Planning Your Trimming Activities Before trimming your clips, consider whether you intend to fade into the first scene, fade out of the final scene, and/or use transitions between the scenes. If you use any of these effects, you need to account for them in your trimming. Briefly, transitions are animated effects inserted between video scenes either to smooth or emphasize the passage from one clip to the next (for details, see Chapter 8). The most commonly used transition is a cut, which is actually the absence of a transition: the video simply jumps from the last frame of the first clip to the first frame of the second clip. Other frequently used transitions are dissolves, wipes, and fades, which you implement using frames that overlap between two clips. If you were trimming two clips to be joined by a cut, the end frame for your first video clip would be the last frame you want to appear in the production. Similarly, the start frame for the second video clip would be the initial frame you want visible. For example, one fun scene for me that I shot during the Fiddler's Convention here in Galax shows my daughters looking at some dodo-bird puppets (Figure 7.47). The visual is key because of the comment my eldest daughter made at the time: "Daddy, can we take these due-due birds home?" This brought a lot of chuckles from those around us. Figure 7.47. Two seconds can make a huge difference. If I cut into this clip at 7 seconds, 15 frames in, viewers see DODO BIRDS and get the joke. If I transition in using a 2-second transition, the first complete frame viewers see is O BIRDS, and the context of the joke is lost. Anyway, if I cut from the previous scene into this scene, the frame shown on the left of Figure 7.47, which is located at 7 seconds and 15 frames into the scene, will be the first one shown, so the viewer will understand the visual context of the remark. In contrast, if I transition from the previous scene using Studio's default 2-second transition, the first completely visible frame will be 2 seconds later, shown on the right of Figure 7.47, located at 9 seconds, 15 frames into the clip. As you can see, "DODO BIRDS" is no longer visible (extinct, so to speak), and though the audio is still there, the visual context is lost. What this boils down to is that you need to leave sufficient frames at the front of the scene so that the target frame becomes the first visible frame after the transition. If you're using 2-second transitions or fades, this means 2 seconds before the target start frame. Of course, the same approach applies at the end of the scene if you plan to fade out or transition into another scene. Specifically, if you're using a 2-second transition or fade, leave 2 seconds of video after the last frame to be completely visible before the transition or fade. A similar approach is a good rule to use when shooting and capturing your video in general. Always start shooting 5 to 10 seconds before you think you actually want to start and let the camera roll for a similar duration after the end of the shot. When capturing, always start the capture a few seconds before the target first frame and continue a few seconds after the target last frame to provide the extra footage needed during editing. |