I think I have answered my own question while writing this. I have been having difficulty fading title clips in and out while placed over video tracks. The black of the title clip appears instantly and then the colour fades in, very odd. But thinking about it, fade from black, this sort of makes sense.

Video shows what I mean here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-ih8NB1xa0

Anyway, I guess the correct way to do this (which I just discovered while messing around) is to use the composite effect, not just to overlay the title clip over the video, but to key frame the opacity in and out, which produces the desired effect.

So I guess my question now is, is this how people do fading in and out for title clips? I have very little understanding of the transitions, and would love to learn more, is there anywhere to read up on all of this? The alpha channel operation for example, and what all the different transitions mean/do.

Cheers

So far, I've found only the same method to key frame opacity in the composite effect. Admittedly, this is tedious when you need to comment ("title") several scenes.

not just me then! :)

I have found that you can copy and paste the composite effect from one title to another, assuming the titles are the same length of course, the fade in/out will work

How do you copy and paste them? On my 0.8.1 ppa version I can select a composite effect and (probably) copy it, but I cannot paste it somewhere by pressing Ctrl V. Probably, I'm doing something wrong here?

Yes, I just right click copy, then right click somewhere blank in the timeline and paste.

To paste things in the timeline, you can't (I don't think) just ctrl v, it has to be somewhere specific you right click in the timeline for it to be pasted

In ver 0.9.2 (at least) you can do a Paste Effects - see http://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Edit_Menu/Paste_Effects

Documented this now at http://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Titles#How_to_fade_titles_in_and.2For_out

BTW - we get an afine transition on the title clip by default now with ver 0.9.3. Not sure why. And not sure that I care. Because it works just as well. Maybe it works better.

@ttguy I think the change was to do with the fact that if you stacked multiple composite transitions, the colours faded and/or showed a green tinge but afine worked ok. I know that composite did that cos I tried it, but haven't checked afine.

Of course, I could be wrong as most things I think of these days are wrong :-))

@ttguy

Thanks! Great info!