FCP single frame crossfade?

[Jean-christophe Boulay]

FCP can’t edit picture on a grid smaller than 1 frame, of course, but it does for audio. 1 frame of video at NTSC framerates is still over 1000 samples, so there is ample material to fade in. A quick test with a 1-frame fade on a sine wave in an FCP7 timeline does give a clear ramp when importing to ProTools, not a square cut. It does not behave as a 1 frame video fade-in would.

Craig, if you opened a “teacher” session with short fades like this on every region, it’s surely as a safety against clicks. While FCP will fade the audio between frames, it won’t let you cut it between frames. This means that audio edited solely in FCP is more likely to have clicks, as you can’t cut at the zero-crossing point unless it’s smack dab on a frame boundary. Batch fades of very short duration just ensure the conformed audio is click-free. Those fades can’t possibly be heard and they safeguard against something that definitely can be heard. Almost all OMFs I get from FCP editors for mixing jobs have theses fades at the head and tail of all regions. I’ve never had to remove them that I can remember, either. It lessens the chances of us playing the “chase the click” game in audio post. It’s good practice, IMO.

IHTH,

JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com

[Ty Ford]

JC,

Actually, someone showed me how to do a less than one frame move (not necessarily the same as an edit, but useful nonetheless. Bring up a clip in the browser and hold shift down while you tug on the head of the clip. It will move subframe.

That’s a great idea to eliminate crossfade click. As you may know Pro Tools, even PTLE, has that sort of feature.

Thanks so much for sharing! You really make it a worthwhile place.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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