Fade to grey - Avid

Fading an image or video to grey can be used to suggest to the audience that this is a serious bit of the film. As the video fades to grey, text might also appear, emphasising the words of a voice over.

Below is a guide to fading to grey.

1. Edit your video clip onto the sequence. For this example I will assume that the video, what ever the duration, will fade to grey half way through. An effect will always start at an edit point. As our effect will begin halfway through the clip we will need to add an edit point.
2. Move the blue play head to the halfway point. Making sure the video track is enabled select the Add Edit button, usually found amongst the timeline tools.
3. Now open the Effect Palette from the Tools menu and select Image.
4. Drag the Color Effect option onto the second half of the clip. An effect icon should appear on the clip in the sequence.
5. Open the Effect Editor from the Tools menu. There should be various options displayed in the Effects Palette, but if its empty click on the clip in the sequence and then the Effects Palette again to activate the options.
6. As we only want to reduce the colour to grey, simply slide the Saturation fader (SAT) to zero.

Before we finish we can also add a dissolve from the first clip (full colour) into the second clip (grey), hence the Fade to Grey title.

1. To add a dissolve move the blue play head to the edit point where the dissolve will appear.
2. Click on the Quick Transition button, usually found amongst the timeline tools.
3. Select Dissolve, Centre on Cut and adjust the frames to 12 (half a second).
4. Then click OK.

That's it, the clip will now fade to grey half way through. Play it back to see it work.

All that's left to do now is to render the effects.

1. This can be done by adding Mark In and Out points to enclose all the effects that have be added.
2. Then right click the mouse and choose Render In/Out.
3. Choose the F:\Broadcast drive and click OK.

Note: When we added the Color Effect to the clip we only adjusted the the saturation. However, there are many other changes that could be made to the clip within this effect. Have a play with the other options to see what else can be done.