Transitions

The point where two clips touch is a cut. Normally the picture flips from one to the other instantly, and that's completely fine — most of cinema is edited exactly that way. A transition stretches that moment out: one shot blends into the next over a fraction of a second.

The studio ships 111 of them, from a plain dissolve to shader-driven modern zooms and whip pans. This guide covers where to put them, how to place them, and — just as importantly — when not to use one at all.

What's in the library

The panel groups them by what they actually do. Some are drawn with plain Canvas 2D, others (the ones marked GL) run as a shader on your graphics card — from your side there's no difference, you use them the same way.

Three ways to place one

Open the “Transitions” tab in the media panel. Each one plays a small live preview — hover it and you'll see exactly what it does before you commit.

1. 1

   Drag it onto the cut

   The most direct route: pick a transition from the panel and drop it on the cut — the line where two clips touch. Valid targets light up while you drag, and the drop snaps to the nearest one.

2. 2

   Press the + button

   Every transition in the panel has a + button. It drops the transition at the point nearest the playhead — so park the red line by the cut you mean, then click. No dragging needed.

3. 3

   Pick it in the inspector

   Select a clip and open the “In” or “Out” dropdown in the properties panel on the right. Here you set both the type and the duration — this is where you go to adjust a transition you've already placed.

A cut and a lone edge are different things

This is the key idea in the whole guide. What a transition does depends on where you drop it.

• On a cut (two clips touching). The two shots blend into each other. The clips do not move — the transition centres itself on the cut and each side keeps playing a little past it, into material it already had. Neither your timeline length nor your rhythm changes.
• On a lone clip edge (nothing next to it). The clip comes in from empty or goes out to empty: there's no second shot to blend with, so that side stays transparent and the background — or whatever track sits below — shows through. This is exactly what you want at the very start and end of a video.

Duration, and having material to spare

A freshly dropped transition is half a second long; you change that in the inspector. As a rule of thumb: 0.2–0.4 s is barely noticeable and doesn't break the rhythm; 0.5–1 s reads as a deliberate transition between sections; longer than a second feels slow and reflective.

A transition on a cut eats a little extra material from both clips: during the blend the left clip keeps running past the cut, and the right clip starts a bit before it. Usually that material exists — it's the footage you trimmed away earlier.

A word about taste

The single most common beginner mistake is putting a fancy transition on every cut. The result is exhausting to watch: the viewer stops seeing the story and starts seeing the transitions.

• A hard cut is the default. If two shots simply follow one another, put nothing between them. You'll feel it when a transition is actually needed.
• A transition signals a change of time or place. Moving from one scene to another, from morning to evening, from inside to outside — that's where it earns its keep.
• Pick one and repeat it. The same transition used throughout a video reads as style. A different one each time reads as chaos.
• The modern ones live on the beat. A whip pan or a zoom punch works when it lands on the music; off the beat it's just noise. If you cut with auto-edit, your cuts are already sitting on the beats.

Common questions