Simple editing in Fusion

Hey all!

Now, before you all point me towards the door for asking about editing and suchlike, please let me explain. The other day I felt a bit silly, so I experimented with a "super speed"-effect in Fusion. That required me to do some cuts in my filmed material. Basically I had a shot that started out clean, I then entered the scene, did something, and left the scene. I then wanted to edit out the parts where I moved into and out of the picture. Of course, I could do this in an editing software or similar, but that felt a bit superflous.

Turns out it wasn't as easy as I thought. I ended up using three loaders loading different parts of the same clip, and then adding them together via the dissolve node (which meant I needed two of those). It worked, but felt a bit wonky. The alternative would be (and I tried this as well) to use Time Stretcher node, and then carefully animate the source time-setting, making jumps between frames where I wanted to cut. It worked, but it was a bit fiddly getting the timing right (since I didn't find a way to automatically make the source time-setting move forwards 1 frame/frame. Instead I had to calculate where the next cut is, find the number of frames there, and then move the source time as many frames forward etc. Doable, but still not something you would do if you wanted to do more editing.

So, what would your tips be if I needed to do some editing as part of a vfx-shot? Proper editing I'd do in another tool, but simple editing for vfx (and no, I didn't find any tools for it in the timeline-view)

Kind regards
Ulf

I am a one man show wearing all the hats, and hardly an expert at any of them. But I would edit the scenes in an editor, export as an image sequence (your favorite flavor), then open the sequence in Fusion and do your magic. Once done, export the appropriate piece from fusion and import to your editor for assembly.

(I will watch this thread in hopes of learning a better way)

Ok, did some more experimenting, and came up with a refined workflow. Still not optimal, but for a few cuts it does the job without to much pain.

I went back to using Merge instead of Dissolve, and added a solid background which lasts as long as the entire clip (this is because merge can only be active as long as it's background image). From the background I add a series of merges after one and another, one merge per cut. Then I connect loaders to each merge. Using the trim and global in/out-settings of the leaders I can then edit the video. While the differences from my first attempt aren't that big, it's a bit refined, and when experimenting with it it did make a difference in speed and overview. Doing that setup, and then jumping into the timeline editor made it fairly easy to change the timing of the cuts.

/Ulf

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 07.02.18.png (46.33 KiB) Viewed 2368 times

Give Time Machine a try:

http://www.steakunderwater.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=74

For your example, you may want to check out the Switch mode (descriptions are in the topic).

Object-Oriented Procedural Editor
Interesting idea... Isn't it ?
Outside the Linear Timeline...