Re: can't get crop curves to work

["Bob Maple" <bobm-ds(at)burner.com>]

> Help.
> I have a bunch of tiff files as titles and I built a tree with alpha
> fade in and out. The clip I built this on was 5 seconds long.
> Now I want to copy that effect to all my other tiffs of varying
> length keeping my 12 frame in and out effects. This is what
> I tried... Saved effect with cropped curves checked, then
> pasted on 10 second clip. Up is fine but it fades out at 5
> second point.

So it sounds like you have a single effect, with two sets of keyframes.. one 
set at the beginning doing the fade in, and one set at the tail doing the 
fade out.  Right?

In this case as a single effect, you can't make it automatically scale the 
keyframes to the new clip's duration, without it actually scaling the 
duration of your existing keyframes (IE if pasted on a longer clip, the 
fades themselves would also get longer).  You sort of want your group of 
keyframes at the beginning to stick to the beginning, and your group of 
keyframes at the end to stick at the end.  Unfortunately, with a single 
effect, this is not possible.

Depending on how your tree is built, you might instead break it into 2 
separate effects and use a single-sided transition on each side of the clip 
(one for the fadeup and one for the fadeout)...  Then you can easily apply 
them to clips of varying lengths.  The only time something like this won't 
work is if your fade up/fade down is not to/from 100%.  In which case, 
you'll have to manually slide the keyframes down to match the proper 
durations (you can do this in the Animation Editor by group selecting the 
end keyframes, and then shifting them at once by typing "30+" into the Frame 
box at the top of the editor, to shift down 30 frames, etc.)

I'd actually put on my 'wish list' a way to GROUP keyframes, so that you 
could do things exactly like this.  For instance, imagine being able to 
group clumps of keyframes within an effect;  And when you stretch the 
effect, the relationship BETWEEN the groups of keyframes would change, but 
the relationship INSIDE the groups of keyframes would not.  Right now when 
you scale an effect (with crop curves turned off) it scales the relationship 
between all the keyframes evenly, slowing down or speeding up the entire 
effect).  Would be real handy, but I don't know if it's anything we'll ever 
see (although I have not seen such a feature in any other software.. someone 
should jump on this! :)


|  Bob Maple  |  bobm_at_burner_dot_com  |  [http] burner.com
|
|  Thom Yorke: "Here's to getting hitched, Space Ghost."
|  SG: "Yeah..  Lets drink until our hearts stop."

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