Stupid Silly Question Dept.: How do you fade-out foreground when green-screening??

ok, I blame myself here, in public, dropping pants coram publico , but since yesterday, I crunch my head on that ultra simple beginners Q:

foreground: someone in front of a green-screen, lower lane: keyed background … anything, a clip.
Now, when I fade the subject, for sure the green is faded too = no key, no bg either!
But I want to continuous play the bg-clip, while the subject is faded-out.

I KNOW the answer will be THAT simple - but doesn't come up here.… (note2myself: ask doctor next time about side-effects of my medication)

… please, after laughing, help the old chicken over the road :blush:

The background is the layer below the green screen, no? If you fade out the green screen layer you should see the background layer.

Tom Wolsky wrote: … If you fade out the green screen layer you should see the background layer.

arrrrghghgh!!!
NOW I see my mistake, have a look, what we have done here in our lil' school project:




(another example of worst green screen ever) our talent, shot in green, clip cropped, keyer applied






now, MY usual routine to fade-out things is, hammering cmd-T onto keyboard - which results in loss of key (of course: no green, no key)

but:






[strike]In such case, I have to keyframe Opacity - THAT simple (slapping own forehead, making weird noises, givin' myself 'names')[/strike]

in such a case, follow Tom's advice…




and check that box…

THANKS TOM… sometimes it's just too simple.

Hope, everybody had a laugh ...
(omg, … ) :silly:

So why doesn't the cross dissolve work? Right-click on it and make sure it isn't set to fade to black.

Tom Wolsky wrote: So why doesn't the cross dissolve work? Right-click on it and make sure it isn't set to fade to black.

(starting to whine) … 'cause I haven't known of this checkbox yet?
Be gentle, I'm a beginner, using FCPX just for about 5 years now...


Guess, I should buy a good book about How To Use FinalCut - any recommendations, Tom?

Have a new edition for 10.3 coming out next week, but you know I'll have to check, but I'm not sure that silly checkbox is mentioned.

Tom Wolsky wrote: …not sure that silly checkbox is mentioned.

…and it's only available in the context-menu, not in the Inspector …
wow, a hidden feature… at last, to my rescue… how should I know that??

Yep, knew to me, also. But the "Fade to/from black" option is grayed out on all my transitions. Even the fade to color transition. When exactly does it become active?

Believe it's only available at the beginning and end of the project timeline.

Yes, you're correct. So it speed up the fade, makes it an S-Curve instead of Linear. Would be nice if we had a selection of curves there.

so, … right-click OR keyframe opacity …

In review, perhaps not a too silly question

I have a new 1 minute news headline segment I have to record on green-screen daily now for a client. Fade in and out at the head and tail is a royal PITA. The FCPX dev team needs to tweak transitions to give us some more options in how they interact with other lanes and such. Not a silly question at all. A very necessary and serious question, one the FCPX dev team needs to pay attention to and consider an update to address it.

There are a lot of options for dissolves in the inspector, unfortunately there's no way I can see to make one a preset. Because it's one of the few transitions that can't be opened in Motion, there's no way that I can see to make a custom dissolve and set it as the default.

Tom Wolsky wrote: … a custom dissolve ….

Not excactly what you mean, but our friend Simon Ubsdell offers this product:
hawaiki.co/dissolve.html