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Premiere CS5: fade-in effect - what a neurotic PITA
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  • @sebben Arg the unbelievable agony

    au contraire, prey continue

  • This is why i love Sony Vegas Pro, everything is simple and has multiple ways of applying. Drag and drop, hotkey, preset template or Sony Vegas Production Assistant

  • @itimjim While the hit area may be wider than the hairline, if I can't see it, I can't grasp it. For whatever reason, your screen grab is displayed in Mozilla at least twice as large as the GUI is scaled in Premiere. Maybe I should consider a hardware upscaling solution to make Adobe's GUI legible?

  • this thread has brought back memories of teaching grandma how to use email.

  • @bimdas: Except I don't imagine your grandma is one of the best and most knowledgable developers of firmware patches for GH1/2 cameras. To me, if something that should be this simple is a pain for somebody like @LPowell, then maybe it's a sign there is serious room for improvement in the UI for Premiere Pro. And I say that as somebody who uses Premiere Pro as my preferred editor. I remember being quite vexed by the fiddliness of fade-ins when I first started working on it as well. But then I was coming from Vegas, which handles fades and other transitions quite elegantly and quickly. I don't use a Mac, so I wouldn't know from personal experience, but understand that FCPX's handling of transitions is similarly easy/intuitive.

  • @LPowell What you want is the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D, which will drop a cross dissolve onto your footage.
    Specifically you want to move the play head near the start of the clip, then press Ctrl+D on your keyboard
    By default it will act as a cross dissolve and show up as a purple sort of box that spans the edit point for a set number of frames on each side, you should be able to quickly grab the left or right side of the box and drag it to the desired duration.
    Dragging it so that the effect starts at the same point as the clip would give you a cut to black and then a fade in to the second clip.
    At least this is how it works in my copy of PPro CS4.

    Hope this helps,
    Josh

  • LPowell Ever tried Vegas? Fades are so easy even I can do them.

  • Thanks everyone, for the helpful advice. I tried the "Dip to Black" effect and it did the job without much fuss. So my problem was really Adobe's obtuse documentation, and its completely clueless omission of even a cross-reference to what is universally referred to as a "fade-in". If I ever have to do this sort of thing again in the future, I'll be sure to ask around before diving into the depths.

  • I'm pretty sure that final cut has a "dip to color" effect that could be used the same way so I don't think the nomenclature is exclusive to ppro. However, I don't think I have actually touched final cut since 2003(fcp4?), when I made the switch to premiere.

  • I never see anyone here mention Videopad. It's a nice step up from movie maker, but nowhere near the complexity of pp. Great if you want to dive in without much learning curve. Also, I never tried it, but I guess Premiere Elements is the same idea?

  • Vegas is nicer for dissolves and fades. Premiere involves to many steps. I wish Adobe integrated actions or scripting for Premiere.

  • Dip to black is a useful feature. If you have a lot of clips up, or titles, and you don't want to use a cross fade. Documentation: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WSE2A9B838-1422-4d8a-9A03-CFDF4332533B.html You only need to set up a few presets and apply keyboard shortcuts, but the basic ones all ready setup work pretty well. If you view the fade in the effects panel, it will show you exactly what is happening. You can also use the trim panel. Lots to choose from! I recommend Magic Bullet as an add on as well as Neat Video Pro. And an i7 with HT enabled 16gb ram, and a GT 240 with DDR5 1gb, then hack the mercury engine. Totally rocks.

  • i wish premiere had action script too. would make life a whole lot easier. i find fade to black does strange things like introduce 1px white borders when fading.

  • @LPowell Adobe's "documentation" is obtuse, indeed - and that's being generous IMO. As a recent convert from FCP, I'm no PP expert, but I do edit on a Win 7/dual-monitor system. At PP's default GUI size on my monitors, transitions are often too small to see or manipulate. As recommended in other comments above, keyboard shortcuts are a quick way to apply transitions. Then, for fine adjustments, I find the Zoom tools very helpful for seeing exact placement and adjustment. Clicking the transition (or EFX) opens the effect control panel for tweaks.

    Also, thank you for your superb contributions to the GH evolution. As is said in Atlanta, "we pre-shate-cha!"

    Coda-DissolveScreenShot.jpg
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  • Also, try choosing different workspaces for the specific function you are engaging in at the time; audio, editing, color correcting, effects, etc.

  • Know this is an old thread but reading it took me back to my first attempt at using premiere in 1997 ish. I was just learning avid and media 100 and premiere seemed so amateurish and fiddly oh so fiddly. Trying to grab 5 pixel square handles. When I came back to it 13 years later I was dismayed to find it very similar. I agree,it is unintuative,and feels bolted together, BUT I can live with it because of Cuda.