Cross-fading video without disturbing audio sync

[MJRinne]

Hi!

I'm trying to edit a music performance shot with multiple cameras, both video and still, using VS X4. I'd like to e.g. insert (full-screen pan & scan) still pictures into the video stream with video cross-fading in and out, but I cannot find a way to get a satisfactory end result without breaking audio/video synchronization.

I've tried the following:

a) Put the picture on the overlay track. If I now put cross-fades on the overlay track, the fades are to/from black, not between main track video and overlay still, which is not the desired result. It is expected functionality, though, so no bug there.

b) Put the picture on the same (main) track with the video. First, I split the audio to a separate audio track to keep it intact. Then I split a piece of video out using chapter markers as guides and replace the cut-out piece with a still picture of equal duration. So far audio sync remains fine. But if I now insert cross-fades into the main track, it gets out-of-sync with the audio with every cross-fade (video gets shorter, probably to compensate for the audio missing in the still pictures?), and it is really cumbersome to manually repair sync after every transition.

Would there be any way to get cross-fades in for multi-camera processing without messing audio synchronization? Some nice function key (press CTRL/SHIFT/ALT etc. while dropping the transition onto the overlay track to force it to process between the overlay and the main video track instead)?

I found a thread discussing the opposite issue (cross-fades on overlay tracks affect the main track), but not one on this topic. Please bear with a newbie and help me to a good thread, if this has already been covered.

Thanks!

[AussieTX]

If you wish to fade the picuture in the overlay track you can do it 2 ways....

1. Select your picture in the overlay track and then click on the options tag, attributes tab, and select the fade in or fade out icons. See first screen shot below.

2. If you are fading to a color (black) select this color and again the options tag, Mask and Chroma key, and set the transperancy of your black to a 99 making it invisible.

Trans.jpg (17.83 KiB) Viewed 1463 times

Hope this is what you were looking for.

[MJRinne]

The first option was the one! Many thanks! I don't know why I overlooked it in the first place.

Now let's hope I'll never want to process any other transitions than cross-fades between main and overlay tracks...

[AussieTX]

If you want to use other transitions other than just fade use option 2 above.
In the Overlay track transition to a color (or anything for that matter) and make the item you are transitioning to transparent.
That way you only see the overlay image outgoing with the transition effect.