Transitions not working in FCP 5

[Shane Ross]

What happens when you try?

Are there enough handes between the clips?

#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

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Wiredcoach]

Ijust went thru figuring this out too. I didn’t read the definition of “handles” closely enough, and because of past experience with other NLEs, I misunderstood this. I thought that just having plenty of frames to work with on either side of a cut point was enough, that the notion of ‘handles’ was simply having lots of frames. In the past, in other programs, I could just place a transition at the point between two clips and it would use frames on either side.

But with FCP, for a centered dissolve, you actually have to set an end point (at least) 15 frames from the end of the first clip, i.e. there are 15 frames that are ‘invisible’, that are not seen unless you add a transition. And, the second clip has to have a start point set 15 frames (or more) into the clip.

You have to edit each clip, setting end points and start points that, in a sense, clip off some frames, and those frames are then used for transitions.

This is something that is obvious to an experienced FCP person, but absolutely drove me bonkers for days, mainly because I had always just placed transitions in the past without having to do anything to clips that were adjacent to each other.