Look in the preferences. (The gear at the top of PD) Under editing is the option for transition behavior. Make sure your running build 2930 (click on the POWERDIRECTOR icon to view your version.) In the transition room click on the fade transition and in the middle bar click the apply to all button.

Here is the link for the latest version
http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/support/powerdirector/patches_en_US.html

All the preferences does is give you an overlay transition when you drag the fade between two elements. I'm looking for a way to do an overlay fade betweem all the elements in the main track, without having to drag fade between every element. Doing an apply fade to all gives the choice of pre, post, or cross. Overlay is not an available option that I can find. Would be delighted to be proven wrong however.

Look in the preferences. (The gear at the top of PD) Under editing is the option for transition behavior. Make sure your running build 2930 (click on the POWERDIRECTOR icon to view your version.) In the transition room click on the fade transition and in the middle bar click the apply to all button.

The information given about changing the transition option in Preferences is correct.

The information given as to how to find the transition "apply to all" is correct. If you chose "post" then you'll need to move the slider to the end of the clips/images you want the fade applied to.

"Overlap" (not overlay - just a mixup of names)is a type of transition and is changeable in preferences to "Cross".

FYI FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH...

After considerable testing and research it appears that the answer to the original question is -- no. There is no way to apply the overlap transiton to the whole track, or to a selection of elements in a track.

Here is a shareing of what the experimentation revealed. See attached visual aid.

CROSS
+ Does not shorten the track duration.
+ Sometimes results in "stop action" (jerky) transitions. Kind of a freeze-frame thing at the end of the first element. Example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ZK7tUrXqg
+ Sometimes get partial black screen for duration of transition
+ Can be applied to entire track (but not to a selection)

OVERLAP
+ Shortens the track duration. Good news - shorter YouTube videos. Bad news - PD sometimes looses it's mind keeping other tracks (like text) in sync with main track.
+ Can not be applied globally like OVERLAP. Must drag-drop each transition.
+ Renders smoothly without "stop action" affect.

NOTES
+ "Prefix" = beginning of first element in track
+ "Postfix" = end of last element in track
+ To get "apply all" buttons to appear, must select a transition, even though that transition is not used -- fade is the "apply all" transition.
+ The default transition type CROSS or OVERLAP is chosen in the the Preferences/Editing dialogue. The is the transition type that will be used when you drag-drop a transition between two elements.
+ Transition type can be swithced to the other type by right-clicking the transition. This can only be done individually, not en masse to more than one transition.

Perhaps someday CL will add OVERLAP to the drop-down apply-all transition button, along with CROSS. Until then the most productive (least time consuming) transition for tracks containing lots of elements is CROSS - FADE, as you can apply it in one fell swoop.

Did you place transitions of your choice in favorites? I didn't see it in your tests.

Perhaps, some day

I did experiment with transition favorites, but did not find a solution to the issue of apply/propogating an OVERLAP transition to multiple elements. Did I miss something?

Hi PDuser -

No - you missed nothing. OVERLAP transitions cannot be applied universally, whatever is set in preferences. All you can do is apply CROSS transitions, then change each one manually.

Cheers - Tony
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10-4

On overlap: 'Bad news - PD sometimes looses it's mind keeping other tracks (like text) in sync with main track.' Isn't this like, huge, and a project video-wrecker? Is there any way around it? I hate the cross-fade freeze-frame and the overlap screws up my audio when I need to overwrite with still images.