Crossfade timing?

[Brain Champagne]

I want to have a clip fade to black, then the next clip fade in.

I understand there's no feature that does this, that crossfade merges the two.

I tried crossfade over a black clip but it didn't both fade out and fade in, it just faded in.

So... I put in a two second black clip in between the two.

A one second fade to black on that clip followed by crossfade for one second.

The fade in part is fine but the fade out seems to be all black in 10 frames instead of taking all 30 frames (1 second) to fade out.

What am I doing wrong? (or is it the software?)

[Black Lab]

A transition simply makes the two adjoining clips overlap each other. So a 1 second crossfade overlaps a half second and the end of the first clip and a half second at the beginning of the next clip. If either of the adjoining clips are a half second long or shorter, the transition will automatically be trimmed to fit. Sounds like that could be your problem.

[Brain Champagne]

That's not it. Even just the 1 second fadeout-- if I go frame by frame I can see that ten frames in it's black. It doesn't take all 30 frames to completely fade out.

[mitchell65]

That's not it. Even just the 1 second fadeout-- if I go frame by frame I can see that ten frames in it's black. It doesn't take all 30 frames to completely fade out.

Then drag the lead edge of the transition to the left to cover as many frames as you wish!

[Brain Champagne]

I don't understand-- which transition? I can't drag the cross-fade (which is really just a fade-in) to the left to overlap the fade out.

[Black Lab]

Let's just clarify. You have the following:

video clip A > 1 sec. crossfade > 2 sec. black clip > 1 sec. crossfade > video clip B

Is that correct? How long are the 2 video clips?

[Brain Champagne]

Okay, I think I fixed it-- two seconds of black between clips. A one-second cross-fade (which JUST fades OUT) followed by ANOTHER one-second cross-fade (which just fades IN). Seems to do what I want.

Don't know why they can't add an effect that's Fade to black (fade out) followed by Fade In, as one effect. If I wanted things to be complicated and still not work I'd be using something by Microsoft.

[Brain Champagne]

To answer your questions-- the clips are much longer than a few seconds.

I have Clip A
2 second black
Clip B

on top of the black are 1 sec crossfade and another 1 sec crossfade.

In the language I speak, cross-fade means fade out one clip as the other one fades in.... but that's not what it does here.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Brian

What version of VS are you using, and are you Pal or Ntsc

Edited
Change the black duration to 3 seconds

There is also a Fade to Black transition in the FX section

[Brain Champagne]

VS 12.0.98.0 Pro (trial version) on WinXP in the US (NTSC).

I want one second fade to black then another second un-fade from black, which I think I accomplished via 2 seconds of black covered by next-to-each-other 1 second crossfades.

[mitchell65]

If I wanted things to be complicated and still not work I'd be using something by Microsoft.

But I thought you said it did work and if this is the most complicated aspect of Video Editing you come across you will be extremely fortunate IMHO

[Brain Champagne]

I got it to work, that's not the same as saying that it worked as it was supposed to.

Cross-fade means fade out then fade in, not 'pick one at the whim of the software.'

[Ken Berry]

To my mind, cross fade means precisely that: fading across -- so that as one clips fades out the other begins to fade in. I do not expect it to go totally black for a period, regardless of how brief that period is...

[Brain Champagne]

Okay, but that's not what it did with one crossfade.

It faded one clip out then CUT to the other clip from a black frame.

[rguthrie]

Brain,

Just so I know I'm understanding you, you're saying that the first crossfade faded out to black, but for the second crossfade, from black to video b), it just went from black in one frame to video in the next?