Using Casablanca With FCP

[Chris Poisson]

What’s a Casablanca? Doing what you want in FCP is really easy. Just use a cross dissolve.

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Chris Poisson] “Just use a cross dissolve.”

You missed this poster’s first question (another thread).
He doesn’t have any extra media for “handles” on the clips.

To ghetto3jon:

You must have “handles” (“extra footage”) on one or both of two adjacent clips to allow a dissolve (or other “Mixing” transition).

So, assuming you wanted a 1 sec. transition between any two ten-second clips:

a) You’d need at LEAST 11 seconds total length (one second of “extra footage”) on the end of the FIRST clip

b) Or, you’d need at LEAST 10.5 seconds total length on BOTH clips (half sec. of “extra footage” at the end of the FIRST clip, and half sec. of “extra footage” at the beginning of the SECOND clip.

c) Or, you could make the “Out-point” several frames EARLIER in the first clip and/or make the “In-point” several frames LATER in the second clip and the transition could then be the length that you moved the point(s).

-OR-

You could make a STILL-FRAME of the last frame of your first clip and dissolve THAT out for as long as you want.

-OR-

Change the SPEED of your clip(s) (slow-mo) and that will allow for a longer dissolve length.

[Walter Biscardi]

[ghetto3jon] “alright, i’ve officially given up on using fcp to split and automatically add one second crossfades to my footage,”

What do you mean “Automatically add one second crossfades to your footage?” If there’s no footage there, you can’t add a crossfade in any editing system, not just Final Cut Pro.

If you know you’re going to be using your entire shots and plan to use transitions between the shots, you MUST add handles to your footage. A casablanca is not going to automatically add footage that doesn’t exist, it may automatically trim both sides of the transition one way or the other, but it doesn’t add footage where there is none.

In answer to your question, yes you will most likely lose a generation doing what you’re planning to do. The easier solution is to simply add handles to all of your shots. I always capture at least 3 to 5 seconds of extra footage on both sides of every shot to allow for any transitions.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Jeff Carpenter]

I think ghetto3jon’s point is that he wants the dissolves to be added automatically, without draggin a disolve onto the timeline.

To answer your question, if this is all done with firewire the video itself shouldn’t suffer much. The transitions you’ve made in the Casablanca will have uncompressed the video in that part of the project and then been re-compressed. Now, that’s no different than how it works in Final Cut so you’re fine there UNLESS you do something else in Final Cut, like apply a color-correction to the whole project. Now, most of the video will be effeted for the first time, but your transitions will be on their SECOND uncompress/recompres.

So the short version is: only the transitions should be effected by this plan. But now that you know that, I wouldn’t worry about it. It shouldn’t be anything you could see with your eyes, I’m betting. So go for it.

That being said, I can’t imagine how capturing everything into one system and then re-capturing it to another could be ANY faster than simply dragging the disolves down to the timeline in Final Cut. With your plan you’d be saving about 1/2 a second for each transition you make but you end up having to re-capture everything a second time. Do you really have so many dissolves that you’re saving time with this plan?

[Jon Downs]

thanks for the suggestions, but i can’t really do any of that stuff. you see, i’m trying to take dvcam tapes (with about 1.5 hours of footage), and just put crossfades between every shot…that’s all. and final cut will not let me do that without any overlapping footage (if i use dv start/stop detect to split the clips out, there never is any overlapping footage). you see, the casablanca actually moves the clips so they overlap enough for whatever transition you are trying to apply…which is why i’m wondering if i do that, then kick it over to fcp, if there is any quality loss…because if there is not, i’ll just do it that way.

i can’t believe i’m the first fcp user that wants to take a tape, and simply add crossfades between every shot. man…

thanks!

[Jon Downs]

yes, the casablanca DOES allow you to add a transition between clips without overlapping footage. it actually moves the clips just enough into eachother so the crossfade can be applied. the longer the crossfade, the more the clips are moved into eachother. i cannot believe fcp does not offer this type of crossfade…

[Jeff Carpenter]

Do you have iLife 05? iMovie has something called Magic Movie that might be all you need.

https://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/magicimovie.html

I’ve never used it…but you can see if it helps. Once you’ve done that you could probably save it as a Quicktime movie and bring it into Final Cut to finish off whatever titles and other edits you want to do.

[Walter Biscardi]

[ghetto3jon] “i cannot believe fcp does not offer this type of crossfade…”

I really don’t know of any pro NLE that offers that kind of automatic trim between clips. I’ve used Media 100, AVID and FCP. Never saw that feature in any of them.

Not really something I would need. With complete tapes, seems to me it’s pretty easy to quickly set an In Point 1 second in and Out Point 1 second back on each tape in the viewer, then apply the clip to the timeline and simply drag dissolves into each place. Only takes a couple of seconds per clip.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Walter Biscardi]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Do you have iLife 05? iMovie has something called Magic Movie that might be all you need.”

That’s probably the best way to go. Since iMovie is a consumer level product, I’m sure it has automatic trim and things like that to help non-professionals when they want to use transitions.

In fact a lot of consumer level stuff has very simple features that would be handy in pro-NLE’s. I guess maybe we should start pestering Apple to add some of these handy dandy features to FCP.

Of course, that would be after they fix the Media Manager once and for all. 🙂

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Craig Seeman]

What ghetto3jon is saying is that Casablanca automatically trims the heads and tails the amount needed for the dissolve.

I use to use EditDV/Cinestream and it would freeze frame the tail of a shot for a dissolve if the handle wasn’t there/long enough.

Personally I’d be bothered by an auto trim. I can’t see much use for it since it may trim something important caught in those last few frames. My guess is one might only use such a feature if one shot in such a fashion that you’d use shots as is in sequence with dissolves with not much happening at the head and tail of each shot. I honestly can’t see much call for that.

The freeze frame feature of EditDV had some use where the shot went too close to the end and yet was critical to the story. Of course one can add freezes manually but given how many keystrokes, that auto freeze was useful in “doc” work where the camera person stopped record too quickly.

In FCP one can certainly trim in/out and then select all the video and drop on the “insert with dissolve” “pop up” on the right side.