Simple way to do fade to blacks between multiple events?
 

I have a project that needs fade-to-blacks followed by fade-ins from black at numerous points in the timeline. Is there a simple way/key command to create fade-outs followed by fade-ins without having to do them all by hand/mouse. Maybe creating one and copying it over as an effect?

Tony

Do you mean something other than pulling the upper corner of the clip left or right for fade in or fade out?
I can't think of anything easier or quicker than that. Any preset would be more work.

Don

Yes, right now I have to do that over and over and over. I'd like to do it once and then be able to apply that to multiple clips (like you can with audio fades).

Tony

View - Video Bus Track will show you the "master" video fader.
Right click on this track header and insert the "fade to color" envelope. Add points and drag down/up as desired like you would on an audio track.

Thanks Mike, I'll try that. What I was hoping for was something like drawing one fade out-in and then saving that action as a preset and pasting it into all other places I needed fade-outs/ins.

Tony

You might look at scripting. A script can create fades for you. Then you could simply select the desired events and run the script to make fadeouts on all those events.

Thanks Edward, that's more what I was looking for. I have Excalibur and Ultimate S and looked in those but wasn't able to find such a script. Do you know of any such video fade-creating scripts or anywhere I could look for one?

Tony

P.S. Never mind, I just found one at VASST that was just posted recently!

Excalibur can do it. Just look at the Fade tool. You can specify whether to control the Fade In,Fade out, length of fade, type of fade, etc... It's the first tool on the Event tab.

Thanks Edward, I'll check it out. I just tested the one I found at VASST and it works great too. I put it on a key command so it's very fast to use.

Tony

Excalibur? and After HDV project SD projects Blurry
 

Hi Edward, What and where do you get/ find out about Excalibur. Must be some sort of plugin I suspect?

Unrelated, but I've been working on a HDV project (it has some SD clips mixed in too). It all looks good in the preview (even the SD part). When I leave this project and go back to ANY of my SD projects - they are all extremely blurry. I've checked settings for project and clips. They are all DV widescreen 720x480-they were shot on panny gs400 in widescreen. Restarting Vegas and the computer do not help. Have you ever seen this before? Thanks - PK

Yes, it's a script plugin that can be found at http://www.jetdv.com/excalibur

The other script tool mentioned by Paul, Ultimate S, can be found at vasst.com

Note that the Video Bus fade to colour envelope is the only way to fade to digital black with Vegas.

The lack of consideration for digital/broadcast black in Vegas is one of the things that I think is a major issue. All it would need is a Digital black baseline option to be ticked in the project properties.

As it is I get rather fed up of having to bring things back into legal range manually when I shouldn't really need to.

That's not necessarily true. Although the standard method of fading will, technically, fade to "transparent", you can always add another track at the bottom of your project, add a solid color generated media, and set the color however you wish - including "broadcast black".

Of course you're right Edward, but Simon's point is dead on. If you have 30 tracks of composite, you have to manually fade all 30 at the same point via one method or another, to fade to a track. It would have been much more simple on the user to have Setup added in Prefs, IMO. It's certainly been requested.

Edward, aside from the extra points that Doug makes, there is another reason why adding a separate broadcast black track is not desirable. Try adding the Magic Bullet Misfire Vignette filter for example and then fading the clip to the broadcast baclk track beneath it. You will see the effects of some absolutely hideous banding as it fades. Not only that but the vignette itself doesn't look very good either even before fading. This happens with other methods of vignetting too.

I've had all sorts of problems in the past when I've tried that.

For serious use in broadcast Vegas really does need to make such things as easy and as painless as possible.