Subtitles of the Movie

Now, I want to spend a module here talking about a special item of concern when you apply transitions and that item of concern is called the handles of your shots. And if you remember back to our modules or our chapter on importing footage, that Final Cut, by default when you import a clip, added two-second handles on either side of the clip and those handles are very important. That's why it's usually important when you capture your footage that you add a little more footage than you think you'll need and the reason why is because you can get into situations where you're trying to add a cross dissolve like this and you're thinking, well, it's really important to have a cross dissolve between these shots because it's not a very smooth cut and I'm not using a lot of jump cuts everywhere else, so this one is going to be rather jarring, so let's smooth out that transition with a cross dissolve. Now, the problem is is that you see that I can't really add a very good cross dissolve. You're thinking, but I want to add it right in the middle. What is going on? Why do I see an X when I try to add it on this side of the footage? And the reason why is because in this shot, which I have adjusted, by the way, I don't have the handles that support the operation. To verify this, I'm just going to pull this shot up in the viewer by giving it a double click and notice here that I'm using almost all of this clip, which you can see as I scroll through the footage there and there's my out point as it's defined in the timeline, which is also right there in the viewer. Now, look here. If I go, what, one, two more clips, I'm out, you can see the film sprockets on the right side that I'm at the end of this clip. So I have no more footage that I can possibly use in order for Final Cut to build the transition. So if I want to extend this shot, this shot into this, as I do the cross dissolve, I'm going to need more frames there, which again, I don't have right now. Now, is that a huge issue? Generally not. You can add your cross dissolves on the left-hand side here and this is not really intuitive in my opinion, but what's happening here, let me just even deselect this, what's happening is that as I add this cross dissolve, and by the way, you have to kind of be careful. You don't really want to add it there and it can get shorter than your default, so you want to go to the left until you see the full time of that transition. But that's where you want to let go and this is again why I'm spending time on this module, just so that you're not thinking what is wrong with Final Cut? Why won't it do what I see Brian doing in the tutorial here? Well, this can be the reason why. What's happening here, as I undo this, is that Final Cut is using the shots in this clip to build the cross dissolve. So it might look like you are adding it and you're building it with the shots here, but that's not the case. You're actually taking this and you're kind of backtracking some of the footage to build the cross dissolve here and, not you are, but Final Cut is. So if you preview it, it's going to look like this. And so again, that might not be a huge issue and it usually isn't, but I just want you to be aware that some of the cross dissolves and some other transitions that Final Cut will try to use, you won't be able to because you don't have the appropriate handles on your shot. So you either need to adjust one of two parameters. You either need to adjust the positioning and or the timing of a transition, maybe you won't be able to use a two-second transition but you could use a 20-frame transition, for example. Or you can adjust your shots so that you have more handles. So if I bring this up again and I set the out point there of the shot, of course I have this gap which I'll now need to deal with, which I can't close because I have linked audio footage so I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that, but I might be able to just bring those together like that. So again, there can be some different consideration if you're trying to adjust this. But now that I've got, if I bring this up again, now it looks like I've got a second or two of handle on this shot and I should be able to add that cross dissolve in between just like that. And now the out point of that clip, that's using actually more footage from that clip to build that little transition. So you can still barely see the back of the biker as the other shot comes in there, which may lend to a better transition, but again, whether or not you're able to execute it can be a matter of handles.