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Purpose of ‘Black Video’ in CS4
Hi all,
this is probably something obvious that I’m missing, but can’t seem to find any relevant info on this online. Just what is the purpose of creating ‘black video’ via the New Item button? It seems to me that surely black video is created automatically whenever there is a gap in video on the timeline? I’m very curious to know if there is some difference in quality? What’s the difference between say using ‘black video’ instead of a black matte?
Any information would be great, I’ve been curious about this for a while but never gotten round to finding out.
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10 Replies
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When there is a gap in the timeline it shows black but in fact its a void.
You can use black video to fill those gaps.
A still has no speed, video does. You can drop certain effects on a Black Video. Quality is the same.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
Adobe Community Professional -
I’ve used black video in the past to create a fade to/from black on multiple layers by keyframing the black video’s opacity…you can accomplish the same thing by nesting nowadays though.
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Never a good idea to have any gaps in the timeline! I had to troubleshoot for one customer who was having trouble with H.264 exports with CS5.5 – he would export his entire timeline, but when playing back the file, the video would freeze at a certain point. Turns out the project wasn’t finished and while the audio was complete, there were “holes” in the video, and that is exactly where the freeze would happen.
Use the Black Video 😉
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
Wow, I had no idea it was so necessary to use the black video. So apart from trouble shooting potential export problems, what advantage is there from using black video over ‘the void’? I would have thought the gaps are determined by the project’s video settings (frame rate etc.) and would effectively have become ‘black video’ anyway? Obviously I’m very wrong about that!
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That’s a big pet peeve of mine — seeing someone fade to or from black (or dissolve to another clip) by putting a transition on every layer involved. Seeing the layers “melt apart” during the transition is jarring to me.
Does this bug anyone else? Just seems sloppy to me.
Greg Leslie
Tulsa -
So what you’re saying Tulsa is that its better to nest the different layers to create the dissolve or fade out to the black video, rather than just using a transition. Presumably this is because the effect produced is more organic?
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*Greg
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If you are fading out or dissolving from a multi-layer sequence, I’m saying it looks bad when editors put a dissolve transition on EVERY layer — as it dissolves out, you see THROUGH each layer to the background.
The layers should be treated as ONE IMAGE, either by nesting, or by putting the next shot ABOVE the outgoing layers and only dissolving IT in. Follow me?
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“That’s a big pet peeve of mine — seeing someone fade to or from black (or dissolve to another clip) by putting a transition on every layer involved. Seeing the layers “melt apart” during the transition is jarring to me.
Does this bug anyone else? Just seems sloppy to me.”
I hate that! Shows me that the editor has no attention to detail.
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Right, so if for example I had one scene that faded to black, it would be better to either nest that isn’t a sequence and had dissolve our all the layers at once, or if I was dissolving to another image I could either nest or put the next image on top and dissolve that in. Either way whenever there is a fade to black it should always be to black video and not to a gap ‘void’ in the timeline.
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