How do I make this transition
 

I'm fading one clip to black 12 frames. Fading in the next 12 frames.

Is there a way to make this a transition. I don't have Pro. Ideally, I'd like to have the ability to input the frame rate but that's not important at this time.

Thanks,
Burt

Put the two clips together as a CUT. Then change the fade out of the left clip to 12 frames and the fade in on the right clip to 12 frames. To do that, just move the mouse to the upper left/right corner and it will turn into a quarter circle. Click and drag toward the center of the clip to do the fade.

Edward,
What I meant to say is how can I create a transition video effect that I can pull down from the Video FX tab. I am making this transition manually and use it a lot. I'd like to just pull it down from the tab between the clips and be done. As an enhancement, I'd like to be able to input the fade out/fade in but that's for another day.

Well, I can't help you much since you say you don't have pro and I'm not familiar with the differences.
One thing I WOULD say is that you can probably find a script to do that, but I doubt your version allows you to use scripts.
Otherwise, just keep doing manually :P
It's not all that long to do, unless of course you have to do it 50 times or something like that. Then I could definitely understand your need for a preset transition.

If you are planning on doing a lot of serious work, I would recommend trying out the trial for Vegas Pro. If it seems like something you could use, then buy it! It's a good investment, I promise ;)

David,
As I gain more confidence with Vegas I begin to see more reasons to upgrade up. I may wait until Pro goes 10. In the meantime, I'll continue the old fashioned way.

You could always write a plug-in (or get someone to write one for you) to do just that. It would be a very easy one to write. Just fade the source to black for the first half of the transition, then fade in the target from black for the other half. Of course, you'd still have to make sure your transitions default to the duration of 24 frames.

I'm not sure how often they upgrade, but Pro 9 came out what, about a year ago? Something like that... Let's see..I bought Pro 8 about a year and a half ago, and then just to piss me off a few months later the 9th one came out.. So yeah, that seems about right lol :P
Actually, I don't know if the cost is problem with you, but if it is you should consider waiting for Pro 10 to come out and THEN buy Pro 9 for a lower price. Just an idea.
The only version I've ever used is Pro 8.0c, and it more than does the job for me 99.9999% of the time, and I can only imagine Pro 9 being even better.
If you do get Vegas Pro, like I said, you'll really enjoy it. I spent some time learning the basics, and then once I hit more intermediate stuff I went on learning binge of sorts and studied the program intensely for about 3 months, resulting in me knowing about 90% of the program inside and out. But there's ALWAYS new stuff to figure out, and new ways to do stuff. It's truly a great program IMO. When I get my new desktop computer, I think I'll go with the Adobe Production Suite though. I like the idea of having a seamless workflow using different programs to accomplish different tasks. But that's just me.
Anyway, good luck with that!

I wonder if you could create an empty media 24 frames long, with bookend fades in/out 12 frames each.
Then you could perhaps drag or copy-paste that element on top of 2 clips butted up to each other?
Not positive if the fades will remain.

OR

with auto fade active, dropping a plain, 24 frame empty media on top of the cut should auto install the fades.

if that 24 frame empty media were in your media bin or avialable in explorer, it would just be a matter of dragging and dropping, not unlike dragging and dropping a transition.

And ten points go to Sam! (not sure what those points are for, but you can have them anyway :P)
That's probably the easiest way there is. And we were coming up with all the more complicated stuff. Sometimes intelligence isn't knowing how to do things, but rather knowing how to do them most efficiently :)

How about just overlapping the clips, go to the transitions tab, pick the "Dissolve" transitions, and use the "Fade through black" preset?

I agree with Edward that method works well with consumer 9 that I have on this machine, and it gives you the flexibility to easily make that transition longer or shorter at will, or to just leave it as a regular crossfade as needed. It also puts you in the frame of mind to know how much of each clip is involved in the transition, i.e. is there anything bad about the start or end of a clip that may be revealed during that extra time needed for the duration of the transition.

I mention that because you can also right click on the edge of any two clips that are butted against each other (a cut), and select a transition to be added that will automatically create the transition area. However that takes several additional clicks to achieve the same results as Edward's method of dragging a preset onto a pre-existing crossfade. (Nothing new will be revealed in the existing clips if you use a fade through black, but other transitions can show additional material at the end or start of a clip that wasn't visible when the edit was simply a cut.)

When using the "right-click on a cut" method to add a transition, the duration of the added transition and the placement of the center of the transition is selected in the Editing Preferences Menu.
So it might be useful if you're going back through a project with lots of cuts that you now want to convert to transitions, but if you're building up a project from scratch I think Edward's method is faster.

Edward's method did the trick. Since I was unaware of these options, I went through the entire menu of options and found the fade thru white to be equally useful for another project that I'm working on.

Many thanks for all of these suggestions,
Burt