Timeline Editing - The 3 - Point and 4 - Point edit

In the previous video, you saw the different editorial modes such as insert and overwrite as well as drag and drop editing. Autodesk Smoke also has a variety of similar editing techniques that you may be used to already in your other editing applications. For example, let’s do a 3-point edit. So you first select your source clip in the media library, and this will load it into the Source Viewer. Using the Navigation controls, you can scrub to the start frame and press the Mark IN button or press I. Scrubbing further down the clip, you can press the MARK OUT button or press O to set your out point. In the sequence, first check the patch panel to make sure your tracks are assigned correctly. Then move your positioner to the point where you would like the edit to take place. If you do not place an IN or OUT point, the positioner will be used as the In point. Press the MARK IN button or the I keyboard shortcut, to set the IN point in the sequence. You can now choose to Overwrite or insert the edit into the sequence. You can press the buttons in the interface or you can use the keyboard shortcuts. You can press F9 to perform an insert edit. Or you can press F10 to perform an overwrite edit. Depending whether you use an in or out point in the sequence can determine forward timing as well as back timing your edits. Smoke can also perform a 4-point edit but both source and sequence must be marked up with an in and out point. In lots of cases, the duration of the marked up source does not match the duration of the marked up sequence. So in this instance, Smoke will perform a fit to fill operation using a time-warp effect, to fit the source clip to the marked up section of the sequence. To some, time-warp is referred to as a speed change. To perform this 4-point edit, ensure your source clip has in and out points. If you wish to create an in and outpoint based on a selection, press X. So the source has now an in and outpoint and so does the sequence. When you press the overwrite button or F10, you will see the new segment fitting into the sequence. Notice that a timeline FX was added to the new segment. The timeline FX is indicated by this bar running just under the top of the segment. If you select the segment in the sequence, the toolbar will inform you of the speed change that has been applied to the segment to fit it into the sequence. In the next video, we’ll look at splicing segments, or you might call it blade. We’ll also do some lifting, extracting and sub-clipping.