Pick transitions for a travel recap, place by place

A travel recap is a chain of places. That gives it two kinds of cuts. Some cuts stay inside one place, such as the market stalls, then the food, then a street musician. Others leave one place for the next. They do different jobs, so they deserve different treatment.

Inside a place, keep the cuts plain

Moments in the same place already belong together. A plain cut keeps the pace and keeps the viewer in the location. Add a transition inside a place only when time passes: a Cross fade from morning light to evening light says "the day went by" without a word.

Between places, give the move a direction

The cut between two places is the one worth styling, because it carries the viewer from one location to another. Choose a style that matches the way you traveled or the mood of the arrival.

• Whip right or Push right for a road trip, a train ride or any move across a map. Pick the direction that matches how the trip runs on screen and keep it the same for the whole journey.
• Cross zoom for an arrival, when the next place deserves a small reveal.
• Dip to black for a night, an overnight flight or the end of a chapter.
• Warm light or Dip to white for a beach, a sunrise or golden-hour footage.
• Cool light for snow, water or a night city.

Directional names describe the motion on screen. Whip right carries the picture to the right, so the new place enters from the left.

Audition the styles with the arrow keys

The Transitions tab is one long list, and the arrow keys walk through it tile by tile, across group boundaries. That makes it quick to compare styles on one cut.

1. Select the transition on the cut between two places.
2. Click a tile in the Transitions tab, so the keyboard focus sits on the tiles.
3. Press the Right Arrow key to move along the tiles. The transition takes the style of the tile you land on and plays with a short run-up and run-out.
4. Keep pressing Right Arrow to move forward, or Left Arrow to move back, and stop on the style that fits the move.

Each press applies its style at once, and the ring in the list follows the transition's current style. Press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) if you want the previous one back.

Use one move for the whole journey

A recap with a different style at every border looks like a demo reel. Choose one style for the moves between places and repeat it. Viewers learn the pattern at the second border, and from then on the transition reads as "next stop". Save a second style, such as Dip to black, for a bigger break like the last day.

Check the length and the music

Every transition overlaps the two clips by its Duration, so the recap gets shorter at each border. Titles, captions and any sound that starts after a cut move earlier by the same amount. If you cut the footage to the beats of a music track, play the recap through after you add the transitions and check that the beats still land.

Your next border

Open DepCut, choose the cut where your trip changes place and step through the tiles with the arrow keys. Keep the style that feels like travel.