Hi there -

You sound like you have a reasonably efficient process happening there. Copying & pasting is always going to lose the very first & last transitions. There's no way around that, to my knowledge.

Here's how I'd approach it:
1. Make a project for your intro & outro sequences (you already have that)
2. Make a separate project for each gymnast's routine. Save it.
3. Open your Intro/Outro project
4. Place the scrubber/cursor at the end of the intro (about 00:00:23:00)
5. Go to File > Insert Project & bring in (say) Rebecca's routine - it will be inserted wherever the scrubber is placed.
6. Save project as "??? Rebecca"
7. Insert transitions at start & end of Rebecca's routines.

That's probably pretty much what you're already doing.

Cheers - Tony
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That's pretty similar to my approach, except I just swap the video segments after doing a Save As for the next girl. The main reason this is such a challenge is that the guts do their routines in rotation - meaning that everyone does uneven bars, then everyone does beam so I have to manually create the routine sequence for each gymnast.

That's where I was hoping to find some automated approach, or at least some way of not having to recreate the transitions every time.

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I see your difficulty.

Do you shoot separate segments for each gymnast? e.g. At the beam - Rebecca (record/stop) - Melissa (record/stop) - Julia (record/stop)... that would make it easier in editing as you could just import all the "Rebecca" clips together.

The way I figure it (could easily be mistaken), you should only have to add 2 transitions:
1. after the intro sequence
2. after the gym routine

Cheers - Tony
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Basically, I record Rebecca doing bars. Stop. Record Taylor doing bars. Stop. I do this for 11 gymnasts on 4 events at each meet (actually 5, since they do 2 vaults and I just pick the best one). So I end up with 55 individual performance/event videos. I import the entire folder and just pull in the videos from one gymnast and place them in the timeline, but I can't preserve the transitions that I want to use in each video.

However, this gives me an idea: If I record an entire event - like uneven bars - as a single video, then I *should* be able to make a master video with all the transitions using just the 4 "all gymnasts" video segments - i.e transition from opening to vault, vault to bars, bars to beam, beam to floor, then floor to outro. Then I would trim each event's video to show whichever gymnast I need for each video, which should keep the tranistions in place!

I think that might save me some real time

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Hi optodata -

I'm not sure that what you've suggested will save you time... in fact, you might create more work for yourself!

Attached is a screen capture of what I was talking about. Note that all "internal" transitions remain as they were. The only transitions that you'd need to add would be after the intro & before the outro.

Cheers - Tony

Whoops - forgot the attachment
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Thanks for the great video! I see exactly what you're talking about, but how does this solve the problem of having to (re)create the "internal" transitions for each girl? You show the compete transitioned segment being added to the "standing" intro and outro, which is nice, but it's the whole part about creating what you're adding that's the time suck.

Am I missing something?

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I think you may be (missing something), but perhaps it's because of the slightly different approach you're taking.

Let's say you have a project, with all Rebecca's clips complete with transitions... it's saved as "Rebecca"

Then there's your "template" project with your intro & outro... it's saved as "Master"

1. Open "Master"
2. Place scrubber at end of intro (00:00:23:00)
3. Go to File > Insert Project
4. Navigate to "Rebecca".pds - select & insert
- all the transitions between Rebecca's clips should still be there!
5. Add transition after intro & before outro
6. Save project as "Rebecca_1" (or whatever)

I hope that clears it up.

Cheers - Tony

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I understand. You've been very thorough and persistent and it looks like I may have mangled my description of the problem a bit.

Everything you've described makes perfect sense, and what I'm trying to do is create all of those individual "clips complete with transitions" using a template or some other method of easy near-duplication - that's where all my time is spent.

The magic solution I'm looking for is for me to create one "Rebecca's routines" segment with its 4 or 5 individual clips and transitions, then somehow use that to make Taylor's and Lizzie's, etc. "individual clips with transitions" without having to create each girl's routines segment from scratch and putting in the same transitions each time I pull the new clips in.

Once that was done, I'd implement your "finishing" approach so that all the complete videos would start and end with the same footage.

Does that help explain what I'm looking for? If it does, can you see why it might work to use a single long shot for all girls on each event, insert the transition from the intro to and between each event and then to the outro, and then trim it to show only Rebecca's events? I'd essentially be working with one video the whole time - merely changing the subject and producing that video for each gymnast.

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Hi again -

Yes - I do understand your workflow as you described it. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no way to avoid the time & effort it takes to produce a large number of videos (similar in structure though they are).

PD cannot create a template where clips are just popped in & transitions instantly applied. The process I suggested is the most efficient method I can think of.

Whatever way it goes, & whichever workflow you develop, there's one simple thing in the way. Whenever a video clip or image is removed from the timeline, its attached transitions will go too. That's how it is.

There are very quick ways, in PD, to apply transitions globally (to all clips & images). This little tutorial might help... http://youtu.be/70CTEAI9ozI - it's effectively the same in PD10

Cheers - Tony


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OK. The "Apply Transitions to All" is one step closer than I was. I can try that with one transition type and then change the remaining transitions, but it may not be any faster than dragging each one down to start with.

I guess having the ability to queue a specific set of transitions and apply them sequentially to each clip in a project would be a great addition. Maybe for PD11?

Thanks again for all your help and patience, ynotfish!

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