I said Add Transition Dang it! Stop fighting me! (FCP4)
 

New to FCP4.

I'm tired of fighting it. I'm a beginner with FCP 4. I try to apply a transition in-between 2 clips and sometimes it doesn't let me. What it's doing is only applying it to the beginning of the 2nd clip and not over lapping the two.

Please see Attachment. I've made a screen shot of what I'm talking about.
www.designsbymark.com/000/fcp4issue.gif

I know it's because of something I'm doing wrong. Does anyone else have/had this problem?

This is driving me in sane!!!

FCP needs you to have enough media in your clip available to make a transition.

When you set and in or out point on a clip for use with a transition, FCP assumes that the in point is the point at which you have wanted the transition to end by. This means that for a 1 second transition, you need 1 second of extra media in your clip before the in point to allow FCP to fade up to that point. Similarly, you need 1 second of trailing media on the outgoing clip.

This can be a little difficult at first, especially if you're used to the A and B track method of adding transitions. Double clicking on the transition will bring up an A / B track version showing you what's going on which may help you a bit.

Graeme

Also, make sure that your clips are butted up against each other with no empty black space between the clips. Expand the view on the timeline (zoom in) so that you can check this.

- don

Thanks Guys for the responce.

Your right, I had to have atleast 1 second before my IN point. After I did that it worked just fine.

Thanks a million.

Actually for a 1 second transition, you only need 15 frames PER SIDE (if working with a 29.97 timeline). So 1/2 second extra at the end of one clip and 1/2 second extra at the begginning of the next.

Very true.

That's if you are content with always using 1 second transitions.

- don

FCP's timeline limit is 4 hours (at least with older versions). So, you could kind of do the transition but you're stuck with the transition is 4 hour chunks.

But if you're talking about time lapse, FCP can definitely do it. You just need about 3 "days" on each side. :)

Mark,

When I switched from Premiere to Final Cut, the most difficult concept for me was the paradigm shift from A/B editing to Single Track editing. As a crutch, I would lay out clips between track 1 and 2, and add my transitions to the clips on track 2. Straight cuts would be layed out on the same track, but any time I needed to add a transition, I would shift the next clip to either the track above or the track below. This helped me get my bearings with Single Track editing.

Rick