What is a transition?

It is the merging of two media moments - they overlap at the point of contact by an equal amount.

A transition can be no greater than half the length of the smallest of two media files/clips in the timeline.

A transition duration minimum is two frames (could be one I haven't checked).

A transition is therefore NOT stealing any time - you need to make allowances for it in your editing. For images you have to work out what period you wish to display - set that in preferences or adjust manually in the time-line. With transitions the minimum in preferences is one second BUT manually you can go a lot lower.

Please understand that two video clips or images HAVE TO overlap for a transition to work. It is up to you to decide the length and period this transition takes place.

Dafydd
[Moderator]
I hope that answered your question.

"overlap" explains things. Good word to explain it.

That still doesn't change the amount of time I would loose when making tight trims. Everyone at some point edits family video. That's one example of where a trim can need to be tight to within a half a second. You know like someone finishes a sentence at the film stops a quarter of a second before the next sceen shows up. Or someone starts talking right after something you're tring to isolate. Trimming can be a major time investment in some projects.

Here's an idea: Have a little highlight "bar" at the end of a media file on the timeline show that indicates how much time should be "used up" (eaten) by a transition.

If a little indicator bar did show up on the media in the timeline, it would save me the time of scrubbing through the timeline and checking all the transition points after transitions are applied.

Hi John,

I'm very familiar with tight trimming.

One technique I employ is to take a snapshot of the last (or first) frame and place it and reduce it's length appropriately to form the moment of transition and allow the next clip to start immediately.

Have you tried that?

Dafydd
[Moderator]

I think I said all this in another recent discussion of the subject, but here it is again -

If you edit so that material you do not want is cut out at either end of the clip, then you add a transition, then there's two possible ways it can be done.

Either the incoming clip must be faded in starting with some frames you cut out, or it must be faded in starting with the first frame you wanted. Likewise for the outgoing clip. And both are happening at the same time in an overlapped area. If you have the first scenario, the overall length of the production will not change but you will see at each transition some frames you did not want to see. If you have the second scenario, you will only see frames you wanted but the production must necessarily shorten.

Furthermore, if you have not edited the clips at all, and the program uses frames before and after the join for the purpose of crossfading the transition (first scenario), then where are those frames going to come from? In one program that works that way, the first frame of the incoming clip and the last frame of the outgoing clip are simply repeated for the length of the transition, which is less than satisfactory.

I guess in an ideal world the program would provide both scenarios. Drag a transition as at present, and the frames starting/ending the clips determine the start and end of the crossfaded section (current behaviour). Ctrl/drag the transition and frames before and after the clips as edited would be used for the crossfade (opposite of current behaviour). Where the frames are not trimmed, do not allow the ctrl/drag behaviour.

There you go, a little feature request.

[Edit - noting only now that the original question related chiefly to stills, in that scenario I would have thought that the program should indeed automatically extend the length of the stills in order to create the crossfade, thus leaving the length of that part of the project unchanged. But having the choice I suggest above would avoid the need for such selective behaviour.]