FCPX3 – audio crossfades

[Mike Bonner]

I’m pretty sure Alex4D’s “Sound Only” transition still behaves the same way it did before. Yeah, I was hoping for a better stock solution this time around. Would love to know if I’ve missed something.
I was toying with the idea of using the new Toggle Audio Fade In/Out kb commands as a work around. Basically, expand audio, toggle fades on each clip, drag one audio portion over, then collapse. It is definitely more clicks, but I never liked the idea of gunking up my storylines with audio transitions.

[John Fishback]

Also, see Ropple Training Solution.

[Henrik Thorsen]

Hi everybody.

I am teaching students in FCPX and have a problem:
In FCPX 10.3 you want do audio editing using the index window, but how is it possible to use the effect
“cross dissolve” on lanes?
It seems like one has to do it when the clips are collapsed. And if you do that it’s not easy to see the crossfade if you open the index window and then open subroles. Do I have a bug or are this something to wish for in 10.4…

Regards Henrik Thorsen,
Oslo , Norway

[Brett Sherman]

You can’t apply transition effects to the audio channels. The audio fade transition mentioned above has to be applied to the video channel. But you can’t visualize it in the lane mode. I’d recommend teaching them how to use the fade handles. While it might be a little more work, it’s also the most precise.

————————–
Brett Sherman
One Man Band (If it\’s video related I\’ll do it!)
I work for an institution that probably does not want to be associated with my babblings here.

[Simon Billington]

I do a lot of these manually myself because, more often than not, I’m doing some kind of J or L cut with the audio.

[Andrew Johnstone]

Is there no way to do an audio cross fade between two clips in FCPX. Really…?

What happened to being able to ctrl+click on the edit point to bring up ‘apply default transition’ (or whatever the precise wording was in FCP7). How did anyone ever think that losing this tool would be a cool idea?

Andy Johnstone
Wild Dog Limited
film & multimedia production
http://www.wilddogworld.com

[Doug Metz]

You can do it just fine. There’s even a keyboard shortcut and everything! For audio-only clips, it works just as you’d expect.

The gotcha is that if you have your audio and video in the same clip, which is pretty common, applying a crossfade applies to both audio and video of the representative clips. Not ideal if you only want to crossfade the audio. It would be nice if there were a toggle in the inspector to select just one or the other, or both.

I’ve built the audio-only crossfade plugin referenced above (took 15 seconds), and can apply that just as easily as the standard one. Super easy to set it as the default, too, if that’s what you’re into.

Doug Metz

Anode

[Andrew Johnstone]

Thanks Doug, but I can’t see a link to the plugin that you mention.

Following your comment, I tried the following workflow:

1) highlight the two clips that I want to fade audio between (in this instance two lots of ambient sound)
2) detach the audio for each from the video clips
3) apply the dissolve transition to the edit between the audio clips.

It work, but it is a crappy fudge to the very neat, miles better and much more user friendly solution in FCP7 of simply selecting the edit point and ctrl+clicking the pop-up menu and ‘apply default transition’.

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes my blood boil with FCPX, it’s ‘all talk and no trousers’. They have done lots of seemingly clever things but lost sight of some of the most basic needs and some of the most simple tools that editors used every day and left us scrapping about for plugins and crappy workarounds. Emperors New Clothes.

Thanks for your help though.

Andy

Andy Johnstone
Wild Dog Limited
film & multimedia production
http://www.wilddogworld.com

[Doug Metz]

[Andrew Johnstone] “Thanks Doug, but I can’t see a link to the plugin that you mention.

Following your comment, I tried the following workflow:

1) highlight the two clips that I want to fade audio between (in this instance two lots of ambient sound)
2) detach the audio for each from the video clips
3) apply the dissolve transition to the edit between the audio clips.”

Hey Andy,

Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=SuyymHkG2MA

The video above was done some time ago, so the interface looks a tad different, but you’ll get the idea. In case you don’t have Motion (it’s really useful, and inexpensive), I’ve included the transition in this post.

You can select a new default transition by right-clicking on the one you want, and selecting ‘Make Default’ at any time.

Start at the bottom of this page, and work your way up:
https://www.rippletraining.com/articles/category/free-video-editing-tutorials/

12637_audioonlycrossfade.zip.zip

Doug Metz

Anode