I produced over 2 hours of video, complete with chapter markers to export into Subler as an index of the key moments of the video. Just before I went to export the final version for upload, I realized that I’d forgot to add transitions between the various clips. Leaving it this way would have looked terrible, but dragging clips around to add transitions doesn’t drag the markers with them unless you create all the markers on the clips themselves. I didn’t, because if I did, then they wouldn’t show up as chapter markers for the index.

Sigh.

Am I really going to have to move the clips, then remember to move every single marker on its own?! 12 frames for each transition? Really?! There was no way I would get this right.

Then it hit me.

A Brilliant Workaround

I wondered what would happen if I locked all the clips, then used Ripple Delete on a section of the video between markers—would it move the markers without disturbing the clips?

It did.

This became the workflow:

  1. Go to the first transition point, where two clips meet.
  2. Unlock all the clips, then drag all the later clips (as a big group) over the earlier clip to create the transition. I usually drag it 12 frames and use the “Cross Dissolve” transition. (I choose all the clips after the transition point to avoid creating a gap later in the timeline.)
  3. Lock all the clips.
  4. Create In and Out Points over the 12-frame transition.
  5. Ripple Delete. Watch that the markers move, but the clips remain untouched.
  6. Breathe.
  7. Repeat all this for the remaining transition points, slowly and surely.

What could have become hours of painstaking work suddenly became much less stressful. Of course, for a 2-hour-long video, it still look a long time, but at least I knew what I was doing and felt confident about it.

Yay!