Transitions, position and colour
Adding a crossfade
Select the second of two clips that are touching on the same video lane, then press Crossfade in the toolbar. The status bar confirms it.
The clips stay edge to edge. Nothing moves on the timeline. This surprises people who expect the two to overlap, so it is worth saying plainly: the blend straddles the join, taking frames from either side of it, and the timeline positions do not change. The diamond handle on the clip fills in to show a transition is there.
The button is only available when the selected clip is directly against a previous clip on the same video lane. If it is greyed out, hover it and the tooltip says why: "Select the second of two touching clips on one video lane."
Adjusting it by hand
Drag the diamond handle at the bottom left of a clip leftward over the previous clip to create or resize a transition by eye. The tooltip shows the duration while you drag.
Or select the clip and use Properties, where Transition from previous clip chooses the kind and Transition duration sets the length. The kinds are crossfade, to black, to white, four directions of wipe, dissolve and slide.
Half a second is the default and it is right most of the time. What a transition is claiming when you use it, and why a cut is usually the better answer, is covered in What a transition says.
When a transition refuses
A transition needs frames to blend, and it takes them from both clips. If a clip has been trimmed to the exact frame you want, there is nothing left to give.
The duration is capped at what the shorter of the two clips can afford. If you cannot get the length you want, the clips are too short, and the fix is to leave more footage at the ends when you trim.
Fades from and to black
Different from a transition, because they apply at the ends of a track rather than at a join. Properties offers Fade from black on the first clip of a track and Fade to black on the last. Anywhere else the control is not available, and it says so.
Position, scale and rotation
With a video clip selected, Properties gives you:
- Position X and Position Y, in canvas pixels.
- Scale, as a percentage.
- Rotation, in degrees.
- Opacity, as a percentage.
- Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical.
- Rotate Left 90 and Rotate Right 90, for phone footage that arrived sideways.
Scaling a clip up past 100 percent softens it, because there are no extra pixels to show. If you shot at 4K and are delivering 1080, you can punch in to 200 percent with no loss at all, which is the cheapest second camera angle there is. See Size, shape, and where to put the subject.
Crop
Crop X, Crop Y, Crop width and Crop height cut the frame down before anything else happens to it. Use crop to remove something at the edge of frame. Use position and scale to decide where what is left sits on the canvas.
Colour
A set of controls with a Colour preset menu above them. Adjust what you need, then type a name into New colour preset name and save it, and the same look is one click away on every other clip.
Correct first so your shots agree with each other, then style. Doing it the other way round means regrading every time you fix a shot. See Why your export looks different from your edit.
Safe zones and grid
Safe Zones over the preview draws the title and action safe boxes, and they follow the Platform preset you have chosen. On a vertical preset that matters a great deal, because the bottom fifth of the frame is covered by the platform's own interface and anything you put there is invisible to your audience.
Grid draws thirds.