Hi
With respect to zooming with the scroll wheel. If you use the wheel to zoom to a preselected cursor line position, you may find that (depending on the length of the project,) the increasing expansion of the timeline will cause the red cursor line to move relative to the screen. i.e. If you have a big project and you are zoomed out with the cursor line in the centre and you then zoom in with the scroll wheel, the cursor line will move away from the centre and will require you to re-position the timelime using the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen. If it actually moves off the screen it may not come back without a bit of fiddling. The best way is to pick out the part of the timeline using the preview screen that you want to examine more closely and then use the Zoom scroll bar at the bottom right. This keeps the cursor line central. That is to say VP zooms in on the cursor line without moving the timeline.
With a short project you may find the scroll wheel adequate.
Nat