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To fade or not to fade
Since a lot of our videos end up on the web do you add fades front and back? Seems we still should.
Most players display a thumbnail with a play icon prior to starting. If there is no fade the user clicks and there is sometimes one frame of black and then a hard cut to the first frame of video. Same at the end….but sometimes it just cuts from last frame to the thumbnail. Either way it looks sloppy to me.
Ideally, the thumbnail is displayed, user clicks and the screen cuts to black and then fades up into the video. At the end the logo or end page sits for a bit, fades to black and sits in black for a good second or so, then finally cuts back to the thumbnail for a replay (or you get a YouTube wall of thumbnails).
I say leave the logo up as a still and add a hot link to the site…roll that for a good 30 seconds before fading out.
On Facebook it seems that videos are sitting on the first frame all the time and a user can set if videos auto play when displayed. In that case it seems you would not want fades. At the end of a video on Facebook it seems to revert to a thumbnail or just sit on the end frame….hard to tell what the rule is there.
Thoughts?
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
5 Replies
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I agree with your views on this, except, I am not a fan of autoplay. it tends to tick off people who don’t expect it and may have their speakers turned up from doing something else.
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I don’t think it is a set rule that all videos fade or all videos do not fade. We still need to keep in mind how even a fade can affect our edits and our stories. That is what is really important.
In answer to technical question about how it looks sloppy in social media. Most sites that focus on video hosting such as Youtube and Vimeo you have the option to choose which thumbnail you want set
nissania trujillo
film editor -
Neil Young said that it was better to burn out than it is to fade. Is there a good burn out transition?
JPD
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There is; the iconic piece-of-film-stuck-in-projector-gate-melts-to-white.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyTtFNGzFsE
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Always up to you and the piece. Also where you are going to upload it. If youtube, you can pick your thumbnail but Facebook likes to use the first frame so if you fade up it’ll display black. Still, I just go by the piece I’m working up.
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