Customizing Cross Dissolve

[Jason Diebler]

No, but you can achieve that with two cross dissolves, or w/ manual opacity keyframes.

“The deepest blues are black” – Foo Fighters
(this doesn’t help me when I’m chroma keying!)

[Mark Petereit]

Try setting one up on your timeline then making it a favorite.

[Jesse Adlin]

Can you explain this further in terms of execution?

On a side note- why would Apple/FCP not have an easier option for doing something so simple?

[Jason Brown]

Correct me if I’m wrong…but how I achieve this is to use the roll tool to slip the transition to where I want it. Not as clean as the AVID dissolve dialogue, but if you want a 30 frame to be offset by 5 frames off center, then just slip the cut 5 frames back and now your “centered” transition is where you want it.

-Jason

[Jesse Adlin]

I’m not sure if I’m executing correctly but this isn’t working. When I use the roll it moves the clip… as in changes the duration of the clip.The dissolve remains centered over the cut. I just want to change the timing on the dissolve.

If you have a step by step procedure that works please let me know.

[Jason Brown]

[Jesse Adlin] “When I use the roll it moves the clip”

It doesn’t move the clip…just revises the start of it. – Make sure you are using the roll tool and have it placed OVER the dissolve, not the clip.

*I may be wrong here…because I am very new at FCP, but…*

A dissolve in FCP can be 1 of 3 things…start/centered/ending at cut. You simply change the “placement” of the dissolve by moving the edit point underneath it. It does revise the length of a clip, but so does adding a dissolve. If you put a 20 frame dissolve on a clip and it’s centered, then it extends the use of the media incoming and outgoing by 10 frames…this is with any NLE I’ve ever used.

Does that make sense?

-Jason

[Alex Gollner]

Using some free plugins, I’ve added more controls to many of the standard transitions including Cross Dissolve:

As well as changing the shape of the curve using a couple of bezier points, you can also set the transition to start a specific percentage in. Using your example you would set the transition to be 40 frames long (centred on the edit), and set the Start % to 25. This starts the transition 25% of the frames in (10 frames in) – it will continue to 100% of the frames (20 frames after the edit point).

Download the transitions from my website.

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com & .com

[Jesse Adlin]

Thanks. This is a clear explanation.