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Okay, one more time this is a clip and this is a transition
Why can’t I insert default transitions in between two clips? Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I put the cursor where two clips touch, right click and choose “add transition,” and its a crap shoot. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Should I be selecting something; I tried separating them; I just don’t understand. Please advise.
jmf
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26 Replies
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It has to do with wether or not the media on both sides of a centered transition exists. If you don’t have unused media after the cut of the outgoing clip and before the in point of the incoming clip, you cannot add a transition. If you double click a transition, it will open in the transition editor replacing the viewer. The light blue on either side of the tranistion in the clips represent unused media, if there’s not enough, you can’t add a transition.
Jerry
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Having media on both sides of a transition doesn’t seem to be relevant to my situation. For me, there are two clips, with the end of one touching the beginning of the other. There are no in and out points, I am coping media from one sequence and pasting (inserting) into another.
jmf
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[jmf] “Having media on both sides of a transition doesn’t seem to be relevant to my situation. For me, there are two clips, with the end of one touching the beginning of the other. There are no in and out points, I am coping media from one sequence and pasting (inserting) into another.”
Ok, one more time, this IS relevant to your situation.
You have one complete clip cut right up against another complete clip. Therefore, there is NO extra media to perform a transition. You need to trim the out point of the outgoing clip and the in point of the incoming clip to allow for a transition.
In other words….. Let’s say you have captured a three second clip and another three second clip. You place both of those on the timeline one after another. You try to apply a 1 second dissolve at the edit point but FCP won’t put one there. Why? Because you will need additional video to perform the transition. Your outgoing clip ends at 3 seconds, but FCP will require another 15 to 30 frames of media AFTER the edit point to perform this one second dissolve depending on where you position the transition. In addition, FCP will require 15 to 30 frames of additional video BEFORE the edit point of the incoming clip to perform the transition.
This is all explained very nicely in the tutorial that comes with FCP.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Each of my butted clips are more than 180 seconds long. I’m missing something simple and very basic. Does it matter that the clips are in the middle of many other clips? I thought the effect does not need to move the object clips as it only needs to overlap them to produce the effect.
jmf
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[jmf] “Each of my butted clips are more than 180 seconds long”
The length of the clip has no bearing whatsover. The amount of pad at the beginning and end of each clip in the timeline is all that matters. If you’ve butted all raw media clips, then you cannot perform transitions.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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You need to carefully and thoughtfully go through a tutorial on this program.
Or you need to sit down with someone that knows the program and can explain the concepts to you.
It’s like two pieces of rope 1 foot long. If you lay them end to end, you have 2 feet of rope laid out. If you want to tie a knot, you use up some of the rope doing that, and it won’t be 2 feet long anymore.
A rope piece is a clip. The knot is your transition. Even if you don’t measure the very beginning part of the first rope, and don’t measure the end part of the second rope, if the two cut ends in the middle are laid out continuous with each other, there’s no room for a knot.
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I’m talking about UNUSED media… i.e. media PAST the current last frame of the outgoing shot and unused in the sequence, but captured, and media unused but existing before the in point of the incoming media. You have to have extra frames to create a transition on both sides for a centered transition.
Jerry
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It really doesn’t get more basic than this.
Not trying to belittle anyone, but this does not belong in this forum. -
Oooo. I like the rope analogy.
Are you coming from iMovie? Because what iMovie does is moves the two clips closer so they overlap, thus giving room for the transition. So a two second clip and a two second butted against each other is 4 seconds with a cut, but 3 seconds with a 1 second transition. iMovie does this for you, FCP requires that you know this and plan accordingly.
Let me try to explain too:
#1 Transitions “Insufficient Content”
Shane’s Stock Answer #1:
You need to make sure that your clips have enough media (called ‘handles’) at the beginning of the incoming clip and at the end of the outgoing clip for the transition. For example, if you have a 1 second (30 frame) dissolve, your in and out point need to be at least 15 frames from the edge of the clip.
What you are running into is that you are marking an out point at the end of a clip then adding a cross dissolve, say 20 frames in duration. Since the dissolve is centered on the cut, it will start 10 frames before the cut, and try to go 10 frames AFTER the cut…which it can’t do.
What you need to do is plan how long your dissolve will be and back-time your cut so that it works.
a full 1 second crossfade reaches 15 frames into each clip. So, if you want to change a cut to a crossfade, there has to be at least 15 additional frames of each clip.
Say you’re trying to crossfade from one clip into the very first frame of a second clip. FCP cannot ‘create’ 15 more frames of the second clip to do a crossfade. If they’re not there, you’re out of luck.
FCP has to extend the end of your first clip by 1/2 of your transition length, and the beginning of your second clip by 1/2 of your transition length, so those frames need to be in your system. The nature of a crossfade is mixing two clips together.
Shane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net -
Easy big guys, I’ve been doing this for quite some time and yet had this embarrassing hole in my know how. No matter how it is, the software should be able to accommodate such a transition. I mean how hard would it be for a software routine to overlap used media and make adjustments to the sequence. I mean, what is so sacred about the last 15 frames of the preceding clip and the first 15 frames of the following clip; and if they are precious then you can always click undo and recap or re-cut the clip.
jmf
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