Using the Video Opacity rubberband

When you place a clip in a superimpose track, an Opacity rubberband, appears beneath it (you must expand the superimpose track to display the Opacity rubberband). The Opacity rubberband specifies the opacity of the entire clip. By adding handles, you can adjust the opacity of a clip.

The Opacity rubberband adjusts opacity after any keys have been applied. In other words, moving the Opacity rubberband adjusts the opacity for opaque, transparent, and semitransparent regions in the clip.

To adjust fading:

1 Place a clip in a superimpose track. If necessary, click the triangle to the left of the track name to expand the track, or Option-click (Mac OS) or Alt-click (Windows) the triangle to expand all the superimpose tracks at once.

2 Click the red Display Opacity Rubberbands icon () to display the opacity rubberband.

3 With the selection tool selected, position the pointer over the top of the Opacity rubberband. The pointer changes to a pointing finger with red plus (+) and minus (-) signs.

4 Click to create a handle (a small red square), and drag the handle up or down to adjust the fading. The opacity percentage appears in the Info palette and updates as you drag a handle. Press the Shift key with a handle selected to view the opacity percentage and to change the percentage in 1% increments for finer gradations.

When the handle is at the top of the panel, the image is fully opaque; when the handle is at the bottom of the panel, the image is transparent. The line between two handles indicates the direction, length, and speed of the adjustment. The steeper the angle, the more sudden the change.

5 Repeat the above step to create as many handles as needed.

6 To delete a handle, drag it out of the superimpose track.

To create two opacity handles:

1 Select the fade scissors tool ().

2 Click the Opacity rubberband where no handles exist. Two adjacent handles appear.

3 Drag the new handles up or down to make a sharp increase or decrease in opacity.

To adjust the opacity of a specific segment:

1 Select the fade adjustment tool ().

2 Drag the line segment up or down. You can set the opacity of the entire clip to a constant value by adjusting the opacity rubberband in this manner before creating handles.

Superimposing and Compositing > Using the Video Opacity rubberband