INTRODUCTION:

Recently I was editing a number of still images, synchronizing the images with some narration.  After a first pass, the overall timing was pretty good, but I had lots of fine-tuning to do.

Many times I wanted to make one clip shorter and the next one longer (or vise versa), but I did not want to change the entire project length.  As it works today, if I make one clip a second longer, the entire remainder of the project is shifted to the right by one second, and now the timing is wrong for the rest of the project.

MY REQUEST:

When changing the duration of a still image by dragging the end of the "clip" on the timeline, I'd like the option to make the neighboring clip longer/shorter by the same amount, so that the total length of those two clips remains the same and nothing else on the timeline moves.

 

EXAMPLE:

Say I want to make "Clip A" shorter, so I drag the end of Clip A on the timeline (at the second "X", below)

 

Original:

X---------------------- Clip A ----------------------X----------------------- Clip B -------------------X---------------------- Clip C --------------------X

 

What I want (currently requires TWO EDITS, one to shorten "A" and one to lengthen "B"):

X-------- Clip A --------X------------------------------------ Clip B ----------------------------------X---------------------- Clip C --------------------X

 

The way it behaves today:

X-------- Clip A --------X----------------------- Clip B -------------------X---------------------- Clip C --------------------X

 

 

MORE COMMENTS:

This could also apply to video clips, as long as the one being extended was previously trimmed and can be extended.

Hi Dennis,

How about doing it this way.

Drag 2 stills to TL. They should default to a duration of 4 secs.

Now select both stills and move the cursor to the dotted line between both.

See a 2 side arrow appear?

Drag the dotted line to the left to shorten 1st still, while lenghten 2nd one.

Drag the dotted line to the right to lenghten 1st still, while shorten 2nd one.

In both cases the total lenght on TL stays unchaged.

Works the same with video clips.

Added later: If there happens to be a transition between the 2 you first have to delete that first .... and place it back after the trimming has been done.

Paul,

THANKS. 

Now that you mention it, that sounds vaguely familiar.  Man, I wish I knew that a couple weeks ago.  Oh well, I know it now.  Thanks again.

hey--good tip--I didn't know that either--could have used it a ton of times, but I have a lot of patience and always did it the long, slow way.  

You can do this from the keyboard - a "Rolling trim" of the out-point.

Position the scrubber at the end of the clip to be trimmed
Hit CTRL/ALT/Left arrow to trim by -1 frame; current clip is shortened by one frame and following clip has one frame added to the beginning
Hit CTRL/ALT/Right arrow to trim by +1 frame; current clip is lengthened by one frame and following clip has one frame removed from the beginning

Both the keyboard method and the mouse method (drag the join between clips with the two-headed arrow) will fail if the clip that has to be lengthened has no slack from which to draw upon the extra frame (so if you're already at the "last frame of the scene" in the current clip or the "first frame of the scene" in the following clip you will not be able to perform a rolling trim. To work around, do a bit of nifty "split scene" and "combine scenes" work in the Album to generate the required slack, replace the scene in the project with the modified one and trim it again.

Regards,
Richard

i have lots of still images and also video, and i can cut and paste them with reckless abandon.  when i put fades,etc in and have pictures on the main track and on the overlay track, they seem to re-align themselves, taking on whatever amount of space they are in the mood for at the time.  If i get my entire project done with no fades, is there an easy way to add fades of the same length to every picture on the main and overlay track without cutting and pasting (and resizing cause i am obviously screwing somthing up) for every single picture?

ok more info.  i drag a fade to the main track and it automatically is 3.29 long whereas if i drop to the overlay the fade is 1.24.  does it make a difference if there is a preceeding clip?   so that if i don't have a preceeding clip on the overlay the fade is shorter than the main track which does have a preceeding clip?  all the pictures are still at 4 and they are ending in the same spot despite all my fades.