Maybe if you were to post

Maybe if you were to post some example of your short fades we would understand more. One of the reasons motion pictures work is due to the fact that the eye cannot discern things of short duration (24fps looks like full motion when in fact it’s just 24 frames over a one second period).

I don’t see how a fade of two-four frames can look like anything but a cut – to the subconscious certainly but I have tried some of these myself and they didn’t look like crossfades to me at all – but that was my experiences, yours may be different.