Trouble with transitions

I took a look at the FAQ and Ken Stone's article and am following instructions but still having trouble. I use FCP 3.0. I am trying to insert a crossfade transition between two clips. Both clips are at least 20 seconds long, and I want to insert a 5 second crossfade between the two. I know I need at least 15 frames of handle on either side for a 1 second transition. But when I place the playhead between the two clips and select crossfade from the video transition, I then double click the transition and the duration pops up in the viewer window as only 1 frame, it will not let me modify this length. I'd rather figure out what I am doing wrong instead of placing the second clip on V2 and messing with opacity.

Don't I have enough handle to place a crossfade?

> Both clips are at least 20 seconds long, and I want to insert a 5 second crossfade between
> the two. I know I need at least 15 frames of handle on either side for a 1 second transition

Yes. Which means you need 2.5 seconds of handles on both sides. From your description, you don't even have one frame on at least one of the sides.


www.derekmok.com

How can this be? I inserted the transition right between the two clips, at the outpoint of the first clip, and both clips are 20 secs long.

You don't seem to understand transitions. A transition of five seconds, centered in the cut point between two clips, means that the second clip now has to have enough media (2.5 seconds) prior to the first frame of the cut in order for the transition to take effect. So a 10-second transition would need five seconds on the first clip after the cut point, and five seconds on the second clip before the cut point. "Handles" are the media you have to have beyond what you've cut into the sequence.


www.derekmok.com

Gotcha. So if there is not enough media and I want to do a decent crossfade, I guess I have to use V1 and V2 and fade out using V1's opacity while I fade in on V2, right?

Even when using Opacity keyframes, you would have to have enough media. The crux of the issue is that you can't perform the transition at the frames you've designated. The only difference with using Opacity keyframes to do this is that you see the actual piece of the clip that's doing the fading, so it's less of a mystery to people starting out with the system.

In your case, if you really want the transition in the middle of the two clips, what you need to do is roll the Out point of Clip 1 back 2.5 seconds, and roll the In point of Clip 2 forward 2.5 seconds.

Double-click on the transition and look at it in the Viewer window. It might help you understand the concept of handles.


www.derekmok.com

Often when I place a dissolve of 1 second duration, FCP makes it 1 frame duration. It seems to be impossible to change but when I come back to it a day or more later, I can often correct it to a 1 second duration. This appears to be glitch in the program. It doesn't always happen but happens very often. Is there a fix for this? I am running FCP 5.1 on my G5 with OS 10.4.

Read this -- "Insufficient content":

[www.lafcpug.org]

Having read another of your posts, you seem to be new to FCP. Ninety-nine per cent of FCP problems are caused by user error -- the issue you're describing above is almost certainly so.


www.derekmok.com

I had already read the article below re "insufficient content." That doesn't apply to my problem. My problem is not a constant one and only seems to affect certain transitions. There is sufficient content -- I know this because I really do understand what's needed for a transition on either side of the edit plus, after many tries and days, the correct duration transition can be put in place. On the screen, the program will change the duration time from, say, 20 frames to 1 frame or 3 frames (whimsically, I think). The same thing happens when I change the duration to 1 second or even something longer. It types in the numbers I type in the duration pop up box but when I press the "Enter" button, it changes to the 1 second duration. Very curious. I think it's a glitch in the program or some conflict with something else.

I'm surprised if you've never heard of this problem from anyone else.

Thanks again for replying to both of my posts.

Try dumping your preferences - it sounds like a preference corruption.

This happens to me, too, only the program will take me back to 1 frame, not one second.

I will try dumping prefs and see what happens.

OMU