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Question

My clips seem to have a mind of their own. I imported a number of captured clips, all taken with the same camcorder. The first batch "accepts" the cross-dissolve transitions with no problem, the clips of the second batch (bin) have an adverse effect on the cross-dissolve: its duration is reduced to 0.01 seconds, hardly enough to be noticed.
It feels as if there is something "repellent" in the clips from the second bin that seems to reject the cross-dissolve (or any other transition).
I don't even know how to pursue this.
Please help.
Barry

Answer 1

Thanks for the response, guys.
I really need to understand these principles because:
a) I don't really understand the mechanics of handles,
and
b) I don't understand the mechanics of sub-clips in relation to the same problem.
First of all, I think I solved my immediate problem by adding a V2 track in the timeline and dragging the recalcitrant clips over and under each other to have their ends/beginnings overlap each other. Maybe a 2 second average overlap.
The cross-dissolve works perfectly when I do that but I can see a possible future problem along the Timeline if I decide later to cut a clip on one of the video tracks and then have to deal with the gap not on the same line as what follows (is there a fix for that too?). Anyway, is that the way I am supposed to deal with transitions?
I am more comfortable working with just one video track if possible.
OK, handles. I really don't understand how they are accounted for. I can well understand that if my clip is only 2 seconds in duration, and I want to add a transition that will overlap each clip by one second, there's not much left to work with. I don't suppose there's some way to insert "handles" now?
But my clips are 4 seconds or longer, and I still have this problem (other than overlapping to solve it). I noticed that in FCP5 User preferences Editing tab provides for handles, x number of frames. Is that where the handles are inserted? And if I change that now, it probably doesn't affect everything that was already imported? And if that is the answer, how many frames is enough for an average transition of, say, 1 or 2 seconds?
Also, sometimes I insert a slug to use with a title. Slugs don't have handles, do they? I had the same problem with the slug as with the clips.
About subclips: didn't think about them in relation to transitions. Yes, some of my subclips were created by using the DV Start/Stop detect feature that created many, many, many subclips. Does that affect transitions?
In other footage, I simply ran the original footage thru and placed an occasional marker to divide the content, creating large and few sub-clips of 10 - 20 minutes duration. What's the difference in the affect of either method on the use of transitions?
Lots of questions, sorry. Would appreciate some help on this very confusing topic.
Thanks in advance.
Barry