@ronricejr-rice

Hi,

It's an entirely different program. Lot's to learn and a lot of new things to use. See this thread for a list of tutorials that you may want to watch that will save you a lot of time.

no buttons to stop where I am (goes back to where I started)

Strange as that is the default - playback (spacebar) stops the cursor at its current location. Go to Program Settings (shortcut Y), Playback tab, Arranger, Spacebar behavior - make sure to check the box for Spacebar stops at current playback position.

when I drag a file in, I only get one track of video and audio.

That is the default. While still in Program settings, Video/Audio tab, Timeline, uncheck the box for Video/Audio on one track. Look at the other defaults to make sure that they are what you want.

no buttons to step through frame by frame

Use the left and right arrow keys. You can also use the jog wheel at the bottom of the Preview Monitor and the shuttle (scrubber). If not on, open the hamburger menu at the top left, and check Visible Jog wheel/shuttle. See below under Fade in/out for the Object Editor where you can move objects by the frame, trim them by the frame, and move the object contents within a trimmed clip, and more.

Note the buttons on the toolbar. Those with 3 dots below them have a right-click menu.

Watch for the track protocol which is the inverse of Vegas. The background goes on the lowest numbered track - like track 1. Titles and overlays go on higher numbered tracks, like 3 and 4, etc. No need to insert tracks to put in an overlay.

Magix MS is a multi-timeline program - called movies and they are tabbed. So you can have more than one timeline (Movie) in a Project, export/import Movies, import another project into your project - goes to separate Movie(s). You can copy paste between Movies.

There are some major advantages that you may not find easily unless you watch the tutorials and read the manual.

A couple that came up recently on the Vegas forum:

• Fade in/out - in Magix MS, drag the handle or click on the button that shows up at the beginning/end of a selected clip. Select Fade in and it will be 1 second. To be more precise, right-click, select Object Trimmer (note the shortcuts) and you can adjust the fades to however many frames that you want and you can see the first and last frames of the fade in and fade out. The other tools give you frame accurate editing as does the timeline. Vegas MS does not have this capability - only dragging handles and you have to eyeball the number of frames.
• Transitions - whole new ballgame. See my tutorials. Right-click on a clip that has a transition, Edit Trimmer (shortcut N) - make whatever frame level editing that you want. Also,click on the same button at the beginning or end of a selected clip and select a transition - cross-fade (1s default) or a template. Or, under the Templates tab, there are many categorized transitions.

John CB