Why Can't I Apply Smooth Cut To My Clips?

I'm following the online tutorials provided by DR to the letter. He can drop a smooth cut transition on top of his clips, but I can't do the same.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Do you have media extents on your clips so the dissolve can be applied?

Do you have media extents on your clips so the dissolve can be applied?

Media extents?

Do the clips 'overlap', or are there enough hidden frames after the cut on the first clip and before the cut on the second clip for the dissolve to be applied? If not, you can't apply a smooth cut as there is nothing to dissolve.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Trevor

Try clicking and holding one fo the edit points for a clip in the timeline.
If the edit point is red, it means that the clip cannot be extended by trimming.
If the edit point is green, the clip can be extended. A white outline shows what these "extents" are - i.e. how much the actual clip in the media pool allows extension till.

A transition needs both (left and right) clips to be extendable. This way, at each point of the transition, both clips can be "referenced" and processed by the transition. If one of the clips has a red edit point, adding a transition using a shortcut can show you this warning:

add transition warning.png (231.55 KiB) Viewed 4205 times

Please note that, in addition to the training you're currently working on, the Help menu also has the DaVinci Resolve manual which has a lot of detail on some of the nuances. This forum thread discusses Blackmagic Design training tools and aggregates third party tutorials - and may be another handy reference.

Regards
Shrinivas

Trevor

Try clicking and holding one fo the edit points for a clip in the timeline.
If the edit point is red, it means that the clip cannot be extended by trimming.
If the edit point is green, the clip can be extended. A white outline shows what these "extents" are - i.e. how much the actual clip in the media pool allows extension till.

A transition needs both (left and right) clips to be extendable. This way, at each point of the transition, both clips can be "referenced" and processed by the transition. If one of the clips has a red edit point, adding a transition using a shortcut can show you this warning:

add transition warning.png

Please note that, in addition to the training you're currently working on, the Help menu also has the DaVinci Resolve manual which has a lot of detail on some of the nuances. This forum thread discusses Blackmagic Design training tools and aggregates third party tutorials - and may be another handy reference.

Regards
Shrinivas

Just came here searching for the answer. I was facing the same problem Trimming one frame from beginning and the end of each clip where I wanted to place the smooth cut transition.

I'm coming from over a decade long experience of using Adobe Premiere Pro. Smooth cut is a replacement for me in DVR what morph cut used transition used to do and Premiere can apply it directly without forcing me to trimming the clips. Isn't there a direct way to apply the effect in DVR?

I have found that if you butt two clips together without trimming and have the transition length set to two frames in Preferences/User/Editing, adding a Smooth Cut will automatically ripple the timeline by 2 frames and apply the Cut. It ripples the timeline whatever default transition length you have set.

I have found that if you butt two clips together without trimming and have the transition length set to two frames in Preferences/User/Editing, adding a Smooth Cut will automatically ripple the timeline by 2 frames and apply the Cut. It ripples the timeline whatever default transition length you have set.

Really? Without notifying the user? I’ve never noticed this Charles (probably because I usually have sufficient heads/tails on my clips).

I only found this while testing it so I could give the op an answer. I don't use Smooth Cut so didn't know it did this either. It will also ripple for other Transitions too. I'm using the Speed Editor to do this so it may be tied to that.

Cool - I'll watch for this next time I use my Speed Editor. Cheers.

You know what? Something really came to my mind reading this thread, just now:
Why would these specific rules need to apply specifically to Smooth Cut??

Yes I know, obviously, it's still regarded as a transition effect, which absolutely always need heads and tails to work. The before and after need to exist because they blend into each other.

BUT the "only" use of Smooth Cut is to smooth out differences between jump cuts. Perhaps even in direct contrast of the idea of a normal transition, in Smooth Cut I specifically choose the last usable frame and the first usable new frame, because what's in between I deem unusable!
The very concept of Smooth Cut implies that I don't want anything in-between the cut, and rather it should look like one continuous take!

I know you could use it for artistic purposes and all that, but to place it between eg. a long shot and a close up, and complain it looks horrible, is asinine. The only usable instance for smooth cut is, in my mind, for hiding Jump Cuts, as best as you can, especially now that is utilizes Speedwarp.

So, for this specific use, why would it matter what came before and what comes next? I give you the last frame, I give you the next "first frame", figure out a way to morph between those two smoothly and do your best!
Especially if exactly in-between is a movement I don't want, and would throw the whole transition out the window!

Just a silly train of thought I had right now

This is actually how Avid does it.
You have the option of using a freeze frame on each end of the transition, moving video on each end of the transition, or any combination. FWIW, i typically leave it set to freeze frame, unless there is some motion that I need to continue over to the b clip.