Cross dissolve not working properly with nested sequences

[Spanky2k]

Hey all,

I'm hoping someone can help as I'm absolutely flummoxed by this issue!

I'm working on a video that has quite a few nested sequences in it (nested sequences within nested sequences too). This has all worked fine in the production of this video so far but after rendering it, I've noticed that the cross fades between nested sequences just don't work - things are missing in the crossfade and pop up after the fade is finished.

My video switches between three different point of view of a game. All three views last the full duration of the video. I've put each screen capture point of view video into a sub sequence so that I can layer some overlay text and a character model directly on each video so that I when choosing shots from the videos, I don't have to have loads of tracks in the main sequence with lots of fades in many layers at once etc. I originally had these nested POV sequences in the same track on the main sequence with a standard cross-fade between each clip. The first two transitions worked fine but on the third cross dissolve, one of the layers in the subsequence doesn't render until the dissolve is finished and this same problem occurs in every single cross-dissolve after this.

I uploaded the video before I noticed so you can see it here: https://youtu.be/-4lJYfahe1w?t=1m48s

You can see the character models in the bottom left corner fade out ok but the new one just pops in with no cross dissolve. The previous 2 ones in the video (they happen 30 seconds apart) are fine but then all later ones fail like this one.

To be sure, this isn't a matter of there not being enough frames in the subsequence as the subsequence is the length of the full video, it's just split up into sections.

As a work around, last night, I moved the point of view subsequences onto three separate tracks in my main sequence with a cross dissolve to black for each one instead of a cross dissolve into the next sequence. This way I could add the extra frames used in the cross dissolve onto the main sequence in case that *was* somehow causing the issue. I swear this looked ok last night (it was 4am though so I was tired and may have missed it) but after re-rendering the video overnight, I've now seen that the cross-dissolves *still* don't work and one of the character models in the cross-dissolve is skipped for the fade and just pops in or out and sometimes both.

From what I can tell, I'm not doing anything wrong and this is some kind of bug in Premiere Pro. Effectively, cross dissolve is skipping a layer in a nested sequence when fading. I don't see any reason why it should be doing that.

Right now, I think the only workaround that should work is if I pre-render each POV video and then put those rendered videos straight on the timeline. That seems ridiculous though and would mean I would have to spend 4 times as much time rendering as the full subsequences are the same length as the whole video. It's already taking about 3 hours to render this 7 minute video so I'd be going up to 12 hours which is crazy.

[Peferling · Accepted solution]

Old school method:  Key the opacity channel.

[fordfilomeno]

Just replying to confirm that fading keyframes still work flawlessly. I'm at CC 2017.

Have the same problem as @spanky2k with the irregularities in the nested sequences within nested sequences—some things just pop out after the transtion. Still in confusion though why this is still an issue.