Why won't a clip cut correctly?

[Little Nac]

Hi Guys.
Have just received Premier Elements 11, and am in the middle of mucking around with it. I brought a video and a still clip into the Time Line, and wanted to trim off the start and the end. I put my CTI at the place I wanted to trim the clip. I tried it both ways, with the scissors and also using Control K. It trims the clip OK, but replaces the clip with the part that has been trimmed. What am I doing wrong? I realise you can crop but why can't you trim it.Thanks for any help. Cheers, L.N.

P1000178.JPG

[Dave McElderry]

L.N., Do you mean that as soon as you perform the cut one of the resulting clips is being deleted automatically? Generally there are two modes that I know of when performing a cut: 1) If you don't have any clip selected all tracks will be cut at the CTI, or 2) If you select a clip first, only the selected clip will be cut. In scenario #1 you will then need to select one or more of the resulting clips before deleting. In scenario #2 the clip to the right of the cut will become selected. In either case you should then have to use cut or delete to get rid of the clip that you don't want. I've never heard of one of the cut clips just deleting on its own.

[Steve Grisetti]

Meantime, Nac. Can you provide a screen shot of the timeline rather than the video itself? That might better illustrate your problem.

It's just not entirely clear what you mean by " It trims the clip OK, but replaces the clip with the part that has been trimmed." When you split a clip, you're not actually removing anything. You're just slicing the clip in two.

[Little Nac]

Hi Guys, thank you for your replies. I have provided three pics and will try to explain what I actually mean.
Clip 1 is the full actual clip with no CTI showing.
Clip 2 is the same clip with the CTI showing where I want to cut the clip.
Clip 3, shows where I have cut the clip, but instead of taking out the small shed to the right, it leaves it there and it has added the beginning of the clip to the right.
I hope all this makes sense. I have tried it with numerous clips including the Bear. Trying to take out the extra "stuff" out side the green screen. It works with the crop tool, but not the scissors or hitting control K.
Thanks for any help. Cheers, L.N.

[Bob]

OK, your terminology was confusing us. What you want to do is mask off the portions outside the green screen area. With Premiere Elements, that's done by applying a garbage matte to the clip. A four point garbage matte looks like it would work here, but they do include garbage mattes with more points if you need the flexibility. Once you apply the garbage matte, go into the effect properties and adjust the four corners. Add the keying effect after the garbage matte effect.

[Little Nac]

Ok Bob I understand what you are saying about the garbage matte, and the green screen part, no problems there. I guess
I just used that as an example of what I was confused about, as I happened to have that on the hard drive and just tried
various examples.
Say the old church for example, why if I say don't want the old shed in the pic if I use the trim tool it keeps the old shed but
kind of like a mirror effect puts something from the left hand side, then if I am really quick I can see something like a mask effect on the timeline.
I realise I could play around in ps etc to get exactly what I want, but am confused as to why the trim tool does not work in
this instance. If I come across this sort of thing I just have to understand why. Thanks again L.N.

[Dave McElderry]

When you cut an image on the timeline you're not doing anything to the image itself. All you're doing is splitting into two parts the total amount of time that it's displayed. In fact, the actual name for the "scissors" is the Split Clip button. For all intent you've created two images, with the total amount of time that they're displayed equaling the length of the original image before you split it. You can then apply effects to each of them separately. The Crop effect will "cut off" part of the image, which sounds like what you want.

[Little Nac]

Thanks Dave. Yes I understand what you are saying, but what I can't understand is why (looking at the pics above), that say I don't want the shed at the right in the pic at all, so I cut it off, but it leaves it in the pic and cuts off the start of the clip. I know that I can crop it, but was just wondering why this happens.
Cheers, L.N.

[Dave McElderry]

Am I correct that you're trying to cut off part of the image with the Split Clip (scissors) tool?

[RJ Johnston]

Is this the problem?

The images Little Nac attached are of the a clip on the timeline, not what's in the preview window. You can't rely on the thumbnails unless you have zoomed into the timeline so you can see every frame. When you cut a clip, then the first thumbnail of the 2nd half will change to the show the first frame just after the cut. That's if you are zoomed all the way in on the timeline. If you are zoomed out to normal view, then the thumbnails could be way off.

I think it might be something like that.

[Little Nac]

Hi Guys,

Yes Dave you are correct scissors tool, or the Control K, and yes they are images on the timeline.
If I do the same scenario with a Video all works perfectly, but I guess if I do the same with a still,
it just does not happen, I just wondered why, as I said when I come across something like that, it kind
of bugs me till I understand the reason. Thanks LN

[Dave McElderry]

If I do the same scenario with a Video all works perfectly, but I guess if I do the same with a still,
it just does not happen,

I think it just comes down to a communication problem. I still don't understand what you mean in the above statement. I'm taking this to mean that you're trying to crop a still by splitting it in the timeline with the Split Clip tool, which can't be done. It can't be done to a video clip either. ??

[Bob]

Dave is correct. You can't use timeline thumbnails that way.

Timeline thumbnails start out by using the first frame of video at the beginning of the clip, but there is absolutely no correspondence with any other frame in the clip except by coincidence. The height of the timeline track is variable and the thumbnail is drawn to a width that maintains the frame aspect ratio. Depending on how zoomed in or out you are, it could represent a few frames or hundreds of frames. Furthermore, subsequent thumbnails do not have to align with a frame boundary. At the end of the clip, the last thumbnail is truncated so that the end of the thumbnail actually matches up with the end of the frame at that location. When you move the CTI to a position within the thumbnail and use the scissors, you split the clip at a frame boundary. The thumbnail on the left side of the cti will become the last one in that clip and will be truncated at the CTI position. The remaining frames on the right side will be come a new clip and the thumbnails for that clip will be redrawn beginning with a new full thumbnail. The same thing happens for either stills or video. Stills don't have frames, but the program internally manages a frame buffer for them so they can be treated as if they did by all the processing routines and plugins.

[Little Nac]

Ok Guys at this stage I give in. I understand what you guys are saying, I guess I kind of thought I could
do something this way, but I guess I can see I can't. Thanks again for the help. L.N.