[Jiggy Gaton]

I feel like I’ve fallen into an escher maze. If that’s true, then are you limited to using just opacity to “fade in, fade out” the beginning and end of each of the secondary storylines, right? If I want more, I have to go to Motion yes? Ok…

thx for the help!

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Ouch. I’ve been doing that forever – stacking up images and video in “tracks” to make a comp right on the timeline. Perhaps I’ve been a bad boy all these years, but that sure was fast. So what to do now? Do it in Motion instead and then what? “Can it” and bring that in as an effect, or as movie clip with an alpha channel? Huh.

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Thx for that! Yes, I see BUT, that makes the Blend Mode null and void!?! (when transition is added). And if you try and undo the added transitions, the whole composition goes nuts (well, seems to me so) and u have to start all over again, from the beginning. This can’t be right…someone please beat me with a hammer….cheers!

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Simon, I really appreciate that help. For grins, here is my running commentary for the task at hand, and in the end, I did not get what I “changed my mind and wanted”, so how to do that!?!

– Select File/New Project and choose the appropriate settings for your needs;

Why can’t I select a new Default Event for the new project? Why not “depends on first clip” option. I like that one. So I picked it 🙂

– Select a clip in the Browser and add it to the timeline – at this point you can use either W, D, or E;

Which “browser” ? – there are two: Event + Media. Clicking Window / Go to Event Browser does nothing. Media Browser does not have clips (interestingly enough). But u must mean Event Library? I dragged one down from there, and never connected it.

Aside: why the heck is everything arranged by HomeDir/Date or Drive/Date? In Nepal, it’s 2067. This is gunna make me insane.

– Use the back arrow to get you back to the head of the timeline clip;

that worked! now we’re cookin.

– Select your second layer clip in the Browser;

Again, which Browser this time? I had one in another event – ha!

– Use Q to add it over the top of the first clip (to which it will now be connected);

This was were I must have screwed up before, I just dragged from the Event Library/Browser?

– Select the overlay clip and hit Ctrl/V to open up the animation editor;

Oh god, now we are using Windows keys…

– Toggle open the controls for the Opacity and drag the little silders at each end inwards until you have the fades you want;

Ooh, I like that Compositing: Opacity box! To bad the other boxes there don’t work like that.

– Hit Ctrl/V again to clsoe the controls;

ok, but i hate keystrokes…I have carpel tunnel from them.

– Select the Inspector for the overlay clip and set the Compositing Mode to whichever blend mode takes your fancy.

Perfect.

That’s it. You have to do all that stuff with the opacity sliders because it doesn’t appear that you can add a transition to an overlay clip (as I’m calling it though I know I shouldn’t). You could always keyframe the opacity from with the Inspector but it’s easier to do on the Timeline I think.

Huh? What about all the other effects we use instead of just a “cross” / opacity change! I just decided that I want “cube” or “curtains” or some other tacky apple transition…wth. This is completely wackadoo, no? If you can’t add a transition to the “whateveryacallit” above, we are in deep doodoo.

But at least my migrane is gone, all for u!

Cheers,
Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

I got a migrane from this and had to stop for a bit. I just wanted to composite an image over the first clip put into the project and add a crossdissolve on the head and tail of the image, and composite the image using a blend mode. I gave up, due to the pain in my temples. This is something that would take 2 seconds in FCP. Can someone list the steps to accomplish this, starting from + new project. thx so much…

PS. This reminds me of the time I had with Aperture 1, trying to figure out the difs between a Library, Project, and Folder, Album, and Library Album. That gave me a headache as well 🙂

Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Not sure why you would want to export anything, as isn’t the contents of the Event Library available to all other Apple Apps? I don’t have FCP on the same drive to test, but you should see something like this in the import dialog of FCP:

Please let me know if I am wrong!
Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Somewhere in this pile of stuff here on the cow, I raised a simular question wanting to understand the philosophy of storylines and compound clips. Someone (can’t recall who) validated my assumption that storylines with compound clips where like virtual tracks and nested sequences. But I cannot figure out how to rename a storyline, so I can see this being hard to keep track of if all the storylines are just called “storyline” in the inspector. The help file is useless in explaination and there must be a shortage of words at Apple these days, as they use the word storyline to define storyline, and never really tell you how or why you would use them, and how this new paradigm compares to the old one. I think that’s what we need… how you did things before, and how do you do them now… perhaps they expect Ripple to sort it out for us. Cheers,
Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

oh man that’s very cool, thx!!!
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Thx all for the help. Rotoscoping…hmmm, always wanted to learn how to do that! Here is a mockup just using 3 edited frames in PS, and then animated in Motion (albiet badly):
1433_rotoscopeneeded.m4v.zip
But I would like something that looks more natural. Do I use AE to do the rotoscoping? I think I saw a filter in there for that…any good pointers? thx!!!
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

I am not positive, but if you are using Motion 4 (FCS3) Livetype is dead. I think Apple wants us to use Text Animations and Text Sequences in the Motion lib… My old livetype projects won’t even open anymore in 10.5.6, cie la vie? Good luck!
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.