10. Transitions

With this chapter, we make another transition—from editing to effects. The first half of the book covered techniques to help you tell your story. The second half examines ways to make your projects look and sound great!

So, it seems appropriate to me to make that transition by discussing transitions first.

Transitions Overview

At its simplest, a transition is a switch from one image or sound to another, to continue advancing the story. The reason we have so many different transitions to choose from is that each transition also contains an aesthetic meaning, or emotional impact.

Here are some examples:

• A cut is a change in perspective. You cut when you want the audience to see or hear something different. Cuts are generally, though not always, considered invisible.

• A dissolve is a change in time or place. You dissolve when you want to imply a shift from the previous scene and call attention to that shift in locale.

• A wipe is a break from the current scene into something totally different. You wipe when you want to forcefully interrupt the flow of the story.

Cuts and dissolves exist for both audio and video. Wipes, on the other hand, are visual only, although audio is increasingly using “whoosh” sound effects as the aural equivalent of a wipe.

A classic example of using wipes to break a story is in sports. A dramatic wipe—generally featuring a logo—flies out of the screen to make the transition from the real time of the game to the surreal world of replays: slo-mo, fast-mo, helmet-cam, grass-cam, blimp-cam, referee-cam, up/down/sideways-cam, then, whoops, wipe back to the action. The broadcaster uses the wipe to make the shift from reality to replay and back abundantly clear.

Handles Are Essential

Remember, in Chapter 8, when we talked about handles in trimming? Well, they are even more important when dealing with transitions. Handles are extra video before the Start and after the End. Handles are video contained in the clip, but not displayed in the Timeline (Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1 Handles are extra video before the Start and after the End point. A dissolve, like the two examples indicated by the Xs in the upper-right corner, can only be created using handles.

In the past, as the box in the top right shows, if you wanted to put a dissolve (or a wipe) between two clips, you would need enough extra video at the end of each clip for the dissolve (indicated by the X in the top image). Essentially, each clip needed handles equal to at least half the length of the dissolve. If one of the clips didn’t have sufficient handles, you could only dissolve if the other clip had enough handles for the entire transition (the X in the bottom image).

Final Cut Pro knows the importance of handles. In fact, when you select the Trim tool (T) and select a clip, the ends of the clip glow with one of two colors:

• Yellow means there is a handle at that end of the clip (Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.2 A yellow highlight indicates that the edge of the clip has handles. A red highlight indicates there are no handles.

• Red means there is no handle at that end of the clip.

In the past, a lack of handles meant you were out of luck trying to apply a transition, but Apple came up with a solution. In fact, FCP X gives you a number of new solutions. In this chapter, you’ll discover a new way to apply transitions to clips that don’t have enough handles, a new way of finding and applying transitions using the Transition Browser, new on-screen controls for manipulating transitions, the ability to apply keyframes to transitions, and a new Inspector for making changes to transitions.

Let’s start by resolving the issue of how to handle handles, first by looking at FCP’s Preferences.

Setting Preferences

You’ve heard the speech: “Final Cut Pro X was written from the ground up to support 64-bit memory addressing, multiple processors, and background processing!” But what does “background processing” mean?

Background processing means that while you are busy editing in the application, Final Cut Pro is working behind the scenes doing the heavy lifting of file and image processing. Most of the time, background processing is a good thing. However, every so often you may want to turn it off. (For example, when I do FCP X training live online, I turn off background rendering to make sure I don’t interfere with the live Internet feed originating from my computer.)

Go to the Final Cut Pro > Preferences > Playback tab. To turn off background processing, uncheck the Background Render checkbox. Generally, you should leave this on. Only turn it off when background processing from Final Cut Pro is interfering with other background processing—like live Internet streaming—that you need to run on your system. The “Start After” setting determines how long the system will wait before starting background processing. Personally, I find the default to be fine.

At the bottom of the Editing tab (I reduced the size of this screen to save space) are two settings that affect transitions (Figure 10.3):

• Default length is the duration, in hundredths of a second, of the default transition. Final Cut Pro defaults to a one-second duration, which I find too long. My preference is a 20-frame dissolve, which translates to 0.67 seconds at 30 frames per second. So, I changed the default to get the duration I prefer. (As a note, some transitions, such as Static, have a built-in default duration, which ignores this preference setting. You can override this duration once the transition is applied to a clip.)

• Apply Transitions using includes two options:

• Available Media. This is how Final Cut Pro has always worked. Transitions require handles. If you don’t have at least four frames of handles on each clip, no transition is applied. If the available handles are shorter than the requested transition, the transition will be shortened to fit the available handles. This is the traditional way of applying transitions. It never changes the duration of the Timeline.

• Full Overlap. This assumes handles are new to you, or you don’t know if you have sufficient handles. When you apply a transition to an edit point, regardless of how long your handles are, the downstream clip slides left under the transition to provide handles. Because this requires the downstream clip to shift left, this always changes the duration of the Timeline. Full Overlap ignores any handles on both outgoing and incoming clips.

Figure 10.3 Transition preferences are determined by these two options in the Editing tab.

My personal preference is Available Media. If you are having trouble understanding handles, use Full Overlap. Choose the option you want from this pop-up menu.

Rendering and Background Tasks

You may have noticed an orange bar above the clips at the top of the Timeline. That bar indicates something that needs to be rendered. If you watch it closely, after a few seconds it disappears. I’m glad it’s gone, but, um, what’s going on here? That disappearing bar shows that FCP is busy in the background, rendering your transition so that you don’t have to wait.

Rendering is one of those terms invented by geeks to intimidate the rest of us. To “render” simply means to “calculate.” It’s just that “calculating” doesn’t sound as scary as “rendering.” So when Final Cut Pro is rendering, it is simply calculating—in this case, calculating video. Thus, “I’m rendering this effect” means the same as “I’m calculating this effect.” Final Cut Pro needs to render—calculate—all transitions, effects, retiming, color correction, and anything that changes the clip from the original format in which it was shot.

Rendering in itself is not a bad thing; at some point the computer needs to create finished video based on what you are creating in your Project. The problem with rendering is the time it takes. In the past, you needed to wait for rendering to complete before getting back to work. Now, rendering happens in the background, while you’re able to continue working.

You can tell if a background task like rendering is running by looking at the clock in the Dashboard. Normally, when nothing is going on, the clock says 100% with a green circle. However, when background tasks start running, the clock changes color and displays the percentage of background tasks completed (Figure 10.4).

Figure 10.4 When the clock, on the left of the Dashboard, displays anything less than 100 percent that means background tasks are running.

To see the status of background tasks, click the clock face to display the Background Tasks window (Figure 10.5); or, if you must, press Command+9, but this is much less cool.

Figure 10.5 Click the clock or press Command+9 to open the Background Tasks window.

The Background Tasks window displays everything FCP is working on in the background, along with current status. This is a monitoring window, so feel free to click and twirl anywhere you like. If necessary, you can also use this window to pause or cancel currently running background tasks by clicking the icons on the far right of this screen.

Project Properties

There’s one other setting to consider as we talk about rendering: the video format of your render files. However, it’s not a preference setting, because it doesn’t apply universally. Instead, render settings can be different for each project.

This next option is very shy. To access Project Properties, choose File > Project Properties, or press Command+J. The Project Library appears, but nothing else.

Move your gaze over to just above the blue icon for the Inspector and you’ll see a wrench icon. Click it (Figure 10.6).

Figure 10.6 Click the wrench icon to access project properties.

This opens the Project Properties window (Figure 10.7). We first saw this in Chapter 2, when we created our initial Project. This is where you can change the name of a Project, as well as adjust other settings. In our case, the setting we are concerned about for rendering is at the bottom: Render Format.

Figure 10.7 Project Properties determine the video format for render files, among several other settings.

We have four choices:

• Apple ProRes 4444. The absolute highest image quality. Huge file sizes. Only use when you need an alpha channel, which we will discuss later in effects.

• Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). Really high quality. I recommend using this when your lenses cost more than your camera and you’re spending way too much time lighting a scene.

• Apple ProRes 422. The overall best choice, especially for less expensive cameras.

• Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2. For use when you need to render in a non-Apple format.

Apple’s Help documentation states: “Transcoding files to the Apple ProRes 422 codec creates high-quality files that are optimized for fast and efficient editing. Apple ProRes 422 provides better performance during editing, faster render times, better color quality for compositing, and faster export times when compared to many standard video codecs. Apple ProRes codecs produce video that is indistinguishable from uncompressed high-definition (HD) video and needs less storage space than uncompressed standard-definition (SD) video.”

Most of the time, I recommend using Apple ProRes 422. But you do have choices, and now you know where to find them.

Transition Basics

There are four ways you can apply a transition, in either the primary storyline or a connected storyline:

• Apply a matching audio and video transition.

• Apply a video transition with no matching audio transition.

• Apply an audio transition with no matching video transition.

• Apply an audio transition with a different duration than the video transition.

The first two are easy; the last two require additional work. Let’s start with the easy stuff.

Apply a Matching Audio and Video Transition

Let’s start with something simple—adding a matching audio and video transition between two clips in the primary storyline.

1. Using the Select (Arrow) tool, select the edge at an edit point, then press Command+T. Unlike FCP 7, you only need to select one edge, not the entire edit point.

This applies the default transition—a cross-dissolve to the video and a cross-fade to the audio—to the selected edit point (Figure 10.8). Both the audio and video transitions have the same duration.

Figure 10.8 This is a selected transition icon. Adjust its duration by dragging an edge left or right.

The transition is centered on the edit point, and this centering can’t be changed when using the keyboard shortcut. Nor can the default transition itself; it is always a cross-dissolve. However, as you’ll learn in a few pages, you can easily replace one transition with another once a transition is placed on the Timeline.

2. To modify the transition using the mouse, drag an edge of the transition. The small number box shows the amount of change to the duration (Figure 10.9). If an edge turns red, you have run out of handles and can’t make the duration of that transition any longer, though you can always make it shorter.

Figure 10.9 To change the duration of a transition, drag an edge. A red edge means you’ve reached the end of a handle.

3. To delete a transition, select it and press Delete.

If you delete a clip that has a transition attached to it, the transition remains after you delete the clip. If you want to delete both the clip and the transition, select both before pressing the Delete key.

Apply a Video-only Transition

Here’s how to apply a video-only transition between two clips:

1. Make sure the Timeline is showing both video thumbnails and audio waveforms, then choose Clip > Expand Audio/Video, or press Control+S.

The audio and video remain linked, but you can see them as two separate elements of the same clip (Figure 10.10).

Figure 10.10 Expanding the audio and video of two adjacent clips allows adding transitions to just the video. Notice the video Start is selected.

2. If you can’t see waveforms in the Timeline, go to the Switch for the Timeline and six icons appear at the top. Click one of the four icons on the left (Figure 10.11). If you select one of the two icons on the right, waveforms will not be displayed, even if you expand a clip.

Figure 10.11 If you can’t see waveforms, use the Switch to display them.

3. Select just the video portion of the edit point and press Command+T.

A video-only cross-dissolve is applied to the selected portion of the edit point (Figure 10.12).

Figure 10.12 A transition is applied just to the video edit point between two clips.

4. As you learned, you change the duration by dragging an edge of the transition to make the duration longer or shorter. To delete the transition, select it and press the Delete key.

5. You can collapse the clip back into its solitary state by choosing Clip > Collapse Audio/Video, or pressing Control+S (Figure 10.13). However, if you do so, you can’t tell whether the transition you applied to the clip is video and audio, or just video.

Figure 10.13 Here’s a collapsed clip with just a video transition applied.

For this reason, although you can collapse clips, if you are doing video-only transitions, I recommend that you don’t.

Apply an Audio-Only Transition

There are two ways to apply an audio-only cross-fade: manually, using fade handles; or automatically, using a transition. I prefer this manual method and here’s how it works.

1. Select the two clips between which you want to apply the transition.

2. Choose Clip > Expand Audio/Video (or press Control+S).

3. Drag the edge of the outgoing clip to the right, to overlap it with the incoming clip.

4. Drag the edge of the incoming clip to the left, to overlap it with the outgoing clip.

5. Drag the fade handle for each clip to cross-fade from one clip to the next.

6. If necessary, right-click a fade handle to change the shape of each fade.

This process of using fade handles to create transitions can be used for any audio clips, either on the primary storyline, connected clips, or connected storylines. The benefit of this approach is that you have complete control over the duration and shape of the fade. Plus, for clips in the primary storyline, you don’t have to disconnect the audio from the video, which means you don’t run the risk of losing sync between audio and video. The only disadvantage of this approach is that it takes more steps than simply selecting an edit point and applying a transition.

Advanced Transitions

Transitions require clips to be contained in storylines. So far you’ve spent most of your time with the primary storyline. Now you’ll learn about connected storylines.

Connected Storylines

A connected storyline is a collection of clips connected to the primary storyline. A connected storyline can be one or more clips, audio only, video only, or both audio and video.

To add transitions to individual audio clips, you need to either use fade handles or convert them into connected storylines.

1. To manually convert a clip, or clips, into a connected storyline, select the clip(s) you want to convert and choose Clip > Create Storyline, or press Command+G. A dark gray bar appears over the top of the selected clip(s) indicating it is now a storyline (Figure 10.14).

Figure 10.14 The dark gray bar over a clip, or clips, indicates it’s a connected storyline.

2. Select the edge of the clip where you want the transition to appear—or select the entire storyline to apply transitions to all edit points at once—and press Command+T.

The default transition appears at the selected edit point. You can modify the duration by dragging an edge.

3. As usual, delete a transition by selecting it and pressing Delete.

Detaching Audio for Transitions

In the last section, I showed how to create an audio cross-fade using fade handles. Now I want to show how to create an audio transition using transitions. (After you see this, you’ll use the fade handles method, too.)

To apply a transition to audio, you need to convert the audio clips into connected storylines. (While the 10.0.1 release of FCP X will convert connected audio clips into connected storylines, it does not do so for clips on the primary storyline.)

1. Select the clips where you want to add an audio transition, and choose Clip > Detach Audio, or press Shift+Control+S. The audio separates from the video and becomes a connected clip (Figure 10.15). In this example, I have two connected audio clips attached to the video on the primary storyline.

Figure 10.15 Detaching audio from video is another way to apply an audio transition.

2. With the latest 10.0.1 release, the process is simple: Make sure the Apply Transitions preference is set to “Available Media,” then select the edit point between the two detached audio clips where you want the transition applied and press Command+T. This automatically converts the two connected audio clips into a connected storyline and applies the transition (Figure 10.16).

Figure 10.16 These two audio clips, converted to a connected storyline, have an audio transition applied.

3. Change the duration of the transition by dragging an edge. An audio transition icon looks the same as a video transition icon.

4. As usual, delete the transition by selecting it and pressing Delete.

If you want to “reconnect” the audio and video elements, including the transition, select the detached clips and choose File > Create compound clip, or press Option+G. Once you’ve detached audio from video, you can’t reattach it, except by using a compound clip.

In addition to selecting an audio edge and pressing Command+T, you can add a fade-in or fade-out to an audio clip simply by dragging the fade handles. Change the duration of the fade by dragging one of the dots at the edges of the clip (Figure 10.17).

Figure 10.17 Dragging the audio fade handles at either end of a clip allows you to add a fade up, or fade down, to each clip. And, if the clips overlap, you can use this to create audio cross-fades.

Trimming Clips Under Transitions

One of the nice features in Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro Express, that carried forward into FCP X, is the ability to trim clips even after a transition is applied. Here’s how.

After you add a transition, look in the top left and right corners; each has a faint icon, as does the top center (Figure 10.18). The corners allow you to ripple edit the outgoing clip (left) or the incoming clip (right).

Figure 10.18 There are three icons that allow you to trim the clips under a transition.

The top center icon allows you to move the edit point itself—a Roll trim—simply by dragging, as seen here. You can also use the Trim tool to slip the content of a clip, without changing the location or duration of the transition. The nice thing is that trimming the clips does not affect the duration of the transition.

If the clips are in the primary storyline, you can also trim using the Precision Editor after a transition is applied to an edit point. Press Control+E to open the Precision Editor (Figure 10.19).

Figure 10.19 You can trim both edit points and transitions using the Precision Editor.

Using the Precision Editor, which we covered in Chapter 8, you can ripple trim the edge of either clip, roll the edit point to a different location, or adjust the duration of the transition. All you need to do is drag an edge. The key point here is that it is easy to make changes to any part of the edit quickly and easily.

Transition Inspector

As you learned in Chapter 9, the Inspector is where you make changes to all your effects. It is context-sensitive, so it changes depending on what you select in the Timeline. While you generally don’t need this during editing, it is essential for all effects.

For example, select a transition in the Timeline and click the Inspector icon, or press Command+4. The Inspector window opens, displaying the settings you can change for this transition (Figure 10.20). As you’ll see, other transitions—specifically wipes—provide many more settings you can play with. In this case, you have adjustable settings for both video and audio.

Figure 10.20 The Inspector is where you make changes to all transitions and effects.

Click the word Normal and discover all the different ways you can change the look of a dissolve (Figure 10.21).

Figure 10.21 You can even change the look of a dissolve using this pop-up menu.

The nice thing about these different looks is there is nothing to adjust. If you like them, they are good; if not, change them to something that you like better. The default setting is Normal.

Just as you can set fade shapes on the audio fade handles, you can also set fade shapes on audio transitions using the Inspector (Figure 10.22). The settings do exactly what you learned in Chapter 9—only here you choose from a menu, not the icon you used when changing shapes in the Timeline.

Figure 10.22 You also use the Inspector to change the shape of audio fades.

My recommendation is to choose Linear when fading to or from black, and choose +3dB when fading between two different audio sources. However, each of these four settings has value, so feel free to experiment to find what sounds best to you.

It’s interesting—I’ve spent all these pages talking about exactly one transition: a cross-dissolve, or cross-fade. Yet, Final Cut Pro has almost 100 different transitions you can use for your Projects. The cool part is that you already know how to apply and adjust them. But, um, you don’t know where to find them.

That brings you back to the Browsers—which is where you will be spending a lot of time for the rest of this book. Let’s take a look, now, at the Transition Browser.

Transition Browser

Like all Browsers, the Transition Browser allows you to find, review, and select elements you can use for your Projects—in this case, transitions. This is where the fun part of using transitions kicks in—there are dozens of transitions to choose from. Since all the browsers work the same, let me illustrate how they work using the Transition Browser as the example.

1. To open the Transition Browser, click its icon; there is no keyboard shortcut for this, though you can create your own in the Command Editor (Figure 10.23).

Figure 10.23 All Browsers are grouped in the Toolbar. Click the Transition Browser icon to open it.

2. On the left are different transition categories. Click a category and all the transitions in that category are displayed on the right. This screen shot has the Wipes category chosen (Figure 10.24).

Figure 10.24 The Transition Browser. The Wipes category is chosen in the Categories column, showing nine different wipe transitions.

The Transition Browser displays individual transitions on the right. Skim across a few of these thumbnails and you’ll see a preview of the effect—both in the thumbnail and in the Viewer above.

3. To search for a specific wipe, enter the text you want to search for in the Search box at the bottom, and the results will display in the Browser.

4. To reset the Search box to empty, which displays all transitions again, either delete the text you entered or click the reset icon—an X in a circle on the right side of the search box.

There are two ways to apply a transition from the Browser:

• Drag the transition from the Browser to the edit point.

• Select the edit point first, then double-click the transition inside the Browser.

Whichever you pick, the new transition is applied to the edit point. Then you can change its duration, copy it, move it, delete it; all the things I’ve talked about earlier in this chapter for dissolves also apply to any transition in the Transition Browser.

You can also replace one transition with another by dragging the new transition on top of the old one. This is just like a Replace edit. The new version inherits the same duration and location as the old transition.

As you’ll quickly discover, many of these transitions are animated. As a general rule, be careful of using too many different animated transitions in one Project—it starts to look like a video ransom note. As much as possible, strive to give your Project an overall consistent visual style.

Animate Transitions

This transition animation is controlled from two places: the Inspector and on-screen controls in the Viewer. Let’s take a look at both.

1. First, apply a transition to two clips. For example, from the Objects category, I applied a Star transition to two clips (Figure 10.25).

Figure 10.25 Here’s a star transition applied between two clips.

2. With the Star transition selected, look in the Inspector to see all the controls available—far more than the simple dissolve we looked at earlier (Figure 10.26). (Since this is a video transition, I did not capture the audio controls in this screen shot, but they are available in the Inspector as well.)

Figure 10.26 Use the Inspector to modify the settings for a transition. Animated transitions have more controls than a simple dissolve.

3. Play with a few of these settings so you can see what they do. Under Edge Treatment, for example, you can change the edge from feather to border, and set its width. One setting is the Center Point, which determines where the center of the transition starts. You could adjust the position by typing numbers in the Inspector, but it is much easier to use the on-screen controls in the Viewer. The on-screen controls let you change the position of an effect as well as other parameters, which vary by effect.

The large, round white circle determines position (Figure 10.27). Drag the ring and the center of the effect moves; in this example, I’m moving it to the right, to reveal the runner.

Figure 10.27 On-screen controls provide a faster and easier alternative to the Inspector. Drag the large white circle to change the position of the selected image.

But there’s a feature in FCP X that you haven’t had before—the ability to add keyframes to a transition to animate it over time. For instance, let’s say I want this star to spin as it transitions from one clip to the next. To do that, you use keyframes.

4. Using the arrow keys, move the playhead so it is over the first frame of the transition. The large L angle bracket in the lower-left corner of the Viewer indicates you are on the right spot; it marks the start of the incoming clip.

5. With the playhead on the first frame of the transition, go to the Inspector and, as you roll your mouse over the word Rotation, a gray keyframe button—a diamond—appears on the right side. Click it to set a keyframe at the position of the playhead.

When a keyframe is at the position of the playhead, the keyframe button turns gold (Figure 10.28). Note that keyframes are always set for specific parameters, not for the transition in general.

Figure 10.28 Click the diamond to add a rotation keyframe to the selected transition at the position of the playhead. Notice the rotation setting of 0.

6. Again, using the arrow keys, position the playhead so it is over the last frame of the transition. The J angle bracket in the lower-right corner of the Viewer indicates you are in the right spot; it marks the last frame of the outgoing clip.

7. Set another keyframe for rotation—remember, you always work with keyframes in pairs—and in this example, I entered a Rotation value of 180. This means that during the transition, the star will rotate 180 degrees (Figure 10.29). As you play through the transition, you see the transition rotating, just as expected.

Figure 10.29 You always add keyframes in pairs. Here, a second rotation keyframe is added at the end of the transition with the value set to 180.

This ability to add keyframes to transition parameters is very new and very cool!

Special Case: Multi-Image Transition

There is one special-case transition I want to cover before we wrap this chapter—a multi-image transition. Although these only work in the primary storyline, these create a very interesting effect, which I want to show you.

1. Search for the Pan Lower Right transition from the Stylized category. It contains multiple images on screen—specifically, six. Two are at the point of the transition, and the other four are randomly chosen from the clip before and after.

2. Select the transition, and the special yellow markers used by this transition appear. What you want to do is move these markers so you can select a better set of pictures to use in the transition (Figure 10.30).

Figure 10.30 The yellow markers indicate where images will be taken for use in the transition. Each marker number corresponds to a specific image in the transition.

3. To do that, drag a marker until it displays the image you want in the Viewer.

You can even position markers over different clips—in the primary storyline—to add even more variety to the transition.

Summary

With dozens of transitions to choose from, it’s easy to indulge in “spot the stars” transition casting. However, try to avoid showing off every transition in the program in your Project! A consistent visual feel is always the best option. When in doubt, use a dissolve.

This chapter has introduced two new concepts that we will be working with for the remainder of the book: the Inspector and Browsers. In the next chapter, we’ll take what we learned here and apply it to adding titles to our Project. For now, though, give yourself permission to play—you’ve worked hard to get to this point. Time to relax and enjoy yourself with some of these transitions!

Keyboard Shortcuts