10 frames replay when scrolling starts

Thank you SoCal and Michael for your responses. I'm thinking maybe describing my situation in some more detail might be helpful at this point.

At three points in my project I cut to a public discussion. Audio isn't the clearest so I decided to use scrolling text to make sure the viewer can discern of all that is being said. At one point this has created a particular problem. In the clip the speaker starts speaking right as the clip opens. Maybe there is a way to change scrolling, but so far it seems one can not prevent a delay before the text begins rolling up the screen. As is, if I drop in the scrolling text without some modifications I end up with text chasing the speaker. As I say, I looked to see if there wasn't a way to set the parameters of scrolling text so that the text would appear immediately. Couldn't find any way. The only work-around I was able to figure out was to start the scrolling text early, then remove the visibility of the text using the pen tool and key frames, then fading up as that clip with the speaking appears. I did that and it works. When the clip with the speaker appears, and the fellow is already in full flight speaking, the text is already visible on the bottom of the screen. It's at the point where the scrolling clip "begins" over the previous shot, where the text is rendered not visible, that the strange 10 frame repeat occurs.

Don't know if this information helps in the diagnosis, for I do the same thing at another point where speakers appear. Here, even though I start the scroll early and black it out then fade up, there is not the strange break and repeat of 10 frames.

(My material, by the way, is HDTV 720p compressed as Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). I'd found myself travelling with just my tablet, found myself in interesting circumstances, so ended up using it. Used Compressor to render more editable material in FCP. Haven't trashed preferences - must admit I'm a bit leery about importing a new program to do that - more a fear that I won't be able to retrieve them - a bit of new-software-phobia, I'm afraid. I have though closed and reopened FCP several times since this quirk has happened.)

Thanks.

John

Thanks again for the help I'm receiving.

Michael, I have tried something like what you've suggested. I opened a new sequence, carefully reconstructed the scrolling text clip, inserted it, then inserted the clip below it, letting the two overlap at the same place they do in my project. But alas, the same effect - that 10 frame stutter. So no chance to go that one step further of nesting or copying it into my project.

Since then, I've tried all sorts of different things. I've gone back to my source media and changed my background clip by a few frames. I've changed the speed/duration of my scrolling clip. I've changed the location where the two clips overlap. I've even created an entirely new scrolling clip (changing the words lest these be some strange unknown and mysterious curse on scroll texting in FC.) But every time the same problem of this 10 frame stutter.

So I've tried experimenting more. I've created an entirely different scrolling text clip and then placed it over four or five randomly chosen clips from my project's media. Bizarre! In two of these instances there is no stutter. In a couple, a stutter similar to the one I've been experiencing. In one just a short stutter.

What could be happening?

Michael,

Thanks for the reply. But before I try what you've suggested here is the letter I was in the midst of writing a few hours ago before I was called out of the house. It may add a different complexion to my problem.....

Actually thinking on it more, I'm wondering if this phenomena I'm seeing doesn't relate to something else unusual I noticed in this project.

Some weeks back I noticed something unusual about the way a certain cut played in the Timeline/Canvas. I had carefully cut one shot so that it would end on a closing door, mid-frame. The position of that door in that frame would land on a desk in the next shot. But when I'd play these two shots together in the sequence, I'd notice the edge of the closing door would go far past the desk on the next shot it was supposed to draw the eye's attention to.

What was happening? Why was the Timeline sequence playing frames past the cut on my clip? I checked the clip, and the out point was exactly where I wanted it to be. And when I looked at the clip in the Timeline it ended at the right point. Yet, when I played the sequence I'd get these – well I realize now – ten extra frames.

I'd found my solution – well at least a temporary one - to this problem. I went back to my clip, pushed the out point back ten frames, and the result on playback was as I wanted. I know this wasn't a real solution. For how, I wondered, would the sequence/film play when I exported it? Would it be true to the actual clip/Timeline cut, or would it play as it has been with those extra frames added? It was a problem I knew I was going to have to face and fully solve later.

Guess now is later, for it seems to me that this is exactly the phenomena I'm experiencing at the moment when the scrolling text enters. Only here I don't have the chance of my earlier “work-around”. In that instance I was dealing with the end of a clip so I could make the adjustments I've described. In the case of the superimposed scrolling clip the “phenomena”, the “jog”, the “stutter” is happening in the middle of a clip.

So I guess, as I'm seeing it now, the problem of the scrolling text is really the same as I've described above. Right now I'd suspect it's just another example of cutting two shots together where for some reason the second shot is “requiring” an extra ten frames of the last shot/clip to play.

Wow! Got me baffled. This got anything to do with Handles? Got anything to do with ProRes 422 (HQ)? I've never edited in that compression format before and must admit in many years editing in FC have never knowingly experienced this “lag” phenomena.

Weird! But it is something I have to figure out, if not just for the sake of saving the clip in discussion, but also to make sure that in the end of it all I won't be exporting a project where every cut will be adding ten frames to the cut before it.

John