Effects, transitions and colour

Where Video editor › AI mode: Off › Transitions tab and the inspector

Everything on this page is free, and everything can also be done by asking the editor’s AI, for example “Add a cross dissolve between every clip” or “Make this scene warmer.”

Transitions

Open the Transitions tab on the left. Drag a transition onto a cut or a clip’s edge, or choose clips and press Apply. Between two clips it plays across the cut; on a free edge it fades from or to nothing.

Bin	Video transitions
Dissolve	Cross Dissolve, Film Dissolve, Additive Dissolve, Dip to Black, Dip to White
Slide	Push, Slide, Split, Whip Pan
Wipe	Wipe
Iris	Iris Round, Iris Box
Zoom	Cross Zoom

Audio transitions (bin Crossfade): Constant Power, Constant Gain and Exponential Fade.

Click a transition on the timeline to change it in Effect Controls: its kind, Duration (one frame to 10 seconds, default one second), Alignment (centre, start or end at the cut), and for some kinds a Direction or edge softness. Remove transition deletes it.

Default transitions. The star on a transition makes it the default. ⌘D applies the default video transition, ⇧⌘D the default audio transition, and ⇧D both to the chosen clips. Out of the box they’re Cross Dissolve and Constant Power.

Effects

Open the inspector’s Effects tab (⇧7). Click an effect to add it to the chosen clip, drag it onto a clip, or search and press Enter.

Group	Effects
Blur & Sharpen	Directional Blur, Gaussian Blur, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask
Channel	Invert
Color Correction	Brightness & Contrast, Lumetri Color, Tint
Distort	Mirror
Image Control	Black & White
Keying	Ultra Key (removes a green or blue screen)
Noise & Grain	Noise
Perspective	Drop Shadow
Stylize	Glow, Posterize, Vignette
Transform	Horizontal Flip, Vertical Flip

Lumetri Presets holds 13 ready-made looks (see Colour).

New adjustment layer at the playhead adds a layer whose effects apply to everything on the tracks below it. Its opacity sets how strong they are.

A clip can carry up to 30 effects. In Effect Controls, each effect can be switched off, reset, copied to another clip, reordered or removed.

Effect Controls and keyframes

Choose a clip and open Effect Controls (⇧5):

Group	Controls
Motion	Position, Scale (5% to 1000%), Rotation, Anchor Point
Opacity	Opacity, and Blend Mode: Normal, Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Lighten, Screen, Color Dodge, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Difference, Exclusion, Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity
Crop	Left, Top, Right, Bottom
Volume	Level, Clip gain, fade in and fade out
Panner	Pan, for sound

Below them are the clip’s Time Remapping, Warp Stabilizer, Opacity masks and its effects.

To animate a value:

Move the playhead to where the change should start, inside the clip.
Press the stopwatch beside the value (Animate) to set the first keyframe.
Move the playhead and change the value. A new keyframe is added.
Click a keyframe to choose how it moves to the next: Linear, Ease in, Ease out, Ease in and out, Hold, or a Custom curve.

Drag a value sideways to change it (hold ⇧ for bigger steps), or click it to type. The arrows beside it jump between keyframes.

Colour

Choose a clip and open Lumetri Color. The Clip tab’s Color & light is a quick version with a few looks and sliders.

Section	What’s in it
Basic Correction	Input LUT (with Import .cube), Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Saturation, Vibrance. Auto makes a starting correction from the frame.
Creative	A look and its Intensity, Faded Film, Sharpen, Vibrance, Saturation, Shadow Tint, Highlight Tint, Tint Balance
Curves	RGB, red, green and blue curves, and the hue curves: Hue vs Saturation, Hue vs Hue, Hue vs Luma, Luma vs Saturation, Saturation vs Saturation
Color Wheels & Match	Shadows, Midtones and Highlights wheels. Color Match matches this clip to another one.
HSL Secondary	Pick a colour range (for example skin or sky) and correct just that. Show Mask shows what’s picked.
Vignette	Amount, Midpoint, Roundness, Feather

The 13 looks: Cinema, Warm film, Black & white, Teal and orange, Bleach bypass, Faded, Cool, Warm, Golden hour, Moonlight, Noir, Vivid and Sepia.

LUTs. Import a 3D .cube file up to 12 MB in Basic Correction, or upload it to your Assets.

Scopes

The Scopes tab shows the chosen clip at the playhead as a Waveform (Luma), Parade (RGB), Vectorscope YUV or Histogram. Scopes read footage and pictures, not titles.

Masks

Masks limit a clip, or an effect, to part of the picture. They can move over time and follow a moving subject.

Choose a clip and open Effect Controls. Find Opacity masks.
Press Ellipse, Rectangle or Pen. With the Pen, click to add points (drag to curve), and click the first point or press Enter to close.
Adjust the mask on the preview, and set its Mask feather, Mask opacity, Mask expansion, Inverted and Mode (Add, Subtract, Intersect).
To animate it by hand, press the stopwatch on Mask path and change the shape at different times.
To follow a subject, press Track mask, choose a Tracking method (position; position and scale; or position, scale and rotation), then Forward or Backward.

A clip can have up to 10 masks. Tracking works on footage (not still pictures), up to 20 seconds at a time; track again from where it stopped to go further. Mask tracking is free.

Troubleshooting

You see	What to do
Choose a clip first, or drag the effect onto a clip.	Select a clip before adding an effect.
Sound has no picture for video effects.	Video effects and colour work on clips with a picture.
The playhead is outside this clip.	Move the playhead into the clip before setting keyframes.
This is a 1D LUT.	Import a 3D LUT (a `.cube` file with `LUT_3D_SIZE`).
…could not be tracked: there is nothing in it to follow here.	Draw the mask over something with clear edges, or move the playhead.
The chosen clips have no sound to cross.	Audio transitions go on clips with sound.