Use B-Roll to Cover Cuts and Show What You Mean

B-roll is supporting footage that plays over your main shot while the main audio carries on. If the main footage is a person talking, the b-roll is what they are talking about: hands at work, a street, a product on a desk. Editors call the main footage A-roll, and the two work as a pair.

What b-roll does for a video

• It covers a jump cut. The sound runs on unbroken while the picture changes.
• It shows the thing the speaker describes.
• It gives the eye something new when one shot has run for a while.

Cut first, then add the overlay

Do your trims on the main track before you add any layers. While the main track is the only video track, deleting a clip closes the gap and slides everything after it left, captions and soundtrack included. Once an overlay track exists, deleting leaves the gap in place. Right-click the empty space and choose Remove empty space to close it. Cutting first and covering after keeps your layers lined up with the words they cover.

Add b-roll as an overlay

1. In the Media tab, open Assets and drop the footage onto the panel so it stays out of the cut. Upload also appends it to the end of the main track.
2. Move the playhead to where the cutaway should begin.
3. Hover the b-roll card, open More actions, and choose Add overlay. The clip lands on a video track above the main one, starting at the playhead. You can also drag the card above the main track.
4. Drag the clip's edges to set its length.
5. Select it, open the Volume tab, and turn on Mute audio so the main audio carries the scene.

Play across the cutaway. The main shot's sound should run straight through.

B-roll often has a different shape from your project. Select the clip and open the Framing tab. Fit shows the whole picture with bars where the shapes differ. Fill scales the picture to cover the frame and crops the overflow. With Fill on, drag the picture in the preview to choose what stays in view.

Time the cutaway

• Start the cutaway on the word it illustrates, or a beat after it.
• Keep each cutaway short enough to read at a glance, then return to the speaker.
• Two or three related shots in a row can carry a longer line than one long hold.
• Stay on the speaker's face for the line that carries the feeling.

When you have no footage for a shot

In AI Gen, the Video tab generates a clip from a prompt and the Image tab makes a still. Both spend account credits. A still lands on the timeline eight seconds long, so trim it to fit. Footage you upload yourself uses no credits.

Try one cutaway

Pick a talking clip in DepCut, add one overlay from Media, mute it, and watch how the cutaway changes the feel of the line it covers.