Find the missing round transition button with Esc

You trim a clip, glance at the timeline, and the small round button between your clips has gone. Nothing is broken. DepCut hides that button on purpose while a clip beside it is selected, and opening the Transitions tab, or pressing Esc while it is open, brings it back.

What the round button shows

The button sits on the main track at each cut between two clips. Once the cut has a transition, the button moves to the middle of the overlap. It has three looks.

• An empty cut shows an outlined round button with a blend icon. Hover it and the tooltip reads "Add a transition". Clicking it opens the Transitions tab aimed at that cut.
• A cut with a transition shows the button filled with the accent color and the icon of that style. The tooltip names the style and says "click to change, double-click to drag".
• An expanded button appears when you double-click a filled one. It stretches into a pill that spans the overlap, with the length in seconds above it. Drag its left edge to retime the transition. The right edge stays on the cut. Double-click again to collapse it.

Why it hides

The button hides while the clip on either side of the cut is selected. A selected clip has its own tools in the right panel (Trim, Move, Track, Speed, Color, Volume, Extract and Framing), so the cut button steps aside. You select a clip whenever you click it, which is why the button seems to disappear in the middle of an edit.

Bring it back

1. Open the Transitions tab, or keep it open, and press Esc. It clears the selection, and it pauses playback if the video is playing. With the Transitions tab closed, DepCut usually selects the clip under the playhead again, so the buttons beside that clip stay hidden.
2. Look at the cut. The round button is back on both sides of the clip you had selected.
3. Click the button to open the Transitions tab for that cut, or double-click a filled one to open the pill.

Opening the Transitions tab also clears a selected clip. With the tab closed, clicking Transitions in the left panel is a second way to bring the buttons back. With the tab already open, clicking a clip selects it again and hides its neighboring buttons, so Esc is the quick reset between edits.

Esc is ignored while your cursor is in a text field or a dialog is open. Close the dialog or leave the field first.

If the button is still missing

• A cut needs two clips. The button appears between a pair of clips on the main track, so a lone clip has none.
• With no clips on the main track, the Transitions tab is dimmed, and its tooltip reads "Add a clip to the timeline to use transitions".
• A transition plays only where two clips touch. With a gap between the pair the button still shows, and nothing blends until you close the gap so the cut exists.
• The button belongs to the main track. Clips on upper tracks have no round button.

A tip for fast edits

Trim and arrange your clips first, open the Transitions tab, and then go cut by cut with the buttons. Each time you select a clip to fix something, the neighboring buttons hide, and with the Transitions tab open, Esc makes them return in one keystroke.

Watch the button return

Open DepCut, open the Transitions tab, click a clip on the main track and watch the buttons on both sides of it disappear. Press Esc and they return.