Synchronizing Fade-to-Black With Audio Fade in VS8

[frank1492]

Let's say we have two successive clips with a fade to black transition between them. (I am just understanding that the first clip will fade down to black and the next will fade up from black, both accomplished with one fade to black transition.) I also understand how to change the length of this transition. What I am having trouble with is a fade of the audio to exactly correspond to the video fade. (I do understand how to change the video fade duration default in "preferences.") I think I have applied reasonable logic here. I tried a 3 second audio downfade followed by a 3 sec audio upfade, and a 6 second fade to black between the clips, but it didnt seem to work exactly right. Obviously I am missing some details here. Can someone help?
Another problem is that I sometimes want longer black. Will this require "sandwiching" a black color clip between two fade-to-blacks?
I'm not a complainer, and I like this program, but as a novice I would
expect this kind of transition would be among the most common anyone would want to do, because it is a Hollywood staple. Yet there doesn't seem to be a facility to do this without a hassle.
Thanks again.
Frank Pfeiffer, Worcester, MA, US

[Ron P.]

Hi Frank,

This is something that as you are learning, you have to play around with to get the timing down. However just to try it, I loaded 2 of the stock clips (Sampl-V01 &02) into the timeline. I then placed a 3 sec black color clip between them. The transition used was a 1 sec Cross-Fade, between the video clips and the color clips. Then I looked at the duration of my clips, and added a Smartsound clip, set the duration for 8 secs (my video clip was 8 secs including the cross-fade and ½ of the color clip. This was repeated with a second Smartsound clip, which I butted up against the first sound clip. Then I simply clicked the Fade-In/Fade-out for each sound clip. The first clip faded when my video faded, and the second faded in with the video... Lucky I guess..

[frank1492]

Thanks Ron. I tried fade-to-black (FTB), black color, FTB and that seemed to work, but your approach (crossfade, B, CF) makes more sense.
Now to the sound. I guess I don't know what a Smartsound clip is.
Can't you just use trial and error with different fade-out, fade-in default durations for first and second video clips? ActuallyI would think that if you made those default durations the same as the CF durations, that would be perfect.

[Ron P.]

Smartsound is the "Auto Sound" that comes with VS. I just used them for my experiment. As you stated, through trial and error you can achieve a synchronized fade-out and fade-in for any sound or music tracks.

You can also adjust the fades using the Rubber-Band method. Instructions can be found on page 110 of the manual..