What are the crosshatches?

GaryStebbins wrote on 3/9/2004, 11:41 PM
I'm editing a video that has a number of cuts from one video stream to another. This was created using Excalibur. Now I'm trying to go back and add some titles, etc., and want some transitions (crossfades) at some points. However, I couldn't get some of these transitions to work - the effect I see is a cut.

I expanded the video track to show the A/B roll. When I did that, I found that the places where it wouldn't work had the same video track on both the A and the B, with crosshatches (actually, I guess, diagonal lines) on one of the tracks. What are these? How do I fix it so I can do a crossfade?

Thanks.

Gary

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 3/9/2004, 11:52 PM
With Excalibur, you could have set it to do the dissolves for you, but the easiest way now is simply drag the edge of a clip so it overlaps its neighbour - don't worry about A/B view, just drag the edges.

If you happen to have the same clip either side of a cut, you must have chosen the same camera shot twice running ....
riredale wrote on 3/9/2004, 11:54 PM
I'm not sure I know what you mean. But if, say, you have a video clip that has cuts in it, and you want to make some of those cuts into crossfades, then the operation is very simple. Just put the clip on the Vegas timeline (no need for the A/B view). Zoom in and locate the position of the cut. Hit the "S" key to split the clip at that point. Then just drag one clip to overlap the other. You'll have a simple dissolve at that point.

Is that what you were after?
jetdv wrote on 3/10/2004, 8:12 AM
Do you have Auto Crossfades turned off? If so, just turn it back on and re-create the overlap.
GaryStebbins wrote on 3/10/2004, 7:33 PM
PeterWright - I know how to do the dissolves with Excalibur - I wanted cuts. I'm not editing every instance.

I know how it's supposed to work, and it does for 99% of the clips. In a few cases, I'm making some changes after I've run Excalibur's Multicam wizard. There seems to be something strange with some of the edits Excalibur did for me. Actually this larger video is made up by combining (cut & paste on the timeline) four separate videos projects into one, each of which has been built using Excalibur's Multicam wizard. This problem shows up in all of the edits done by Excalibur on one of the four videos. The other three are fine.

I've never seen these diagonal lines over the video before. I can't find anything about it in the Vegas manual or on-line help. When I drag the 2nd (right) clip over the first, it visually indicates that it's making a transition. But, when I release the mouse, it's as though I've put the clip on a higher track, thus obscuring the first (left) video that I want to transition with.

I'm sure the clue is in the crosshatches over the video when showing the A/B roll - if someone could just tell me what they mean!

Gary
PeterWright wrote on 3/10/2004, 9:18 PM
Ed hit on it, Gary - when auto crossfades (icon above timeline or Ctrl Shift X) is turned off, this crosshatching appears to show the "overlapped" part of an event that is not currently visible.
GaryStebbins wrote on 3/10/2004, 10:25 PM
Auto crossfades are on. I'd believe, however, that there are multiple copies of the event on the same track. I've found in some cases I can select an event and delete it, leaving another behind. _Sometimes_ I can then work with this remaining event. I'll keep playing with it. I'd guess something went wrong in the Multicam wizard (not saying it's the wizard's fault - it's likely something I did, but I didn't see any problems until I tried to add a crossfade between events).

Gary
GaryStebbins wrote on 3/10/2004, 10:56 PM
I've played with it some more, and It definitely looks there are two copies of the events on top of each other on one track. You can only see them if you display it as an A/B roll. I've been able to delete the second copy all the way trhough the one section. There was still some problem when I tried to slide the 2nd event to create the crossfade. I think possibly Vegas got confused, or there was something else there that wasn't showing at all. I eventually managed to get it visible so I could select and delete it, and all's well. I'll have to go back and see if I can reproduce it to see what happened. It's possible I ran the Multicam wizard twice without deleting the Master track - don't know if that would do it or not.

And, thanks to Excalibur. I could never have done this project (at least not in a reasonable amount of time) without the Multicam wizard.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Gary