simple dissolve not working with effects

Hi,

Do I feel really lame right about now....the basic cross dissolve when transitioning between photo graphs isn't working the right way. I'm doing a photo montage with basic moves on each picture, using cross dissolves and the camera flash plug-in (which by the way takes, like forever to render even on a fast system).

Anyway, the cross dissolve doesn't allow for the photo to smoothly dissolve into the next picture. It causes a jump. I'm used to the Avid....can someone help?

I'm dreading that I need to extend each photo out with head/tail room or something. Will trashing the preferences help or is this just what the Final Cut does?

Thank you

If you are using psd images you are better off giving them all some extra head room, as that particular image type doesn't allow you to transition before the head of the clip. Jpegs, for eg, will extend in any direction. Ack. Hard to explain this.

Here's a simple way of dealing with it if the lack of headroom is your (only) problem. Double click on the cross dissolve to load it in the viewer. Move your cursor over the viewer window up into the graphical representation of the transition. When you are in the correct place, the arrow will turn into a 'roll' tool. Click and hold on the transition in the viewer and you should see two pictures appear in your viewer. One is the shot before the transition and one is the shot after the transition.

Now drag left or right to reposition the dissolve. If you have a headroom problem it won't let you move in one direction at all, but (unless you have a tail problem too) you should be able to extend into the other end of the first clip. This should make your dissolve work.

Unless ... I'm not sure what the camera flash plug-in is. Are you trying to stack transitions? Or is the camera flash thing a filter?

One more potential problem: If you set a motion keyframe at the beginning of your clip, then did a transition to the beginning, you would now need to put the start keyframe to the beginning of the transition, not the beginning of the clip as it's cut, or the movement won't start until your transition is over -- which makes for jumpiness.

You can check for the above by turning on keyframe display in the timeline. If you see any - you have a problem. They should all be hidden before or after the shots containing them.

Ian

Thanks for the comments but I'm super confused! What I did is put one keyframe at the beginning of each photo, and one keyframe at the end of each photo. I have them all timed out perfectly to the music, and the last step is to add the dissolves. It sounds like the Final Cut won't calculate the keyframes or extend them for a smooth transition like the Avid does.

So now, I'm looking at a 10 minute video filled with straight cuts that need simple and smooth transitions, and have no idea what to do.

I tried putting each picture (all jpeg's) on different layers, and extending the shots, but it still jumps. I also tried the avove of moving the first/last keyframe to the beginning of the dissolve but that doesn't work either.

Can anyone help? It seems hard to believe that the Final Cut will not allow for simple dissolves when using the motion functions in the viewer!

Thanks...

It's really hard to figure out what's going wrong here without being able to see what you've got going on. Could you post a section of your timeline somewhere, with the media included so we could download it and have a look?

I mean - just a short timeline with two pics demo-ing the keyframing and transition methods you are using.

Also - still don't know what the plug-in you mentioned is about.

agree with Jude,
are the "jumps" simply the key-framed motion effects clicking in, and bumping to a halt?
or something else?

if that's all they are, then it's not the end of the world, or even your show
it's certainly a drag, though, i'll admit.

you can open each clip and manulay extend the keyframes.
it's a drag if you;ve got a few parameters.
or
you can remove the disolves, and A/B the clips on alternating tracks.
BEFORE you extend the in/outs,
copy the clip
after you extend the in/outs
paste atributes.
threre is a check box to scale the effect to the new duration, which by defualt is on.
then you'd have to re-aply the disolves

both methods are a drag.

nick

Thanks for trying to help me but none of these suggestions are working. I'm thinking about buying the Avid Express because I'm so frustrated. It's such a simple function, all I should have to do is right click, add dissolve, then the program should figure out the rest. Maybe that's why the Avid is more expensive but better....I always cut to the music, add my moves, then add dissolves afterwards. Otherwise having to extend each shot to do a simple dissolve will mess up my timing and also take forever.

Ok, I did try A/B'ing, it looks better once I individually change every single keyframe, but still jumps. It's not a smooth transition. I also tried the copy/paste, but could only get the paste to work on the same video layer, and it also did not extend to where I marked my in & out points.

Ian...I have no idea where the keyframe display is on the timeline except for at the bottom left, I clicked that on & off but it made no difference at all.

Is my brand new system messed up or is Final Cut this limited? I just don't get it. Will call tech support tomorrow.

Thanks again for trying to help!

I dunno that you need tech support. Might be better to spend your money on a good trainer or book to help you negotiate out the transition from Avid to FCP.

It sounds like you are just getting frustrated with what methods you have, and you really don't need to be.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm tired and cranky, had a tough day with a guy too.

Thanks again for the help

Katie

I know what you mean I had that problem exactly when trying to do the same to about 100 images.
I had to go in and manually keyframe all of them cause for some weird reason FCP does not add the extra space for the keyframes so that the dissolves work the way they should.

I see where you are coming from with AVID express.
Going from Avid to FCP is not a good experience, you will have to
get used to doing things the hard way...

After putting the project off for a week, I have tried everything, have tried different settings in the timeline, but cannot get the simple effects and dissolves to work when animating still photos using the Motion tab.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

I have lots of photos that I need to put moves on and then different effects and simple dissolves between each photo. At first I put them all on the same video layer, but then learned that Final Cut does not automatically calculate the keyframe moves for you like the Avid does. So, now I stacked the pictures on all different layers, put 2 keyframes on each photo (one at the first frame and one at the last). Now is where the problem comes in. When I put a dissolve on, ending at cut or starting at cut, the first frame of the photo jerks. It's like it stops for 1/2 frame exactly when the dissolve happens.
And, the frame that this jerking happens on shows a small green square on the lower right or lower left hand side of the canvas.

I have done this same exact thing on another system without any problems before, so I know it works. My only solution is to creat keyframes and bring the opacity down, this works, but now the video is boring without any effects.

Could someone try animating a couple of photos and tell me the correct setting that you are using? I'm assuming it's a simple setting somewhere that I have just not found. I'm using FCP 5.0 on Tiger. Could be a 5.0- bug but there are none reported.

Thank you!!!!!

Hey Kate

I'm not on FCP 5.0 yet so I can't verify a bug, but this should work for you.

Go to [members.iinet.net.au] and have a look at the example.

The way this looks on the timeline is here [members.iinet.net.au]

Since you have already built a stack of movement to music, what you could do is adjust the keyframes of each in the motion tab. This is easy and quick to do, and it means you won't have to dissasemble the work you've already done.

Go to [members.iinet.net.au]

This is the motion tab of the second photo in my timeline. The rectangular area surrounded by a red line is the range of the clip in the timeline.

What I have done is to make the drift left of the photo start before the photo appears on the timeline, by grabbing the 'Center" keyframe (circled in red) and dragging it to a few frames *before* the beginning of the clip as it is on the timeline. If you hold the shift key while you drag the keyframe it will stay at the same settings vertically, and only move backwards or forwards in time.

Of course, you can choose to move any of the keyframes for any attribute in the same way, but in this case this was the only one that needed changing. If I was rotating the picture, like in the first photo, I wold need to shift that one back as well.

I hope this makes some sense - like i said, its hard to explain this stuff by remote, and not knowing what you have done at your end.

Also - make sure you are fully rendering your work before watching for problems - stuff with the lime green line at the top will display without rendering, but it not fully prepped, so can tend to look jerky. In FCP 4.5 use option-r. Not sure if this has changed in FCP 5.

Jude,

Thank you very much for taking the time to post everything, I appreciate it.

I didn't really understand why you have to move the center keyframe back 3-4 frames on the second photo though.

Here's the strange part...I can make the dissolves work smoothly only after I add the De-Interlace filter to every single picture. Otherwise I get the jump.

The only other solution is making freeze frames out of my jpeg's. That solves the problem too. Not sure why it just won't work with my standard Jpeg's. I am rendering them out too.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your helpful insights!