room for fades

I know if there aren?t enough frames in the clips you can not have an affective transitional fade on the time line. I know that there have been times when there are plenty of frames and when I select a transition it creates this little tiny fade on the time line that looks like a blank frame when played. Also, FCP won?t let you stretch it out. This doesn?t happen all the time but it does happen and I know that there is room. Is there a setting or a trick I am missing, or am I just crazy?

I use FCP 5, on OSX 10.4.9, footage from HVX 200 P2, 30 fps DVC Pro 50

crazy!

how do you know there is enough room?
have you opened the clip in the viewer?
i like to use the Slip Tool.
clicking on a clip with that sows you a "ghost" image of the available media.

if you are not crazy, then FCP is.
time to trash the prefs!
read this:
[www.lafcpug.org]


nick

Are you sure that the two clips are butted up against each other? Sometimes, for some reason, the clip may not join with the preceeding clip, which will give you what you have described. Barry

Try what Nick says. Open each clip in the viewer and see where the In and Out points are. I'm betting one of them is butted up at the end or beginning. That or there is a gap.

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<Are you sure that the two clips are butted up against each other? >>>

One of our editors likes to move clips around manually. Unless "snapping" is turned on, there's no guarantee of the accurate start and end times of the clips.

Koz

I have to say, that I've seen that before. It's rare, but even when both clips enough media for a transition it can still happen. However, if you drag the transition to the clip instead of using a shortcut or menu to apply the transition, you can get around that problem. You don't need to drag all the time, just on that particular clip where you're having the problem.

It hasn't happened enough to me to be able to track down the why of it, but I have seen it, so you're not crazy.

...unless we both are.

Andy

Thanks for your all your responses.
Thankfully Andy has seen this before. I was starting to google psychiatric help. I never thought to drag the transition to the timeline. Next time I come to this issue I will have to try it and let you know.

This has happened to me a lot with various versions of FCP and none of the work arounds mentioned have worked. In fact, I have tried moving in to a clip further, well away from the start, and still the transition won't take. It's like the clip is corrupted in some way, maybe dropped frames or something. In any case I am usually forced to abandon my first cut choice.

Andy Neil Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have to say, that I've seen that before. It's
> rare, but even when both clips enough media for a
> transition it can still happen. However, if you
> drag the transition to the clip instead of using a
> shortcut or menu to apply the transition, you can
> get around that problem. You don't need to drag
> all the time, just on that particular clip where
> you're having the problem.
>
> It hasn't happened enough to me to be able to
> track down the why of it, but I have seen it, so
> you're not crazy.
>
> ...unless we both are.
>
> Andy

> This has happened to me a lot with various versions of FCP and none of the work arounds
> mentioned have worked.

Ninety-nine per cent of these occurrences are due to human error. The other one per cent can be fixed by dragging the transition to the timeline instead of using a menu.

FCP does have a bug whereby if you apply a transition using a menu selection or a shortcut key to a cut without sufficient handles on either side, once the transition is applied, it will refuse to let you use the "transition alignment" buttons (Start on Edit/Center on Edit/End on Edit) or shortcuts to reorient the transition to adjust to the cut. You'd have to do it by hand in those cases.


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