Classroom in a book

109
Dealing with inadequate (or no) head or tail handles
Eventually you’ll want to place transitions at edit points where you don’t have 
adequate head or tail handles (footage beyond the In or Out point of your clip). 
This might be because you paused the camcorder too soon or didn’t get it started 
fast enough. You might want to add a transition to ease what would be an abrupt 
cut edit. Adobe Premiere Pro deals elegantly with this situation.
1
Open Lesson 06-04.prproj. Notice that the two clips on the Timeline have no 
“heads or tails.” You can tell this because of the little triangles in the corners of 
the clips; the triangles indicate the very ends of the clips.
2
Using the standard Selection tool, drag the right edge of the last clip to the left, 
and release. Notice that the little triangle at the end of that clip is no longer 
visible. Stretch the clip back to its full length.
3
Drag the Cross Dissolve transition to the edit point between the two clips.
The “Insufficient Media” alert appears. Click OK.
4
Click the transition to display it in the Effect Controls panel, and note that the 
transition rectangle has parallel diagonal lines running through it, indicating the 
lack of head or tail frames.
5
Lengthen the transition to about three seconds by dragging the right and left 
edges of the transition rectangle. You may need to zoom in the Timeline by 
pressing the equal sign (=) to be able to grab the edge of the transition.
6
Drag the current-time indicator slowly through the entire transition, and watch 
how it works:
t
For the first half of the transition (up to the edit point), the B clip is a freeze 
frame while the A clip continues to play.
t
At the edit point, the A clip becomes a freeze frame, and the B clip starts 
to play.
When played at regular speed (at the default one-second duration), few viewers 
would notice the freeze frames.
#
 Note:
In this lesson’s example, both the A and B clips have no head or tail handle frames. 
Frequently only one clip has no head or tail room. In those cases, Adobe Premiere Pro forces the 
placement of the transition to start or end at the edit point, depending on which clip lacks extra 
frames for the overlap.

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ptg