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Transitions

Video transition is a post-production technique to connect shots (clips) and tie them together into a cohesive and polished storyline. Depending on what mood or tone you want to convey, suggest passage of time, or tell different parts of the story or even show parallel story line, different transitions can and should be used. It is part of the creative process of film making.

In Kdenlive, transitions are part of compositions. After all, you are compositing two clips albeit for a different purpose. But the workflow is very similar. And because transitions are added as compositions, the two terms are often used interchangeably. Just keep in mind that they are used for different purposes in video editing.

There are two ways to transition between clips:

  • Mixes, also called same-track transitions , between two adjacent clips in the same track

  • Composite Transitions between overlapping clips on different tracks

Available transitions range from built-in presets to wipes with different methods and the ability to use your own greyscale images in .pgm (Portable Grey Map) format. Most wipes (and the same applies to Dissolve and Luma) are essentially greyscale images under the hood. During the transition, the composition track[[1]] will be displayed in the darkest part of the wipe image first; if the wipe transition is inverted, the composition track will become visible in the brightest area of the wipe image first.

Refer to this list of all available transitions.

[[1]]

The composition track is the one the selected clip is composited with. For example, a clip on V2 overlaps with a clip on V1, and a transition is created to dissolve from V2 to V1: V1 is the Composition Track. *[RGB]: Red Green Blue *[VFX]: Visual Effects *[feathering]: Smoothing or blurring the edges of a feature