop polypropylene caps with values (pictured right-to-left) .047uF, .022uF, .01uF, 6800pF, 4700pF, 3300pF and 1000pF.

I purchased these Orange Drops at Mouser – significantly cheaper than at guitar specialty stores.

As with part 1 of this video, everything is played on my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Vintage Vibe Guitars P-90 pickups, through my Vox VT30 on the Boutique Clean model, mic’d with a Rode NT1 large diaphragm microphone.

After much deliberation, experimentation, determination, and the inevitable procrastination and distraction… I’ve finally completed this comparison of tone capacitor material types and capacitance values.  In part 1, I’ll evaluate a bunch of different dialectric material types to see how they change the character of the sound.  In part 2, I’ll cover how different capacitance values affect the range and usefulness of the tone pot.

First, I built this Tone Thing   It’s a piece of cardboard on which I mounted 7 different capacitor material types, and 7 Orange Drops of different capacitance values, and one Bourns 500k audio taper pot.  This is connected up with alligator clips to my Epiphone Riviera P93, in parallel with the signal at the output jack (the same place as the master tone in a regular guitar circuit).

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