User Manual

Table Of Contents
Non-Additive Dissolve: Start Ratio lets you adjust how far along the transition is when
it first begins. End Ratio lets you adjust how far the transition gets at the very end. The
Reverse checkbox reverses the direction of the transition.
Smooth Cut: A special-purpose transition designed to make short jump cuts in the
middle of a clip less noticeable. This is done by using optical flow processing to match
the same features on either side of a cut in order to automatically morph a subject from
one position to another over the duration of the transition.
A Mode drop-down menu provides two options: Faster and Better. The Better option is
default, with excellent quality and the capability of preserving the motion of subjects for
the duration of the transition. The Faster option is the original Smooth Cut method,
which morphs between stills of the outgoing and incoming frames. In most practical
circumstances, the Better mode will give you a superior result, but certain cuts or
effects may be better addressed with the Faster option.
The Smooth Cut effect works best on clips such as sit-down interviews and close-up
head shots with a minimum of background and subject motion, and where the subject’s
position on either side of the cut is not significantly different. A good example of when
Smooth Cut is effective is when you’re cutting pauses, partial repeats, filler sounds
such as “um” or “you know,” or other speech disfluencies out of an interview clip to
tighten the dialog, and you want to eliminate the little “jump” that occurs at the cut
without having to cut away to B-roll. Applying a short two or four frame Smooth Cut
transition to the edit can make this kind of edit invisible, as long as the speaker doesn’t
change position significantly during the cut. The more motion there is in the
background of the shot, and the more the speaker changes position, the harder it will
be to get a useful result using Smooth Cut. Although the default duration for any
transition is one second, you’ll find that Smooth Cut transitions work much better when
they’re short; 2- to 6-frame Smooth Cut transitions often work best to disguise
jump cuts.
Iris
Irises are directional transitions that are commonly used to both call attention to a specific part
of the frame and indicate to the audience that one scene has ended and another begun. Irises
were widely used in the silent film era instead of the more technically complicated dissolve.
Arrow Iris: Color sets the color of the border, if there is one. Border sets the width of
the border, in pixels, with 0 creating no border. Offset to center lets you alter the center
point at which this transition is positioned. Feather is a checkbox that, when turned
on, uses the Border slider to determine the amount of feathering at the edge of the
transition. Box mode lets you choose one of the following presets:
Arrow Head Up
Arrow Head Bottom
Arrow Head Left
Arrow Head Right
Cross Iris: Color sets the color of the border, if there is one. Border sets the width of
the border, in pixels, with 0 creating no border. Offset to Center identifies the center
point at which the cross wipe begins, as X and Y coordinates on the screen. Feather
is a checkbox that, when turned on, uses the Border slider to determine the amount of
feathering at the edge of the transition.
Chapter – 35 Using Transitions 732