Set the right length for a transition in DepCut

The length of a transition decides how it reads. A quick one is a small beat. A long one is a deliberate change of pace. DepCut starts every new transition at 0.5 seconds and lets you set anything from 0.1 to 2 seconds.

Two ways to change the length

Start by selecting the transition. Click the round button on its cut, or drop a new tile there. The Transitions tab shows the transition's Duration slider at the top.

1. Drag the Duration slider. It moves in steps of 0.05 seconds, and the readout beside it shows the current length, for example 0.50s.
2. Double-click the transition's round button on the timeline to open it into a pill that spans the overlap and shows its length, then drag the pill's left edge. Double-click again to collapse it.

Dragging the left edge changes the length. The right edge stays on the cut.

What short and long feel like

Under half a second reads as quick and energetic, and suits fast cuts and punchy styles. Around half a second works for most cuts. A second or more suits a slow change, such as a Dip to black between two sections of a video.

Once a transition passes a second or so, it starts to slow the video down. Watch it on your footage and shorten it if it drags.

What the length costs

A transition overlaps the end of the first clip with the start of the second. The second clip starts as many seconds early as the transition is long, and both clips play their own footage across the overlap. The edit becomes shorter by the transition's length, and everything after the cut, including captions, titles and soundtrack clips, moves earlier by that amount.

A transition cannot be longer than 90 percent of the shorter of the two clips.

When the transition changes

Shorten a transition, or delete it, and the clips after the cut move later by the amount you took off, so the edit gets longer again.

Open the editor

Open a project in DepCut, add a transition to one cut, and drag the Duration slider until the length feels right.