Transition length

I'm still pretty new to FCP. I shot a piece of film in 4X3 format and one in 16X9 format. I "Exported" the 4X3 piece to create a 16X9 copy of it. I then imported the 16X9 version to my project. The video plays fine. HOWEVER, when I go to create a simple video dissolve, it makes the length 1 FRAME long (even though the shot is 4 seconds long), and I can not seem to do ANYTHING to make the transition even 1 second long. Can anyone help me with this??? Thanks so much.

sounds like you don't have handles. 4 second long shot? If you're using all 4 seconds in your video, you've no handle for a dissolve.

I know I'm new, but what is a handle, and if I only want a 1 second transition, why is a 4 second video section not long enough?

> I know I'm new, but what is a handle, and if I only want a 1 second transition, why is a 4 second
> video section not long enough?

Look at it this way. Before you apply a transition, the two clips are sitting back to back, each four seconds long. When you add a one-second transition onto that edit, the first clip now cannot end at the edit point -- it must now last for 15 frames longer in order to complete the transition.

I'm guessing that when you re-exported the clips, you only chose the parts of the clips you thought you were going to use, so now you don't have handles.

I don't believe the re-export was a good thing to do, myself. You could have easily applied a letterbox mask to the 4:3 footage to match the 16:9 without re-exporting the clips. Re-exporting the clips greatly reduced your flexibility.


www.derekmok.com

Would the letterbox mask "stretch" the footage to fit 16x9 format? Can you tell me how I put that mask on? I don't want to reduce my flexibility, and I'm sure it is something I should learn how to do. Thanks a TON!

> Would the letterbox mask "stretch" the footage to fit 16x9 format?

No, but you could have done the stretch using Motion - Distort. Re-exporting the footage before you edit means you lost parts of the frame and can't readjust the frame if you want to. Also you may have lost timecode.


www.derekmok.com