The FCPX transitions you NEVER use

Tash - our in-house FCPX editor had a few minutes spare, so did a funny little comp of all those transitions in FCPX you'd never touch in a million years. Enjoy...

www.tech-tv.co.uk/video-production-2/vid...ansitions-never-use/

Anyone got any more?

Surely it would be simpler to ask which ones we DO use?

I think that for most productions transitions are detrimental. They take your attention away from the content. Usually it is best just to cut simply from one scene to another.

Occassionally transitions can be useful for conveying a passing of time perhaps or if you want to cut up action without using alternate shots.

However I think transitions should be used with great caution. Crucially they distract from the subject material and this is very bad.

Every once and awhile there's a project where I think I can use some sort of transition. After trying a few out I usually go back to a hard cut, maybe a dissolve, sometimes a wipe if something moves in front of the camera.

Transitions are just a very specific tool that doesn't work for most things.

Other than the stock dissolve and dissolve to color... I don't really use any these days.

Full screen you might never use those transitions, but with a small element it opens great possibilities. Here I used the "spin" transition in a spot ran nationally on Cartoon Network. The Logo spun from the center of the frame into a full sized logo, and it has motion blur no less.







I've used the clock wipe and page peel as well. The star transition, well that is purely to make something look like it was done on a video toaster.

tpayton wrote: The star transition, well that is purely to make something look like it was done on a video toaster.

Kiki Wipe?

Actually I do use about 3 of those. The flip, the cube and the "spin" but I use that last one on titles and graphics which have an alpha channel very similar to tpayton's example. Sounds like the guy who made this video only ever uses straight cuts and dissolves.

Anyway those are FAR from the worst transitions in FCPX. The bad ones are ones like the tree leaves or the ones where they back up, show a desk or something with woodgrain on it and then zoom in to a post card that's laying on it, etc. I don't know what it's called because I never use it. Those are awful and there's a ton of them. Even movies like the Star Wars trilogy use some of the wipes presented in the linked video, but only grandmas and people who use iMovie would use "fun" transitions like the ones I just described.

I think I've probably used every sing;e one of them at some time or other and just between you and me, I used a page peel yesterday.

Guess I'm just a bad editor