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Transitions

Two clips on a reel meet in one of three ways: a cut, a dip to black, or a cross-dissolve. There will be no others. Shotwork is a reel tool, not an editor, and a reel is judged on the shots, not on what happens between them.

How it works

Join What you see How you make it
Cut The next clip starts on the frame after the last one ends. Nothing: every join is a cut until you change it.
Dip to black The first clip fades down to black, and the next fades up from it. A fade out on the first clip and a fade in on the next. See Fades.
Cross-dissolve The first clip blends into the next. Planned. See Cross-dissolve.

A dip to black is two fades, one on each clip. Each side can have its own length, and either can be there without the other: a fade out alone goes down to black and then cuts to the next clip at full brightness.

A color card between two clips is a hold on a color rather than a transition. With a fade out before it and a fade in after it, the reel dips to black, holds on the card, and comes back up.

Cross-dissolve

Not built yet

Cross-dissolves are not built. Roadmap, launch polish bundle, "Transition: cross-dissolve".

Drag the Cross-dissolve tile from the Features tab onto the cut between two clips. The two clips overlap for the length of the dissolve, so the reel gets that much shorter. Drag the dissolve's handle to change its length, the way you resize a fade. Export Video renders the blend, and Export Timeline carries it as a dissolve your editor can adjust.

To fade to white, or to any color other than black, dissolve into a color card of that color.

What this means when you…

  • …roll a cut that dips to black: each fade stays on its own clip. A fade that no longer fits in half of its clip gets shorter.
  • …reorder a clip that has fades: the fades go with the clip, so one dip to black can become two separate fades somewhere else.
  • …export a timeline: each fade arrives as a dissolve from or to black at the clip's edge, ready to adjust in your editor.