Getting text to fade in/out over the main Video?
 

I know this is probably a dumb question. The issue is: getting text to fade in/out over the main Video without fading the main Video. Its easy to do in Vegas, you just put the text on the track above your main video track and apply fade in/out to the text clip. When I try this in PPro, the main video goes black and fades in with the text. The only solution seems to be using keyframes with the opacity on the text clip. Is there an easier way? Thanks

You do it the same way. You use the titler to make your text and put it above your clip. You can animate the opacity, or just drop a Cross Dissolve transition on each end of the title.

As Steven said, you do it the same way. Simply add the title to a track above your video, go to the head and tail of the title, making sure the sequence that the title is on is selected, and you can either manually add a cross or other dissolve from the effects palette or simply for a cross dissolve, hit cntrl+D which will add the default dissolve at the end of the clip. You have to be at the end, beginning or intersection/joining points of a clip in order for this to work. But you will then have independent control over your transition and it will fade out separate from your video track below..

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Thanks Damon and Steven. As I said, that is what I tried. I made the text in the PPro 1.5.1 titler and placed it on the video (2) track above the main Video (1) track. I then tried to drop a disolve on each end of the text "clip". When I played this back, my video would fade to black when it came to the spot where the text clip was on the track above, and then fade in with the text. Annimating the opacity worked fine, so I used that, but droping a disolve or fade "video Transition" on each end of the text clip would be easier/faster. From what you say it should work, so I don't know what I did, so I guess I will just see next time. Anyways, thank you both very much for responding. Take Care - Paul

Are you sure you didn't use "Dip to Black" instead of "Cross Dissolve"? The former would cause exactly the sort of problem you describe. I know; I've been there. More than once.

Hi Adam. I believe I tried the cineform crossfade-disolve, whatever there called - there is only 2 of them but there real time. I may have tried the dip to black as well. It is good to know not to use dip to black and that the way I was trying to do it should work. I am going to finish 2 projects I have going in Vegas 6, then in September I will be reformatting an d reinstalling Windows XP Pro along with Vegas 7, the new version of Cineform, and CS3. Hopefully everything will work a bit quicker then and I won't have to ask you fine folks so many questions, but I sure do appreciate the helpful Info. Thanks - PK