Small (short) transition question

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

You need the clips to have EXTRA FRAMES (“handles”) before and/or after the cut-point for the length of thre transition.

If the clip only has 30 frames of “unused” footage after the cut, then you can only dissolve during those 30 extra frames.

[Shane Ross]

Let me go more in depth on this, simply because I already have it written up and just have to paste it:

#1 Transitions “Insufficient Content”

Shane’s Stock Answer #1:

You need to make sure that your clips have enough media (called ‘handles’) at the beginning of the incoming clip and at the end of the outgoing clip for the transition. For example, if you have a 1 second (30 frame) dissolve, your in and out point need to be at least 15 frames from the edge of the clip.

What you are running into is that you are marking an out point at the end of a clip then adding a cross dissolve, say 20 frames in duration. Since the dissolve is centered on the cut, it will start 10 frames before the cut, and try to go 10 frames AFTER the cut…which it can’t do.

What you need to do is plan how long your dissolve will be and back-time your cut so that it works.

a full 1 second crossfade reaches 15 frames into each clip. So, if you want to change a cut to a crossfade, there has to be at least 15 additional frames of each clip.

Say you’re trying to crossfade from one clip into the very first frame of a second clip. FCP cannot ‘create’ 15 more frames of the second clip to do a crossfade. If they’re not there, you’re out of luck.

FCP has to extend the end of your first clip by 1/2 of your transition length, and the beginning of your second clip by 1/2 of your transition length, so those frames need to be in your system. The nature of a crossfade is mixing two clips together.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Burns S]

Thanks Shane and Matte.

Honestly that was what i thought and had searched the archives but couldnt find anything. Thank you both for your help.

Burns

[Soreyrith Um]

Is there any way to work around not having handles for transitions? I’m sure there have been times when you want to put a transition right at the end or beginning of a clip. In PremierePro, the program simply extends the first (or last) frame of a clip to fill the handle requirement. So you have a still picture during part of the transition, but it’s usually not noticeable.

Also, is it possible to add transitions to nested sequences? I was not able to do this, even when there were handles available in the last and first clips of adjoining sequences.

http://www.HotSpotsOnline.com

[Tom Wolsky]

Only by rippling back the shots. Or by making a freeze frame and then transitioning through the freeze. You have to do this manually. You might want to put in a feature request.

Same for nested sequences, you have to ripple them back in the master sequence to create room for the overlap. The application does not look inside the nest to see if there’s material for the handles (it wouldn’t know how to treat multiple tracks) . You can also mark I/O inside the nest and then FCP will treat those as the ends of the sequence and use the material beyond the marked I/O as handles.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Soreyrith Um]

Thanks Tom. I figured out the part about rippling back the nested sequences after I sent in the question. Then I thought, this can apply to the clips with short handles, too. Basically you can put the clip in its own sequence, extend the freeze frames, then nest that sequence wherever you want. It’s a long workaround, but hopefully I won’t have to use it much.

http://www.HotSpotsOnline.com

[Carol Glover]

To me it seems fce is therefore inferior to imovie in this respect because the latter could handle transitions on clips with no spare frames.