Last week I sold my PC with everything and got a brand new MAC Pro with Final Cut Pro.
This weekend I finaly had everything installed and I played around with some video I captured from my Canon XH-A1 in HDV-25F.

I moved some small pieces of video on the timeline and started praticing adding video transitions.
Something strange happend during that time and I still haven't found the solution to my problem.
A few of the video transitions (cross dissolve) were added on the timeline and those were very small (only one frame in length). The strange thing about it: I could not stretch the length of those video transitions.
At one time I also got an error message 'No material available' ??

I looked and looked and tried and looked.....nothing found.

Does anybody can tell me what I did wrong?

Do a search in your onboard manual for "handles" These are about 15 extra frames you need on either side of the transition, 15 frames beyond the ends of the clip. Trying trimming one of the clips and see what happens

Hello Victor,

I enclosed a screendump so everyone can see what I see on my screen at the moment.
On the timeline three little pieces of video and on the top-left side the effects window.
I decided to look around because I still havent figured it out why the MAC decides to make those small transitions.

I double clicked on the Cross Dissolve effect so it shows up in the left window.
Then, when I started to klik on the three top buttons: 'Start on edit', 'Centre on edit' and 'End on edit' I finaly could place the transition on the left.

But....the second transition on the right will not go to 'Centre on Edit'
I find it a bit strange that I have to open the effect before I can apply it correctly to the timeline window.

I hope the picture will clear up things. Thank you very much in advance for the help.

It has to do with how much video your clip has left.

It does the same thing (or similar) in Premiere Pro.

Let's say your clip is 5 seconds long. If you have ALL 5 seconds stretched out on the timeline, and you butt that clip up to another clip that's 3 seconds long and all of that clip is stretched out on the timeline you have 8 seconds worth of clips.

OK, let's say you want a 1-second dissolve between those clips.

To understand 'handles' let's assume that you're going to use the opacity/keyframes solution instead of a transition.

If you do it that way, you have to place one clip in the track above the other clip and overlap them by 1 second to create a 1-second 'dissolve'. Then you'd adjust the opacity and keyframes appropriately.

A dissolve transition does this WO you having to place the video in the track above and overlap them. However, you still need to have at least 30 frames of extra footage NOT on the main timeline on each clip to accomplish this, just as you would IF you used the opacity/keyframes solution.

Does this make sense?

Gert,

Do you understand the problem now?

Two clips. One is running out. And the other is starting.

If both those clips are placed with every frame of their content already on the timeline - then putting a dissolve between them fails.

It fails because there are no "overlap" frames available between them to use for the dissolve.

One way to solve the problem would be to TRIM the end of the outgoing clip back by 15 frames. And TRIM the beginning of the incoming clips a similar 15 frames.

Then when you use a 30 frame dissolve between them, the effect uses the overlapping 15 frames on each side of the center of the dissolve to mix the scenes together.

That overlap on each clip is referred to as the clip "handle" and is the reason it's important to start the camera a few seconds prior to the start of the scene you want to use - and leave it running a few seconds after the point where you want the scene to cut.

Then you have these natural handles to use for effects that take time to complete like dissolves or slides, or page peels.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for all the help! I figured out how it works! It's different from the way I used to work with the PC version of Premiere, so I got a bit confused with that.