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Fade to black
The other day I was in my first online edit with FCP and ran into a bit of a snag (or two, actually).
#1
At the end of our promo we have a network logo, a matte layer (both imported from tape) for the logo, and a background. My editor was using a blending mode to make the key of the logo, which clipped the logo correctly, but left it at 90% opacity. The logo is correct and white is 100% white in the matte layer (the logo mattes correctly everywhere else). Eventually, we had to take the matte and fill into After Effects to generate a QT with an alpha. None of the matte or key effects worked properly either. What is the correct way to matte a fill in FCP? Coming from Avid, this used to be easy, however, I don’t know how to direct the problem in FCP.#2: Regarding the same logo/endpage in #1, we needed a 6 frame fade to black, where all items maintain their opacity in relation to each other, but just go dark. My editor put dissolves on all layers ,which affected the opacity of our network logo over the background and looked bad. He tried everything, fade to color, etc, but could not simulate the look I was asking for. Eventually, I just had him put 10 frames of black on the top video layer at the beginning and end of the spot and apply a dissolve at the head of the black clip. This did the trip, but it’s a ghetto edit that I’m sure there’s a correct solution to.
Any ideas on the right way to do this? i’d like to be able to direct FCP sessions better so that I can make the right calls when producing.
Thanks!
J -
4 Replies
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J,
I agree with you, the way cross dissolves blend multiple layers is not particlarly attractive. I had a similar issue earlier today and determined that the only good solution was to nest the layers and apply a single fade to the nested layers. I ultimately ended up using a wipe, which turned out to work better in my situation.
DRW
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In avid there is a way to make that fade to color apply to all layers simultaneously, although I forget how it’s done (maybe applying fade to color on an empty layer above?).
i’m still on my first manual, so maybe volume 2 or 3 has it in there….
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Nothing “ghetto” about it. (What an odd thing to say.)
Applying a black color matte (or slug) to a new layer above all the other video layers and dissolving to and from it IS the correct method for fading in and out of multi-layer sequences.
The Avid “fade-to-color” on the top track is exactly the same thing.
This is a virtual version of “down-stream black” that is a mainstay feature of the “live” video switchers of analog editing.
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Yep, I agree. That’s how I’ve been doing this in Avid and After Effects when I really wanted to make sure things looked right.
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