I'm not sure what's going on with Excalibur but VASST Ultimate S Pro can do this quite easily using the Fades function on the Editing Tools tab.

~jr

John, are you trying to help or sell product?

Hmmm, well, it's weird. I can get *every* other effect I try to work immediately. Maybe it's the sleep hobgoblin telling me to quit for today. It's very early in the AM here...

Have you tried contacting Edward Troxel directly?

> John, are you trying to help or sell product?

I'm trying to help by offering a tool that I know would work. Had the OP not said that they were trying a "demo" I would not have said anything because they were already an Excalibur customer, but considering that they ARE trying out a demo I was offering an alternative tool that I know works for multiple events on multiple tracks.

~jr

If you wish to contact me, I'll definitely help get you going. In the meantime, I've run a test here. This is what I did:

1. Add several images to the timeline as CUTS and then SELECTED those events
2. Went to the Event tab in Excalibur
3. Clicked on the little radio button beside "Fade Events" and set the parameters as you specified: in/out 2 seconds and both on linear. Make sure you also check the boxes besides the "linear" options and also make sure you do NOT check the "No fade-in change" and "No fade-out change" boxes.
4. Click the great big "Fade Events" button.

All worked perfectly fine for me in Vegas Pro 8.0/Excalibur 6 doing the above.

If that's not working for you, I'd really like you to e-mail me all kinds of information like exact version of Vegas, exact version of Excalibur, maybe even the VEG file so I can try your file here.

Edward

Thanks Edward, I will, but first perhaps the secret is in the "cut" ?

What is a "CUT" ?

I'm just dragging and dropping image files to the timeline. I presume that's not a "cut" ?

It depends on what your settings are. If you have "Cut to overlap conversion" turned on in the preferences, you'll get dissolves/crossfades instead of cuts. If you're wanting longer crossfades, the fade tool will still change to the type of fade you want but the gap/overlap tool will be able to make the transitions longer.

If you put the all on the timeline as cuts (i.e. no overlapping at all) then the fade tool will add the fade in/out as specified. However, you'll then get a "fade to black" between each image.

At this point, it sounds like you already have an overlap on all of the events so you'd, instead, want to use the gap/overlap tool instead to make the overlaps longer.

I download Ultimate S and it's the same ! Everything works except the fade effect !

This is really bugging me now. There must be some setting preference which is stopping this particular effect working.

I've started various new test projects and just dropped a single png or jpeg in there and still zip.

I'm on 8c build 260 on a fast quad under XP. Everything is set on the defaults. I just can't understand what's going wrong !

Thanks again Edward.

As for the project I have one track of video. Above that I have a track with some pngs and jpegs. Each image is completely by itself - no overlaps. I simply want the image to fade in over the top of the video, stay for X seconds, then fade out again showing the video.

Extremely simple I thought. I could just manually drag the fade edges on each image and do it that way as I uysually do, but there's so many of these videos to do I thought I'd save time and set a default fade in&out time for each image.....

Send me the VEG file and I'll check it out. There's got to be something else going on. I know the fade routine works so there must be some other reason those events are not being affected. Send me the VEG file and I'll see if I can figure out what that reason is.

ATW? I Am assuming that you have the JPEGS somehow reduced in size, to allow for the video to show underneath? YEah? As in:

Track 1 JPEGS

Track 2 VIDEO

If you AREN'T reducing the size of the JPEGS then you can ONLY see the video when :

A] The JPEGS Fade thru black

or

B] You have a GAP between the JPEGS

or, as I said above . .

C] You have reduced the size of the JPEGS allowing to see the Video ALL the time.

Which of the 3 above options are you wanting? A or B or C?

I have repeated Edward's approach within Excalibur. I have fades thru black momentarily revealing the to Video on Track2.

Grazie

I'm on a widescreen PAL project. I have the seminar speaker on the right side of the screen. Inset on the left I have a series of Powerpoint screengrabs (PNG files).

The screengrabs are on the top track set to "screen" in the compositing mode so they're semi-transparent.

Some of the time the grabs will transition from one to the next, but most of the time I just want to have a grab fade in, show for say, 10 seconds, then fade out.

I get *exactly" the effect I want if I grab the little fade edges of each image and manually make the fade in & out. Perfect. Couldn't be happier. But as I mentioned above, I've so many of these things to do that I thought it'd save time if I could simply designate a fade time for all of them & automate the process.

But neither Excalibur or Ultimate S will do this for me (I know both packages work fine for other people!). I can get both to do all sorts of other things, but NOT make any significant changes to my images. All I seem to be able to do is select different transitions. If I try to even change the duration of any image they are immediately shrunk to a tiny slither. I've tried different projects & different images with the same results.

I've absolutely no idea what could be causing such odd behaviour. My Vegas 8c is pretty much on all the default settings.

OK!!

I think I got it.

So you want to :

1] Have ALL your JPEGS/Graphics to have a say 1 second fade in fade out

2] You want to position these Stills at the point you want.

OK .. .

How about:

i] Place MARKERS - roll the video and tap the M key

ii] THEN place your stills with something like a Stills to Markers script

iii] And THEN hit 'em with fade ins and outs.

Both Excalibur and ULS have the where with all to assist here. But I think we needed you to explain a bit fuller what you were wanting to achieve. And I STILL might have got you wrong!!!

If this is what you ARE wanting then this will ensure you have stills at the point/s you want 'em and you WILL have the fades in and out just like a presentation.

HTH

Grazie

> If I try to even change the duration of any image they are immediately shrunk to a tiny slither. I've tried different projects & different images with the same results.

It sounds like this is the root of the problem. I'm guessing that both Excalibur and Ultimate S are being told that the image isn't long enough to make the fade which is why they are not working. I have never seen this behavior where changing the duration causes an event to shrink to a slither (assuming the slither is just 1 frame). Have you been messing with the Internal Preferences? (if you don't know what they are then, good you haven't)

Maybe try starting Vegas with a reset. To do this, hold down Ctrl+Shift while you DoubleClick the Vegas icon on your desktop (or wherever it is). Warning: this will reset all of your preferences to the defaults that Vegas uses right after it's installed and you will have to change them back to what you like, but it may be worth a try.

~jr

I received the VEG file and now know the real issue here. The timeline format was set to "seconds". The textbox had "00:00:02:00" and it was not being recognized correctly with that timeline format. There were two options that allowed this to work:

1. Change the format of the timeline. I changed it to one of the SMPTE formats and all worked fine.

2. Change the format in the textbox. I change it to simply be "2" and it also worked fine.

So, it's really just a matter of the timecodes matching the ruler format.