Possible to set video trax FX "pre" clip fade ?

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/30/2010, 11:54 AM

Hi,

This might be a stupid question, and there might be another and better solution than what I have found.

I want to use the excellent Mike Crash's "Autolevels" video FX on a track. The filter places itself into the video chain in a manner that clips on the track send their video to the FX - post fade. With fade I refer to the end of the clips that you can drag to fade in or fade out. Especially when using settings (in this filter) as "Full color correction with film levels", the fade out just causes the filter to increase its gain, before finally fading the output. In other words, ruins the clip fade due to the internal gain in the FX.

The only solution (that I have found) is not to set the FX at the track level, but add this same FX to every clip on the track. FX added at the clip level seems to work in a (logical) manner that the fade is post-FX - exactly what I want to achieve. Copying and pasting the FX to all clips is a workaround, but a tedious and slow one. Every time I want to (globally) tweak this FX settings for the TRACK - then I need to copy the settings from one clip and paste to the remaining clips on the timeline. Seems so unnecessary.

What I would like to do is to add the FX to the track, so that the FX receives the video BEFORE the clip fadea (on the track), not post fade. But this seems to be impossible!?

I hope someone is able to grab what I am trying to ask and achieve (my mother tongue not being English makes it hard to find the right words to use to describe this).

I still believethat there must be a better solution for this. It should be possible to add a track level FX so that the clips feeds the FX - post fade - or then not? I understand that there might be some conflicting situations (two clips crossfading), but in this project there are no such conflicting tracks...

Grateful for any comments or ideas. I hate when some technical limitation eats up my time that I could use for some more creative work. This solution works as I describe, but is not elegant...

Cheers,

Christian

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/30/2010, 12:15 PM

If your concern is only Fading in and out to black, then the easy fix is to add a video track, put a black clip above where you want to fade and dissolve the black clip in or out. Gives the same effect.

But this obviously does not affect when you do cross dissolves between scenes. In this case, you could make an A/B track and cross dissolve between tracks.

Dave T2

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/30/2010, 1:18 PM

Thx Dave T2 for your tip, your suggestion could be an easier workaround.

However, moving clips around (without their "black" matching siblings") gets at the same time more tedious... I have lots of crossfades, and as you metioned, for these I would need a sngle A/B track. Again not an easy option since there is some track-vise color correction...

Well, you cant win every time... It's either manually pasting FX to the clips, or this "black mask" technique. Will try both an see. It still would be neat to add FX to video tracks - pre-fade...

Christian

Former user wrote on 5/30/2010, 1:29 PM

What happens if you add the effect in the Media Pool?

Dave T2

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/30/2010, 1:42 PM

Hi again,

You are right, adding a FX to the media would do the trick (FX applied before the clip fade in/out). However, there is a big BUT:

The media consists of (unfortunately) scene detected separate clips (a zillion of them), so adding the FX to the media would cause (in this case) even more work. Not mentioning how to proceed if I would like to tweak the FX settings a little... But your idea brilliatly works around the pre/post problem, and would have been nice and useful for just a few longer source files...

In my opinion, the possibility to add track FX before the fade in/out - would bestill very handy sometimes...for me - just at this moment..

Any other ideas still left :) ???

Christian

farss wrote on 5/30/2010, 2:10 PM

The Yellow Triangle?

Bob.

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/31/2010, 1:29 AM

Publicly showing my lack of knowledge (and totally happy with that :) - what yellow triange do you refer to ??? Maybe I did not get your pun?

Christian

farss wrote on 5/31/2010, 1:39 AM

"what yellow triange do you refer to ??? "

Its correct name is "pre/post toggle". Enter "pre/post" into the online help search for details.

It may not help with your problem. Then again you'll now know about The Yellow Triangle :)

Bob.

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 5/31/2010, 12:46 PM

Thanx Bob, i learned again something new. Searching the pro online help gives me here the following options (by clicking the small triangle in front of the selected video fx in the popup window)´. The help says:

"When Pre is selected, the effect will be applied before any event panning or cropping.
When Post is selected, the effect will be applied after all effects that are set to Pre and after event panning and cropping."

I didn't know this, even if I have worked with Vegas since version 6. Well, the old saying is true, if everything else fails, read the manual.

However, the pre/post selection triangle (that is NOT yellow in my Vegas - just hollow) thus selects if the effect is applied before or after panning or cropping. I'm not doing either. I would like the video effet to be on the track pre-fade. And with fade I mead the fade in/out you can drag at each clip's beginning/end. Video FX (like Autolevels) that try to equalize the shades do not work on the timeline when you fade in/out. They try to "resist" the fade by increasing the video gain - an thing that I don't want to happen.

So far I have not found any other yellow triangles other than the in/out markers.... Maybe there is something else I have missed? Probably there is no other way of doing this other than copy the effect applied on the clip level to all other clips on the timeline (or doing the same in the media bin - for each file). So far I have not found a way of applying this kind of filter to the track, without the fade in/out ruining the video due to the automatic gain - during the fades...

Cheers,

Christian

farss wrote on 5/31/2010, 2:37 PM

You found the correct triangle and yes, the color does seem to have faded from it.
You missed part of the documentation however. The toggle affects both before/after panning or cropping and before / after compositing, you have to look further down the page in the Help.
What I'm not certain of is if the Event Compositing Level which is how crossfades are achieved is influenced by the toggle or not. Did you try flipping the toggle to see if it changes the behavior of the Auto Levels FX?

If it doesn't do what you need one painful solution would be to nest every event. That will force the FX to be applied to the event in the child project and then the cross fade will be done in the parent project after the FX has done it's thing.

Bob.