Auto Crossfades

BobWard wrote on 2/26/2011, 2:08 PM
Everytime I join (snap) 2 events together on the timeline, VMS10 insists on putting a small audio crossfade on the butted ends of the 2 events. These events are not overlapped, just butted together, end-to-end.

I have Automatic Crossfades turned Off. So why does VMS10 insist on doing these audio crossfades? It just takes time for me to manually go back and remove the crossfade.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 2/26/2011, 2:31 PM
That definitely should NOT be happening!

When the button is not activated, you can still overlap two clips if you butt them too tightly together. But you definitely should be be getting a Cross Fade.

You're sure the button is inactive, right? It is gray instead of white, right?
Tim L wrote on 2/26/2011, 4:46 PM
This is normal for the Audio tracks, even for events butted up against each other (with no video overlap).

You can turn this off by clicking Options >> Preferences >> Editing. Locate the "Quick Fade Length for Audio Events" setting, which defaults to 10 ms.

HOWEVER... I'm pretty sure there's a good reason it defaults to having this crossfade. I think without it you can be prone to getting little pops and clicks at the ends of events, as the audio will cut off immediately.

MSmart wrote on 2/26/2011, 5:11 PM
HOWEVER... I'm pretty sure there's a good reason it defaults to having this crossfade. I think without it you can be prone to getting little pops and clicks at the ends of events, as the audio will cut off immediately.

That would my guess too. I've always left it at 10ms and never noticed any ill effects. I'd say leave it as is.
musicvid10 wrote on 2/26/2011, 5:35 PM
The problem is, if you cut anywhere other than an exact zero crossing, there will be a click where the signal is cut off abruptly. So if you are cutting at frame boundaries, as most people do, the quickfades save you a lot of headaches. As mentioned, they can be turned off in Preferences, in which case one will find oneself doing microsurgery at the sample level with quantize "off" on each and every audio cut. It's entirely your choice.
Chienworks wrote on 2/26/2011, 8:15 PM
I suspect that these are not crossfades since from your description they don't overlap. Without an overlap there is NO crossfade.

What you're seeing is a fade out and then a fade in. This is why it's not affected by the auto crossfade setting.
gpsmikey wrote on 2/27/2011, 9:15 AM
The pop/click suppression is the most likely explanation (as pointed out, not a crossfade, but a quick fade-out/fade-in). One of the big issues that has plagued folks for some time in the slideshow forum I am active in is the "clicks and pops" where one track ended and another started (or if they left a gap). The general rule has been to overlap the ends to avoid this (many of us had 5 or 10 second "silent" clips that we could overlap on the ends to avoid this). Sony's approach sounds like a good way to avoid the strange things that can happen if you don't cut on a zero crossing and 10 ms is pretty short.

mikey
BobWard wrote on 2/27/2011, 9:19 PM
Thank you for the very insightful replies.

You are right - it is not really a crossfade, since the audio tracks do not overlap. So it would more accurately be called a "fade-out / fade-in".

When this "fade-out / fade in" is left in-place, I am hearing a noticeable disruption in the audio as the volume goes down and then back up when passing the splice point, even though it happens very quickly.

For the project I am working on, the audio does sound much better if I manually remove the "fade-in / fade-out". However, this may very well depend on what type of audio sound is being played.

Bob
Chienworks wrote on 2/28/2011, 3:11 PM
If i've really needed to have no dropout and no click, what i've done is turn off auto ripple and enable ignore event grouping, then drag both ends of the audio into each other by a few milliseconds. That way there's a very slight audio crossfade rather than an abrupt cut or a dropout. It's tedious, and it's very important to remember to turn ignore event grouping back off and auto ripple back on (if you use it) afterward.