Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
[Charlie Austin] “Every second counts, the client is foaming at the mouth!”
I’m pleased to say that most of my clients don’t have rabies as far as I know 😉
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “What I don’t like about dissolves is that the kb shortcuts don’t work as well.”
What issues to you have with this, Jeremy?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Charlie Austin] “Oh, definitely. But without the dissolve,effect on the clip, you “have to” expand splits to see your A/B vs. straight cuts. Once you change the A/B handles/fades under an expanded dissolve, the dissolve effect isn’t doing anything other than being a drag thumb/visual indicator. :-)”
Yes, it’s a useful visual clue certainly. B
But the fact that it auto-creates the handles has to be a timesaver as against dragging them out manually, doesn’t it?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Charlie Austin] “I might actually use secondary’s for MX beds now”
I always use secondaries for music beds – it’s one of the really great features in X that you can build a music bed in its own container, complete with fancy cross-fades (however you choose to make them), and you never have to worry about it unravelling. Just pin it to the right reference clip and you’re done.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Charlie Austin] “But using a dissolve creates your handles in one click and lets you drag the edit point without switching tools. I think it’s a much quicker way to do it if you need to.”
It’s a really powerful option – not having to drag out the handles yourself is a significant time saver.
A great tip, thanks for sharing it.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Michael Gissing] “Just when you thought it was all over there is a way to do asymmetrical dissolves on a single track but not in an NLE. However DAWs, particularly the ones I have used (dSP & Fairlight) do allow for asymmetrical dissolves.
They can do it because you can dissolve (crossfade) to clips stacked on the same track. On the outgoing clip a fade can be added. The length of that dissolve and the shape of the curve are fully adjustable. Then another clip can be placed over that outgoing dissolve and the clip on top can then be set with another dissolve with a different length, start point and curve shape.
So it is possible but basically it is emulating doing asymmetry by splitting tracks or layers in an NLE.It is useful and powerful but if I need to do a similar thing with images in an NLE, I just use V1, V2 etc layer and keyframed opacity ramps.”
That’s a very interesting point to make because it highlights another way of looking at this in FCP X.
In actual fact, as Charlie Austin has pointed out though not in so many words, what happens when you add a dissolve to an edit in a secondary storyline is that you’re creating pretty much the exact the same thing as a stacked track.
Create a music edit in a secondary, then add a dissolve at the edit point.
Then Expand the audio (Ctrl+S) – what you will then have are two overlapping tracks where X has added the handles for the dissolve.
To create a true asymmetric dissolve all you need to do is grab the fade handles and adjust to taste – very simple and very powerful.
So maybe what Charlie should have said is “There Is No Such Thing as an Asymmetrical Dissolve Transition in any NLE except FCP X”.
😉
Admittedly when you adjust the fade handles you are over-riding the Dissolve transition that you’ve added so strictly speaking the dissolve transition itself is still never asymmetric, but it does create the condition where one adjustment will create the asymmetry.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeff Kay] “I guess I just don’t see the point.”
I think Charlie’s point was probably that “asymmetrical dissolves” are sometimes perceived as being something that they aren’t and that leads to confusion.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Chris Harlan] “Aindreas, on the other hand, is pointing out the usefulness of having the positioning built into the transition, itself, which is something I agree with.”
I have to say, I’ve never really understood why this is a feature that anybody would actually want since it’s purely cosmetic rather than functional. And a lot of the editors I’ve worked with have been confused about what it actually happening here which is far less sophisticated than they are usually thinking.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “the asymmetrical dissolves available in … 7”
which ones would those be out of interest?
never been able to track those down.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “But in Motion I have to open the keyframe editor (can’t seem to copy from the layer), toggle to animated Keyframes, decipher which Keyframes are opacity ones amongst the jumble of other Keyframes being graphed all over the place”
There are lots of cunning things you can do to make keyframe navigation really quick (Curve Sets, for example, are really powerful and save a lot of time) but to answer that specific point, you can simply toggle to Opacity (rather than Animated) which will show you the fade keyframes only and avoid having to sift through any others.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com
