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MillimeterNavigating Apple Final Cut Pro's Speed Options, Part 2
Apr 6, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Figure 6. Shortening the transition length is OK, but don't lengthen FCP's suggested transition lengths.
A couple of points. Once you choose a transition technique other than linear, Final Cut Pro will calculate a length in frames. It's OK to make that shorter, but if you make it longer, strange things happen. For example, I wanted a 30-frame transition when moving from 100 percent to 25 percent speed. But when I changed from 14 frames to 30, a portion of the clip ended up moving backwards.
Figure 7. Working in the Motion tab.
Second, one of the benefits of working in the keyframe graph area is that you can click and drag a keyframe to the left or right to fine-tune the positioning of your speed changes. You can also view the adjustments in the Motion Tab of the Viewer, where you can fine-tune keyframe positioning and the speed transitions using bezier handles. Just click any keyframe, right-click and choose Smooth, and the handles will appear.
I find this control very nonintuitive and hard to use, and recommend that you only use it to make very fine adjustments to your speed transitions. Do the bulk of your work in the keyframe graph area, and fine-tune here, checking the tick marks in the keyframe graph after any adjustment to assess the results— and preview frequently.
Again, most novices can add variable-speed changes to a clip more quickly and easily by breaking the clip into multiple parts and applying a speed change with transitions to the individual clips. More experienced editors can benefit from the flexibility enabled by adding keyframes directly to the timeline.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.