Use video transitions deliberately: This is how your video gets a professional flow

Your first video is cut, and in the editing software you discover the effects palette: iris wipe, page turn, cube spin, glitch. A different effect goes between every clip, and when you watch it, the result suddenly looks like a slideshow from the early days of editing software. Viewers pay attention to the effects, no longer to what you want to show.

The technology is rarely the cause. Every editing program comes with dozens of transitions, and even with an online editor you can add transitions to videos right in the browser without installing anything. The difficulty is not inserting them, but choosing them.

A video looks professional when the changes between shots are barely noticeable, or are noticeable exactly when they mean something. This guide shows why the hard cut is the most important transition, which transitions are good for what, how to set them cleanly from a technical standpoint, and how sound carries the changes.

Why is the hard cut the most important transition?

Because it adds nothing. With a hard cut, one shot follows the next without an effect, and that is exactly what viewers constantly see in films, series, and tutorials. The eye follows the change without anyone consciously noticing it. Whether a cut works therefore depends less on the effect than on the question of when and why you cut.

For this, film editor Walter Murch set out and weighted six criteria in his book "In the Blink of an Eye": emotion at 51 percent, story at 23, rhythm at 10, eye trace at 7, direction of movement within the frame at 5, and the spatial continuity of the action at 4 percent. The numbers are not a measurement but a ranking. If a cut cannot satisfy everything, you give up the lower criteria first, never emotion in favor of story.

For your videos, this means: A transition is only as good as the moment you choose for it. A cut on the right beat that picks up the gaze where it was in the previous shot feels smoother than any dissolve in the wrong place. Effects do not rescue a cut that doesn't fit in terms of content.

Which transitions are there, and what are they good for?

Besides the hard cut, you only need a handful of transitions for most videos. Each has its own meaning, and you should know it before you use it.

The dissolve lets the first image slowly merge into the second. According to the film portal StudioBinder, it usually lasts one to two seconds. In doing so, it tells viewers: time passes here, or the mood changes here. In a tutorial, it fits, for example, between two work steps with half an hour between them.

The fade takes the image to black or out of black. With it, you open and close a video or separate major chapters. In the middle of a scene it feels like an ending, so it doesn't belong there. One variant fades into a color instead of black, such as white.

With the wipe, the new image slides over the old one from one direction or in a particular shape, such as a circle or star. It is conspicuous and quickly comes across as playful. In an explainer video for children or in a humorous format it has its place, but in a factual tutorial it tends to distract.

The match cut connects two shots whose composition or movement match each other. The best-known example comes from "2001: A Space Odyssey": a prehistoric man throws a bone into the air, and the film cuts to a satellite. On a smaller scale this works for you too, for example when a hand moves toward a cup in one shot and the next shot shows the cup on a different table.

Then there is the jump cut, a hard cut within the same shot that deliberately makes a jump in time visible. In vlogs and tutorials, where you cut out pauses and slip-ups, it has long been common. The colorful special effects from the effects palette, from glitch to light leak, on the other hand, are design tools for music videos, trailers and social media clips, not for every cut.

How do you set up a transition cleanly from a technical standpoint?

With enough footage on both sides of the cut. A transition does not create new images; it blends images that are already in the clip shortly before and shortly after the cut point. If you have trimmed a clip exactly to the last frame, this material is missing, and the program has nothing to blend.

DaVinci Resolve, for example, uses a one-second cross dissolve as the default. If the footage at a cut point is not sufficient, the program warns you and offers to shorten the clips, skip the transition at this spot, or cancel. How to insert transitions there and change their length is shown in the lesson DaVinci Resolve: Inserting Transitions.

So plan ahead already during the shoot: let the camera run two or three seconds longer before and after each shot. Then in the edit you have the choice of whether to cut hard or to blend, and you don't have to shorten a clip afterwards.

You decide the length according to the pace of the video. A one-second dissolve seems appropriate in a calm portrait, but sluggish in a fast clip with music. There, shorten it to a few frames or stick with the hard cut. On the Mac, the lesson iMovie: Transitions shows how to adjust the type and duration.

Not every project needs a full editing program. If you just want to quickly join a few clips for a social media post, you can also get by with an online editor in the browser. Such tools usually offer a selection of ready-made transitions with preview and allow you to set a transition including its duration for the entire project.

How many transitions can a video handle?

Fewer than the effects palette offers. As an editorial rule of thumb: where the change should not announce anything, you cut hard. You use a dissolve or fade only where time passes, a chapter ends or the mood shifts.

Stick to one style within a video. If you have chosen a short dissolve for chapter changes once, you use it at every chapter change with the same length. This way viewers quickly learn the language of your video and understand the change without thinking about it. In a series, this applies across all episodes.

A good test is to watch the video without sound. If you notice a transition even though nothing special happens at that point, it is too much. If you lack orientation at a certain point, for example after a change of location, a deliberate transition can help, but often a shot that briefly shows the new location is enough.

How does sound help with the transition?

It connects the images before the eye registers the change. The two most important techniques are named after the shape they form in the timeline: J-cut and L-cut. Both work in any editing program that can edit the video and audio tracks separately.

With the J-cut, the sound of the next shot begins while the old image is still playing. You hear, for example, the voice of your conversation partner before you see her, and the cut to her face feels like a natural consequence. With the L-cut it is the other way around: the sound of the current shot continues while the next image is already visible, for example a close-up of what is just being explained.

Especially in tutorials, these cuts are more useful than any dissolve. You keep talking while the image changes from your face to your hands, the screen or the workpiece, and the connection doesn't break. Music can also link two scenes: if it runs across the cut, viewers perceive two shots as belonging together.

Pay attention to smooth transitions in the audio itself. A hard cut in the picture is not a problem, but a hard cut in the audio immediately stands out as a crackle or a jump in the room tone. A short fade-in and fade-out of the audio track at the cut point smooths this out.

What this means for you

A professional flow comes above all from the right moment for each cut and from restraint. We consider the hard cut the right choice in the vast majority of places, and we see crossfades, fade-outs, and wipes as signals that should only appear where they say something.

• Cut everything hard first and only then decide at which points a transition should mean something.
• When shooting, leave a few seconds of buffer before and after each shot so you don't run short of footage for transitions.
• Settle on one transition for chapter changes in each video and always use it at the same length.
• In your next tutorial, try a J-cut or L-cut instead of a crossfade.
• Watch the finished video once without sound and remove every transition that only stands out to you as an effect.