best way to do a dissolve when working with more than one layer?

I have a single video track (on V1) and a single layer of a solid color (on V2). On the solid color layer, I'm using an eight-point garbage matte to mask out a part of the video track. I'm doing this to cover a mic cord on a talking head.

My issue--if I want to dissolve in or out of the talking head which has the matte/mask, how do I do this so that the solid color layer doesn't dissolve at the same rate, thus exposing the mic cord? Make sense?

Is the only way around this to nest the video track and mask/solid color track in a new sequence, then bring it back to my main sequence and run the dissolve on that composite? Or is there another way this can be done without that much nitty/gritty back and forth? I guess I could just render out each clip and re-import into FCP, but I'd really like to find a way to solve this issue in FCP, because it's one that I've come up against before, and it would be good to have a solution in my arsenal.

Am I making sense? Anyone have suggestions?

You answered your own question. Nest them (OPTION-C). Or, use Opacity keyframes to execute the fades. Much more work, though.


www.derekmok.com

derek, thanks for the tip---this is the first I've heard of the option-c shortcut--very helpful!

is there any easy way to reverse the nesting (i.e. an "undo" of the option-c)?

at any rate, I think this will help a lot in this project, and in the future.

thanks

Copy/Paste the content back onto the timeline. Or Command + drag the sequence icon to the timeline.

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Try dropping the cross dissolve on the upper layer as well.

So drag the cross dissolve between the two clips your dissolving, and then drag the cross dissolve on the singe clip above. Believe it or not, the dissolve will go in as if there was a clip next to it on the upper layer.

I'm just about to do a tutorial on this - dealing with uneven dissolve rates. The uneveness comes from a visibility compounding error, so using two dissolves one on top of the other can't work, mathematically.

I suggest doing the nest (which you can open up again by double clicking, BTW), but I use a 'top and tail' approach, where I just blade the last second or so of the problem layers, and nest them, then apply the dissolve to the 'tail' (or 'top') nest only.

If you need to make changes, you can just delete the nest, stretch the original footage into place and make a new blade, nest to suit.