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transitions on secondary storylines, a question
Hi,
so I tend to put my interviews on my primary and my b-roll on secondary. I don’t like destroying the video on my primary that is beneath b-roll in case I want/need to open up the talking head in a different place later on.
I use a lot of transitions, mostly dissolves but when going into and out of talking head bits I use a fancier transition, usually a bought plug in.
As such I put any bits of talking heads to be seen up on the secondary so I can transition between them and the b-roll.
The problem I run into is when I use a transition that moves the clip in such a manner that it sees ‘behind’ the b-roll/talking head clips, because the movement is such that the clips aren’t full screen.
At the moment because my interview is on the primary it will show the talking head where it should show black. My solution at the moment is to detach the audio from this bit of talking head (under the transition) and ‘V’ the video part of it so it is visually silenced. The problem with this method is, of course, I am detaching audio and the issues that come with that.
It isn’t a huge bugger for most my work but it isn’t ideal and if there is a better suggestion to address this problem – which is needing to detach audio to make it work – then I’d like to do it. Dropping opacity is an alternative but it takes much longer and I try and add as few extra actions to my editing as possible as it stops the flow [man!].
So aside from opacity to 0% on the video under a transition, any other ideas?
Personally I will a detached audio clip could be ‘totally’ detached if that is what is wanted by someone or just ‘track’ detached so it is still actually connected to the video and if one is moved the other follows, but is its own separate element in my timeline, allowing me to simply ‘V’ the video without destroying the relationship between the two elements of the same clip (if that makes sense)
Cheers
Jules
*edit: ok, I am a bit stupid here. Having just written this I looked at my timeline again and of course the detached audio is ‘connected’ to its video element. So when I move the video the audio moves with it.
So what is the concern about detaching audio? What am I missing in my understanding of the relationships between the two when the audio is detached? What can I ‘not’ do later simply because I have detached the audio?
I guess is Apple simple allow a detached audio clip to be reattached it would make all these concerns go away, but if someone doesn’t mind I’d like to know what the issues others come across are when detaching audio, because for me a lot of the time detaching audio is preferable in many ways.
Cheers and sorry for the need for an *edit, my mistake.
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15 Replies
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If I understand correctly, you have two connected clips in one secondary storyline. The clips have a transition between them but during the transition the video on the primary storyline shows through in areas that one clip is not full-screen.
Assuming you want a black background, compound the just the two clips and the transition between them (not the secondary storyline itself, or other transitions), then go into the compound clips timeline and drop a black generator underneath the transition. Step back into the project and apply in/out cross dissolves to the compound clip if desired.
Now that I typed that out, I realize you could just drop a black generator under the transition, between the primary and secondary storylines and be done.
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Actually, putting a black generator the entire width of the timeline between the two story lines is a decent workaround. it will at least stop me having to faff around each time I have to do it. and sadly it is never just one isolated case of two clips but usually a dozen or so times in a ten minute film, thus my looking for something easier. I also tend to find compound clips a bit frustrating with having to go in and out to amend them, and often clicking on the entry icon accidentally and finding myself in the compound clip when I just wanted to highlight it, so I avoid them unless really necessary.
thanks for the generator idea though, appreciated.
would like a reconnect audio option.
also still curious as to real life experience issues with detaching audio, if anyone can be bothered to point them/some out.
Cheers
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Glad that the workaround works for you. As long as the generator doesn’t extend under a transition to/from the primary/secondary storylines.
Yeah reconnect audio and sync indicators, also better yet, “bring back audio” and “bring back video”. Right clicking a clip and choosing an option would add the respective audio or video back to the selected clip, without the need for both pieces of audio and video to be on the timeline and selected in order to “reconnect” or having to match and replace the clip from the Event Browser.
I haven’t actually had any problems with detached audio, or really aware of any (besides the lack of reconnect and sync indicators, of course). Most of the time I disconnect audio, its respective video is deleted and the audio used out of sync anyway. In this case everything just behaves as expected.
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[Julian Bowman] “would like a reconnect audio option.
also still curious as to real life experience issues with detaching audio, if anyone can be bothered to point them/some out. “
Not sure if this what you mean but I often find myself having to disconnect audio for various reasons and whilst its not possible to reconnect as one could in FCP7 where you could see how many frames out one was, it’s very simple to Shift F any clip to reveal in events browser and select Shift 3 followed by Q to lay the audio down in sync again.
Also with the huge improvement in Compounds I often lock the audio to clips by creating a new compound clip.
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I’ve been using FCP X since it came out. I have not had any need to detach audio at all. I have done it but didn’t really have to. If I’m taking only audio from a clip, the video is usually covered by another video source on a connected clip or secondary storyline. In the odd occasion where it is not, it is pretty easy to set the video opacity to zero.
anickt
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I’m not at my computer bit IIRC you should be able to compound the two clips and then apply the transition in the compound and it won’t show what’s beneath it in the main primary. I don’t think you need a black generator at all.
As far as detaching audio is concerned, the only real issue is that it’s extremely easy to throw audio off sync from its video.
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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Andy, that should be the case, but with the offending clip not being full-screen the underlying clip still shows through in the blank areas.
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Hi Jules,
If I understand your issue correctly, my solution for dealing with a situation like this is to move the a-roll out of the primary and place it underneath the storyline. Then place the b-roll in the primary so you can easily attach the transition. I understand the why you would want to to keep all b-roll above, but it’s just not always possible.
I’ve been working with multiclips a lot lately and you cannot break those apart, so that’s how I came up with the above solution.
Sometimes, depending on how many shots, I’ll move the A-roll up to a secondary storyline and just create the transition to the b-roll above the storyline.
I try to stay away from detaching audio. I guess, another way around detaching audio would be to match back to the original shot and do an audio-only attached edit.
Hope that helps!
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP
My Moviola Webinar on Cutting News in FCP X -
Please send feedback to Apple to add a “video” checkbox to the inspector so that we can disable just the video like we can the audio.
Jeremy
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Jeremy, brilliant. Annnndd… Done
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