Transition Durations

[Marlene]

I'm sure this is going to sound like a stupid question to you weathered veterans but I'm a newby and temporaily lost. Did a search and didn't find the answer.

I am doing a tutorial for V9 and it says to change the duration of the transition to 3 frames (not seconds). Does this mean you put the transition in three times? That doesn't really make sense to me but ....... can't think of anything else.

Marlene

[Ken Berry]

Not a silly question at all, though in my humble opinion, depending on which tutorial you are referring to, it seems a silly suggestion!

You can certainly change transition duration to frames and not seconds: if you notice the little timer clocks used in the program, they all have four columns 00:00:00:00 -- representing Hours, Minutes, Seconds and Frames. So for instance, if you have your transition highlighted in the timeline/storyboard, the little clock up in the top left of the Edit screen will show how long it is set for -- that will be linked to the default duration you set in File > Preferences > Edit. Normally, this will be 1 or 2 seconds, say. But of course, if you want something shorter than a second, you can highlight the number in the Seconds column (the third) and set it back to 00. Then highlight the fourth column, which normally would have slightly smaller 00 showing, and set it to, say, 3.

But I am not sure why you would bother. As you are aware, NTSC video runs at 29.97 frames per second and PAL at 25. So 3 seconds is only one tenth of a second for NTSC and (roughly) one eighth of a second for PAL. This would, IMHO, be imperceptible to the naked eye and thus fairly useless as a transition duration. Hence my comment above that it seemed a silly suggestion.

But I guess the point is that if you want a transition to be less than one second, then you use the frames setting in the timer clock! Hope this is all a little clearer than mud!!

[Marlene]

Not a silly question at all, though in my humble opinion, depending on which tutorial you are referring to, it seems a silly suggestion!

You can certainly change transition duration to frames and not seconds: if you notice the little timer clocks used in the program, they all have four columns 00:00:00:00 -- representing Hours, Minutes, Seconds and Frames. So for instance, if you have your transition highlighted in the timeline/storyboard, the little clock up in the top left of the Edit screen will show how long it is set for -- that will be linked to the default duration you set in File > Preferences > Edit. Normally, this will be 1 or 2 seconds, say. But of course, if you want something shorter than a second, you can highlight the number in the Seconds column (the third) and set it back to 00. Then highlight the fourth column, which normally would have slightly smaller 00 showing, and set it to, say, 3.

But I am not sure why you would bother. As you are aware, NTSC video runs at 29.97 frames per second and PAL at 25. So 3 seconds is only one tenth of a second for NTSC and (roughly) one eighth of a second for PAL. This would, IMHO, be imperceptible to the naked eye and thus fairly useless as a transition duration. Hence my comment above that it seemed a silly suggestion.

But I guess the point is that if you want a transition to be less than one second, then you use the frames setting in the timer clock! Hope this is all a little clearer than mud!!

Thanks so much for your reply. For some reason I hadn't caught that the left two numbers were frames.

the tutorial I was following was the one I purchased with VS9 called "Getting Results with Video Studio 9" by Charlie Hills. The tutorials I was working on were to create a freeze frame. There are three tutorials - Create a Freeze Frame, Creata a Better Freeze Frame and finally Create a Better Better Freeze Frame and it was here in the latter where the instructions were to change the duration of the transition.

You are probably right that it is probably useless as a transition duration but be that what it may I did learn something thanks to you.

Thanks again.

Marlene

[sjj1805]

Charlie goes to extremes in his book to exaggerate a point.
It's not something you would do in a "real video"

The best way of learning is to go 'over the top' with things like that so that you get to understand what an effect will do.

[Ken Berry]

Marlene -- just to correct one point you made -- the frame numbers are the two _right_ numbers, not the two left ones as you wrote: HH:MM:SS:FF

[Marlene]

I did know that Ken but thanks for the clarification. Next thing you know someone else may read this and think they had it wrong.