Intelligent fade tool?

[TWright]

Can someone tell me about the intelligent fade tool ... what does it do and how to operate it?

Also, how do I "overlap" two effects? For example, if I have two adjacent fade-up/fade-downs on the same channel, how do I "overlap" or "meld" them into each other?
Thanks for your help.
Tom

[bob]

The Intelligent Fade tool will make a fade up if you drag left to right, and a fade down if you drag right to left. And if you just click without dragging (on an "off" effect), it will do a fill (i.e. it will change that off effect to a fade that coincides with the intensities preceding it and following it).

As for overlapping or melding two adjacent fades, I am not sure that I understand what you mean. However, if you mean that you have two fades separated by an "off" effect, and you want to change that "off" effect to a fade which smoothly goes from the preceding fade to the following fade, try using a fill. You can do this with the Intelligent Fade tool (as noted above), or the Fill tool. Or, if you're doing it on RGB channels, with the Color Fade tool (in the same manner as with the Intelligent Fade tool).

The following help file page has more details on these tools:

http://lightorama.com/help/index.html?the_tools_menu.htm

[TWright]

Thanks, Bob, your explanations have been very helpful. Let me see if I can explain my question.
For the sake of discussion, let's say that I have a fade down and want to "overlap" it with a fade up. Let's say I want to place the fade up before the end of the fade down, thus overlapping it. I've seen it done where thare is no break in the first fade but when I do it there is a distinct break between the two fades. I've seen R.Holdman do this where there is a smooth transition between the two fades.
Thanks,
Tom

[bob]

The followup question was also sent to me via PM, and I responded to it, but I will duplicate the response here for anyone else who may be interested:

If I understand you correctly, you want something like the following (please correct me if I'm wrong):

You have a fade down from 100% to 0% over the time 1.00 to 1.50.

You want a fade up from 0% to 80% over the time 1.00 to 1.10, followed by a fade down from 80% to 0% over the time 1.10 to 1.50.

Is that right?

If so, the general way to do it would be to use the Fade Tool Settings dialog and the Fade Tool Options dialog to specify that a "fade up" should be 0% to 80%, and then apply a fade up to the time range 1.00 to 1.10.

Depending upon exactly how the sequence is set up, though, there might be an easier way:

If the intensity immediately preceding the start of your desired fade up is the same as you want the start of the fade up to be (in the example I gave, 0%), then you could use the "Off" tool to turn off the area where you want the fade up to go, and then use the "Fill" tool to fill that area. It will automatically fill it with a fade from the preceding intensity to the following intensity (in this case, 0% to 80%).

The help file contains more detail on Fade Tool Settings/Options dialogs and the Fill tool, all on this page:

http://lightorama.com/help/index.html?the_tools_menu.htm