How to ladder clips

daorus

Sometimes we combine videos like on this picture to cross-fade their sounds

And at this picture if I want to add video 6 under video 5 we have to manually move EACH video one level up because there is no insert new track feature and there is no move track up or down feature.

Is there a way just to insert new Video track at the place where i want in order not to move each video in this ladder, becase, when it is 27 videos and I want to insert 28, it is an adventure to move all 27 videos one level up again

borate

Tracks can be moved up/down. Right-click in the track name area for those choices.

[deleted]

That's a very clumsy way to crossfade sounds between several clips IMHO.

Just place clip 1 on Track 1, then clip 2 on Track 2 but pulled back a couple of seconds so there is an overlap.

Right click the soundtrack for clip 1 and "Fade out" for two seconds.

Right click the soundtrack for clip 2 and "Fade in" for two seconds.

Sound tracks now crossfade.

Add the next clip to Track 1 again but again pulled back a couple of secds from clip 2

Add the Fade out and Fade in as before for the overlapped area..

Repeat with next clip on Track 2 etc.

You only use 2 tracks and the sound track fade/in/out lines are visible all the time so you can line them up correctly.

If you want to cross fade the visuals as well just use the transparency effect at the start and end of each clip.

There really no need to use all those tracks.

Nat

borate

Good plan by Nat.

For the video fade, try adding the transparency to only the overlay track.

To crossfade from main track to overlay...

At clip start set a transparency ZERO keyframe, then add a keyframe a bit later that has transparency at 100%.

To crossfade from overlay to main (lower) track...

Near clip end set a keyframe for transparency 100, then at clip end add a transparency ZERO keyframe.

You can apply these procedures to a single overlay clip. To add keyframes manually, click the green + sign.

daorus

borate wrote:

Tracks can be moved up/down. Right-click in the track name area for those choices.

Oh, my God!!! I feel myself very stupid. Sorry!!

Yes, there is Move down and Move up feature in context menu of each Video layer.

I'm sorry that I didn't noticed it before...

Now to move new track down we need to click menu item 27 times. But this much bettter than moving all videos up!!!

I was just looking for insert new track menu item and overlooked, that there is move up and move down items.

Sorry...

borate wrote:

You only use 2 tracks and the sound track fade/in/out lines are visible all the time so you can line them up correctly.

If you want to cross fade the visuals as well just use the transparency effect at the start and end of each clip.

Yes we produce cross-fade for sound exaclty as you offered. Fade out for current and fade in for next. From 4.05 version now we can use cross fade for picture too, because in v.4.05 there is new cool feature fade in for videos

Well, yes, you are right about crossfade, but all this ladder of tracks is used to produce effect which is used in movies a lot when sound of next video starts in current video and picture of next video appears a bit later

If we would use only tow tracks, that would lead to chess order of videos and transitions 1-2, 3-4 are ok, but transitions 2-3, 4-5 will produce effect when picture of next video starts earlier, while sound of current vide is still there. And that is not what we want. We want transitions like 1-2, 3-4, and that is why we have to use such a ladder

Anyway, there is no problem to produce these effect, it just takes a lot of mouse movements and clicks. But result is available.

borate

It's not mandatory to use FADE IN/OUT for audio.

Select a clip, then click the AUDIO EFFECTS button in the toolbar. Drag the horizontal blue line up/down to create keyframes that fade audio in/out at any time.

For video, transparency keyframes can be similarly timed to your liking.

This, together with the overlap positioning of the clips, may achieve the desired result.

daorus

borate wrote:

For video, transparency keyframes can be similarly timed to your liking.

Wow!!! This is first time in my life when I realized, that fade in & fade out are just animation of transparency effect with black PNG at the very bottom level.

Thank you for this idea!! It opens a lot of new possibilities for making movies!!