View Full Version : Ghost Ship in my transitions (FCP X 10.0.3)


John Nantz
March 17th, 2012, 09:43 PM
I've got a little problem that's really bugging me.

First off, this is a portion of a video which uses regular video clips but this one part of the Timeline uses a few still shots which are transitioned together to create the feeling of a video.

I imported some *.jpg photos into the Timeline and they had a default value of 10 seconds each. Because they were so long I shortened each one down to 6 seconds each and threw in a 2 second transition between each one. After viewing them it seemed each clip was still too long so I went back in to shorten each one, probably by using "the bully way."

Using the pointer tool I took each clip and raised it above the Timeline, shortened it by a second or two, then dragged it back down into the Timeline from whence it came. Everything looked fine until I went to play it back.

What seems to have happened is a small piece of one of the clips overlaps the other clip and causes a "ghost ship".

Any ideas on what I did wrong?
And, how I can correct the problem?

See some new information under the link picture.

Thanks, and here is a link to the clip:
2012 Ghost ship on Vimeo

Upon further inspection I found that each photo/video clip (they were all *.jpg photos but they're in a video Timeline) overlaps the next one underneath the transition. This is not the way they were originally inserted into the Timeline.

When the Timeline was originally created the photos were inserted one after the other and each one 10 seconds long abutting the next one.

After all the photo/video clips were in line a transition was dragged and placed between each clip. The photo/video clips were then shortened.

P.S. It looks like this wound up in the wrong forum by accident. Anyone know how to move it to, say, Mac post production solutions?

John Nantz
March 18th, 2012, 10:33 PM
Not exactly sure how the original problem occurred but I was able to edit the problem areas out.

The transitions on each side of the offending clip were deleted.

Then each offending clip was deleted.

New clips were inserted in their place and edited for length.

Then new transitions were inserted.

In one case there were TWO very, very small clips, actually clip remnants. I was able to spot these by zooming way in and that made it really easy to select them and do a delete.

Now everything works just fine like it is supposed to.

What I found was, when a transition is inserted and there is an error message that the clips are too short, it's probably because the two clips are not touching. The fix for this seems to be to delete one or both of the clips and re-insert new ones. Not absolutely positive about this, but pretty sure. Time will tell.