Can't fade in on connected clip

Question

Can't fade in on connected clip

Hi folks, and I'm going to apologize in advance for asking newbie questions and I appreciate you indulging me.

I'm trying to start my project with a fade in from black. I know the Cross-Dissolve has the "Transition to/from Black" feature, but it's grayed out in this case.

My hunch is that it's because I'm trying to do it on a connected clip, not on the "primary storyline", which raises the question of whether my entire approach here is wrong. (I tried putting a cross-dissolve on the primary storyline, and the transition to/from black feature is available there).

The core of my project is a multicam clip capturing a bunch of performing musicians and a primary audio track, all in sync. That audio track will be almost the exclusive audio for the entire project. And my plan is to cut-and-switch between angles in the multicam a good bit. So, I have placed this multicam clip on my primary storyline. That seems like a natural choice to me (although I confess I feel that what belongs on, above, or below the primary storyline is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I digress).

However, there is some "B-roll" footage that I would like to splice in as well. It's not synced to the audio and is therefore not part of the multicam. And so my plan was to place it above the primary storyline in various select places, using various masks and cross dissolves.

All this is fine, except at the beginning of the project where I want to fade in from black, and I want to do so immediately into one of these connected clips. But as I mentioned above, the "Transition to/from Black" feature is not available. So, the underlying studio video on the primary storyline bleeds through, as you can see in the GIF.

What I want to happen here is:

1) start with black

2) fade into the beach scene (currently, a connected clip)

3) audio starts (from the audio track in the multicam on the primary storyline; you can see the waveform)

4) then fade away from the beach and continue from there

Instead, you can see the studio video from the get-go. I could left-trim the studio video, but that actually shrinks the entire project (apparently because that's on the primary storyline). The other negative side effect is that it trims the audio track.

I guess I could apply an all-black mask to the studio video on the primary storyline as a workaround. But I'm more concerned that I'm missing something basic here and starting this project all wrong. Note that I will want to do a similar thing at the end of the project and probably other projects, so kludge solutions seem like a bad practice to get into...

Any suggestions? Is my workflow broken or should I just black out the studio video for a certain duration?

Mac mini

Posted on Aug 31, 2024 2:36 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

terryb

Level 4

2,602 points

Sep 11, 2024 8:12 PM in response to Dave Kitabjian

You're doing great Dave! The black that's under the beach clip really only needs to go until the first dissolve ends, but it doesn't hurt anything running longer. FCP is very good about knowing what clips are visible and not bothering about others.

If you remove the dissolve at the front of the beach clip and instead place the black clip before it, then dissolve between the black and beach, I think you could also get what you want.

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Answer 2

Sep 12, 2024 3:11 AM in response to Dave Kitabjian

Yes, your solution works, but as terryb said, a transition between the black and the beach clip would have worked also. What I think happened is that you placed the black outside the storyline, so the transition was not from black to beach but from nothing to beach.

An illustration (I am using a Curtain instead of your background and a placeholder instead of the beach).

This works (the Curtain does NOT show through during the transition):

This does NOT work (and is what I think you had):

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Answer 3

Sep 30, 2024 11:28 PM in response to Dave Kitabjian

Dave,

I think you understood it correctly.

This container is called a (secondary) storyline.

And yes, you'd need have the black and the beach clip inside the same storyline.

You can do this just by placing the two side by side, selecting them

and then pressing Command-G (or go to Clip->Create Storyline):

Alternatively, if the two clips are adjacent (no space between the two), you can select the edit point and add a transition there. Adding transitions to connected clips automatically creates storylines. You just need to clips to be side by side and with no space between them.

Also: if you already have a storyline and want to add clips that are not inside the storyline,

you can add clips to the storyline by dragging "into" it. It may need a little practice to get the target right:

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Answer 4

terryb

Level 4

2,602 points

Aug 31, 2024 3:57 PM in response to Dave Kitabjian

As Alchroma said, adding a black solid before the beach clip is probably the quickest and also most obvious way to see at a glance what's happening.

Another way is to set an opacity keyframe (of 100) on the multicam clip at some point after the the beach shot is up full, then move backward a few frames and drag the opacity slider down to 0 to set another opacity keyframe. If there's anything below the multicam, it will become visible but it looks like the bottom multicam is black at the beginning.

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Answer 5

Alchroma

Level 7

23,821 points

Aug 31, 2024 3:11 PM in response to Dave Kitabjian

Try adding a Black solid generator at the head of the beach clip:

Al

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Answer 6

Sep 11, 2024 5:14 PM in response to Alchroma

Okay, guys, thank you so much! And sorry for the delay. If it wasn't for my day job, I could do more of this!!

So thanks to you guys, I now learned about Generators, and how they are useful. You can see my result below. Sorry, I had to shrink it substantially to fit within the file size limit. The result is nice.

I saw that you both proposed putting the black prior to the beach clip, but that doesn't work. Once the playhead reaches the cross-dissolve, the studio clip below falls through and displays. I had to put the black underneath the beach for at least the full length of the cross-dissolve, as shown below, which worked.

Thanks again!

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Answer 7

Sep 30, 2024 6:03 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Luis, thank you. But I have a follow up:

"a transition between the black and the beach clip would have worked also."

I just don't get how to do this. And I don't even know the terminology to use here. But if you look at my gif and yours, do you see that gray bar that sits above your pair of clips and the transition between them? I don't know what that is, but I think I need to get my black inside that container, and I can't figure out how to do that; that's why in my example it sat next to it to the left and, as you said, didn't transition properly.

What is that gray bar and how do I insert something inside that container??

Thanks!

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