Best way of fading between two clips?

[King Mustard]

I have the following timeline:

<clip1-8secs><clip2-3secs><clip3-3secs><clip4-3secs><clip5-20secs>

I wish to have a short fade between clip2 and clip3 but when I try to use the Cross Dissolve transition in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, I get a message stating "Insufficient media. This transition will contain repeated frames."

Any idea how I can solve this?

[senu]

In general most video editing programs need a minimum amount ( duration) of footage to create a transition between clips, and will give the same message you got from Premiere if the clips are deemed to be too short
The transitions are created by merging elements of the outgoing and incoming clips and are themselves of a minimum duration otherwise they will be so brief you may not notice them
As such I feel a 3 second clip followed by another 3 second clip ( such as you intend) may not lend themselves easily to a fade in many programs
What happens in some instances is that the clips are timestreched ( or repeated to allow easy creation of a transition
Another method is to use a still( whose duration you can prolong) instead of one of the (short) clip
HTH

[King Mustard]

Originally Posted by senu

In general most video editing programs need a minimum amount ( duration) of footage to create a transition between clips, and will give the same message you got from Premiere if the clips are deemed to be too short
The transitions are created by merging elements of the outgoing and incoming clips and are themselves of a minimum duration otherwise they will be so brief you may not notice them
As such I feel a 3 second clip followed by another 3 second clip ( such as you intend) may not lend themselves easily to a fade in many programs
What happens in some instances is that the clips are timestreched ( or repeated to allow easy creation of a transition
Another method is to use a still( whose duration you can prolong) instead of one of the (short) clip
HTH

Would you suggest I use Blend from the Effect Controls panel?

[redsox_mark]

I've used short clips with very little overlap on the cross fade (e.g. 5 or 6 frames, 1/4 of a second or so) in Vegas and never had any issues. Agree with senu that having lots of short clips with fades between them may look hectic and best avoided, but I've never come accross a technical limitation.

[senu]

Originally Posted by King Mustard

Would you suggest I use Blend from the Effect Controls panel?

You could.. as Mark implies, the ease of ability to do fades with very short clips could be program specific.
I also find it very much easier ( almost childs play) to do fades in Vegas than in Avid Liquid. Liquid is not shy in warning you that "You do not have enough material for a transition/effect " If it feels the transition or transition point are "invalid"

My familiarity with Premiere is getting rather faded now TBH although I still dabble with Premiere Elements ( Im "playing" with ver 4 ATM ) from time to time