Transition types and their uses

Like all effects, transitions should be used not for their own sake but to serve the overall needs of your movie.

The basic transitions discussed below – fades, dissolves, wipes, slides and pushes – are all among the first group of standard transitions (the “2D transitions”) in the Album.

Cut: A cut is the minimal transition – an instantaneous shift from one scene to the next. In Pinnacle VideoSpin, it is the default transition.

Fade: This transition fades into the beginning of a video clip from a black screen, or from the end of a clip to a black screen. A fade dropped between two clips creates a fade down followed by a fade up. The fade transition is the first transition icon in the Album.

Dissolve: A dissolve is similar to a fade, except that the new scene begins to fade up even while the old one is fading down.

Wipe, slide and push: In each of these standard transition types, the incoming video is gradually revealed behind an edge that moves across the frame in a certain direction. The Album icons shown with this paragraph represent a leftward wipe, a down-and-left slide and a rightward push respectively.