Re: Video fade only

I have a clip where I want the video to fade in from black while having the audio come in from the start of the clip (no fade).

Still new to FCP (ex-Premier) and cannot figure this out...?

Here's what I did:

Go to the First Frame of the clip, mark a keyframe in the Compositing/Opacity at the bottom of the Inspector (Cmd + 4) and set the Opacity to 0%.
Then, go down to where you want the Fade In to be full-up, mark another keyframe in the Opacity and reset the Opacity to 100%. Leave the audio on the clip alone.
You can also do this by opening up Video Animation (Control + V) and Option clicking on the Compositing/Opacity line and marking a keyframe. But you still have to set the Opacity levels in the Inspector.

If you want to fade the audio up as well, use the handle on the audio part of the clip and drag it forward.

Phil

Thanks for your help today Phil. I must be missing something in your instructions. I set the play head at the head of the clip, open the Inspector, slide the opacity to 0 and clk the "add a keyframe" icon.

I then set the play head at what will be my 100% spot, slide the opacity to 100%, clk the "add a keyframe" icon and... the opacity immediatelly slides back to '0'.

What am I missing here?

OR!

Find a solid black generator in the Generators tab. Drag on top of the video you wish to fade in. Put a dissolve where the generator ends. Now it fades from black to whatever is underneath.

Matthew,

Without moving the position from where you set it at 100%, try raising it back to 100% after it slides back to 0%. Reset the keyframe.

If that doesn't work:

Sometimes, FCP X acts buggy. In order to correct it, close out, hit Option + Command + FCP X and Delete Preferences.
See if that makes FCP X act normally.

Let me know what happens.

Phil

Phil,

Seems that you only set the keyframe the first time when setting to 0 on the first frame. When relocating the play head to the 100& location in the clip, it seems you just need to slide the opacity back up to 100 without clicking the keyframe icon.

That seems to work. I do seem notice a difference in the way the fade come up this way compared to using the fade to color tool. Interesting...

Thanks!

Joe: tried the 'black' generator with the dissolve. Created the dissolve in the audio as well as the video.

Hi Matthew,

Select the start of the first clip and press CMD+T to add the default Cross Dissolve.
Then press CTRL+S to expand the audio and drag on the audio fade handle to get rid of the audio fade.

If you want a different visual fade-up you can add the Fade to Color transition instead of the default Cross Dissolve. Both transitions yield different visual results, and both transitions can be further customized in the Inspector > Video tab.

Phil's and Joe's solutions will work fine as well, so you have a lot of choices (-:

Best wishes,

Ronny

Ronny,

I gave your method a try: after I added the dissolve to the video, I expanded the audio. I could see the fade from the Dissolve which had been applied to the audio track even though the fade handle was positioned to the left (pic #1). However, when I dragged the fade handle over the audio fade all the way to the head of the clip, the fade reappeared (pic #2). The only way I could eliminate was to drag the fade handle a tiny bit forward so it was not technically a full fade from the head of the clip.

Phil

Hi Phil,

You are correct, this is a little bug that needs to be addressed. You can drag the audio fade handle to change the audio fade independently of the video dissolve, but when you drag it to zero it will often (not always) revert to its original state. Dragging it to +1, as I did in the screenshot, gives you a 1 frame dissolve which is the same as having no dissolve at all.

Best wishes,

Ronny

A +1 audio fade is not the same as having no audio fade at all. That first frame of audio will be at 50% volume. And yes, it absolutely makes a difference. I will often do audio fades of +1 or -1 so make bad audio cuts sound smoother. It works.

If the start of your audio is so tight that you think you actually will hear a 1 frame fade in, all you need to do is zoom in a little bit on the timeline and then drag the audio fade handle. As FCP X works with audio on sub frame level this will create a fade-in that is much less than 1 frame. In the screenshot you see a fade-in of 100th of a frame, which is absolutely unnoticeable. But again, you only need to do this if you cannot drag the audio handle to zero, which in most cases you can when you are zoomed in.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Phil. Ronny, Joe,

Thanks for your interest and feedback. I will play with these different approaches to see how they differ in the way the fade is presented and in terms of what seems to work best in differnet editing situations.

Much appreciated!

Cheers ~
Matthew