Mark a change of section with a Light leak

When a video moves from one section to the next, the viewer needs a signal. A Light leak gives one with light. It lays a warm glow in the top-left corner of the frame and sends soft, tilted streaks of light sweeping across the picture. Your footage keeps its own colors underneath.

What the effect gives you

The Light leak tile sits in the Effects tab of the left panel, under Moving. It has one control, Amount. At low values you get a single streak. Near the top of the slider all three streaks appear and flare harder. The default is 50.

The glow drifts and the streaks sweep and pulse while the bar plays, so judge it by playing across it. A single paused frame shows only one moment of the motion.

The leak has no fade of its own. It appears at the left edge of its bar and disappears at the right edge. Put one of those edges on a cut and the change in picture covers it.

An effect sits on its own row above your clips. Placing one leaves your clips and timing exactly where they were.

Place it across the cut

1. Click the ruler to park the playhead on the cut between the two sections.
2. Open Effects in the left panel and select Moving.
3. Drag Light leak onto the clip that starts at the cut. A teal bar named Light leak appears in the rows above the clips. It covers that whole clip and is already selected.
4. Drag the bar's right handle to the left until the bar covers only a moment, such as a second or two.
5. Drag the bar left until it straddles the cut. Its edges snap to the playhead and to the cut, and a guide line shows where they catch.

Set the strength

With the bar selected, the right panel shows the effect's name and its Amount slider. Click the bar once so the playhead jumps inside it, then drag Amount and watch the preview. Lower values give one soft streak. Higher values give a busier flare with more bands.

A section break is a brief moment, so a modest setting usually reads well. If the leak draws attention away from what comes next, bring Amount down.

Choose where it belongs

Use a leak at the turns that matter to the story:

• The start of a new chapter or topic.
• A jump forward in time.
• The move from a calm part to a lively one.

Skip it on ordinary cuts. A leak on every cut stops signalling anything. Pick a length and an Amount, then use the same pair at every section break so the viewer learns the signal.

To compare the section break with and without the leak, click the small eye button on the bar. Its tooltip reads Disable clip. Click it again to bring the leak back. Right-clicking the bar and choosing Hide does the same, and the menu then offers Show.

A sound effect from the Sound FX tab placed at the same moment adds weight to the turn.

Place your first leak

Open DepCut, find the cut between your first two sections, and put a Light leak across it.