Transition and logotype question

Question

1) I made a slideshow and imported it as a quicktime movie in FCP. Working fine, but at the end I made a motion clip with the logotype. When I try to insert a video transition between the movie and the motion clip it will not work. I also tried just to insert a normal image and make the transition but still there will not be a proper transition. Hard to explain but maybe it's just a simple explanation.?
2) When I make a logotype in photoshop (png file) and insert it to cover the movie down in the corner, I can not make the image longer then 1.04.07 minutes. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

My bad.
I totally forgot that FCP defaults to centered dissolves. It's one of my rants, and the short version is that I never use them for several reasons. But I'm guessing that you have one without, of course, realizing it. When you double click on the transition, let's say it's a dissolve, here's what you'll get, a diagram and choices of the event.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/129533/centered_dissolve.png
a dissolve that starts at the beginning of the event needs frames on the outgoing side. On the incoming side it already has all the frames it needs (unless your transition is too long).
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/129533/start_dissolve.png
an end dissolve needs frames, again, on both sides of the transition.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/129533/end_dissolve.png
you can change the way the event works by clicking on the little triangles I've pointed out.
You CANNOT have a transition longer than your footage. You do need to worry about handles. You've been fooled into a false sense of security by working with stills. They can be expanded to just about any length. Think about it. A still is only one frame in the first place. How is it that you can lay down several seconds of it in the timeline? The system just does that for you transparently. However, there is a limit, which can be changed. Your slide show is footage, actual video instead of stills. Same with your logotype animation. So you do have to take into account the handles and how the transitions will work.
as an aside: the centered dissolve is a holdover from cutting celluloid by hand. It was easier for us (yes, some of us have actually done this) to work this way when building A and B rolls (hey, that's where B-roll comes from). The traditional video dissolve starts at a cut and proceeds from there. It was derived from the fact that on tape (yes, and a few of us here spent years doing this too) you had to do a "match-frame" on A and B rolls of videotape and then when the tape was rolling at full speed perform the transition starting at that match point. Early in the digital non-linear game certain manufacturers who will remain nameless (but start at the beginning of the Alphabet) thought it would be "cool" to act like "film" and used centered dissolved. The NLE systems that led the pack did not, but they were designed by editors, not software engineers (love 'em, I really do). When FCP came along much, much later, they must have thought it was cool to have centered effects. I'm betting that's what's biting you right now. Sorry for not thinking of that earlier.
Robb