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Chapter 21 - The Begin/End Tab

Video Fade | Audio Fade | High Quality First/Last | Hold Frames

Media Cleaner allows you to set some commonly used special features for the beginnings and ends of your movies, such as fades and high quality frames.




Video Fade

To create a video fade, check the box next to the option you want (in and/or out) then type in a time in the duration box. You can specify decimal times as well as whole numbers.

Fade colors are set with the fades pop-up. Your options are "black", "white", "WWW gray" and "Color...". Selecting "Color..." will bring up the standard Apple Color Picker to allow you to set the color.

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Audio Fade

Audio fade in causes the audio to start at silence and smoothly increase until it is the normal volume for your movie. Audio fade out does the reverse at the end of a movie. It is often best to have audio fades accompany video fades. As with video fades, you can use decimal times.

Even if your video doesn't fade, a very short audio fade will help avoid "pops" at the beginning and end of the movie. Usually .25 - .5 seconds works well.

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High Quality First/Last

The "High quality frames" option forces the first and/or last frame to be a higher data rate than normal. This extra data makes the beginning and/or end of your movie look better and is useful for movies that stay on the screen before or after they are played, especially those with titles or end-screens.

NOTE: Because the extra data is in the beginning and/or end of the movie, this doesn't normally affect playback. In some cases, the first frame may automatically be "held" (as described below) to manage its data rate.

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Hold Frames

Setting a hold time for the first and/or last frame makes the movie play the first and/or last frame of the movie for a longer time than normal. This is useful for some applications (such as older versions of Macromedia's Director), which have a hard time starting video smoothly.

A first frame hold of one second lets the program "come up to speed" before the real video starts, which helps prevent the movie from "jerking" when it is played.

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