Fade in/Fade out transition revelations

I've been testing out the difference between using the Compositing option in the inspector and the Fade to color transition.

I decided that Compositing does not do what I'd like. The fade in is just to quick initially, but then ramps down in speed toward the end of the effect. I'm not even sure this would be a recommended way to do this, although it worked the way I liked in FCP 7.

I was not crazy about the fade to color transition since it had unexpected results. I found that the actual fade would start about 25% into the transition. Something just did not look right, and I was getting all twerky.

Until I started experimenting with the "Hold" slider in the transition. What I realized is that the Hold slider defaults to "25". Had no idea what that was about until I started playing with it and found that this means the fade will not begin until 25% the way through the transition.

If I set the slider to "50", the action didn't begin until after half the transition played.

So what worked for me was to set the Hold to "0". The transition starts on the first frame and works great for me. There has to be some reason and use for changing this setting, but I can only guess.

There is also a Midpoint slider, which I am guessing sets where the mid point of the fade will be.

Interesting. I must have a play with that. Agree with you the way that FCP fades using opacity is awful.

Seanus,

The more I use the Hold slider set to 0, the better I like the fade. Try it and let me know what you think.

JL