Name: TOP 8 "Smooth" Seamless Transitions
Uploaded: 2024-08-01T07:52:11.000Z
Duration: 16 min 53 s
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Hey, how's it going, Parker Walbeck here with FullTimeFilmmaker.com and today I'm joined by our newest team member, Landon, by the way, Landon has been helping me shoot and edit his videos that I've posted on this channel.

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He is a super talented cinematographer and editor and he has a specific skill that he does much better than me, thus why I brought him onto my team because I'm always surrounding myself with people who are better than me in certain areas and the area that Landon really kills it in is seamless transitions.

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Now personally, I think this style of shooting and editing is becoming super overused and cliche especially in travel videos.

I do use them from time to time but I've noticed a lot of videos that either overuse them or than adding to it.

So in this video, Landon and I are going to be sharing our top eight seamless transitions and not only showing you how to achieve them but also hit on when they are most effectively used and times when they feel forced or overdone.

In this video, we're going to be covering the basics of shooting and editing seamless transitions but there's a lot of in-depth Premiere and After Effects work that is needed for some of these that would take too long to cover in this video.

So we built another mini course, Seamless Video Pro, dedicated to teaching you how and when to plan, shoot and edit seamless transitions.

So if you like this video and like to learn more about our seamless transition workflow, stick around to the end to learn more about our mini course and yes, this mini course is included inside the full Full-Time Filmmaker course as well.

Let's go ahead and dive in now to our top eight seamless transitions that we like to use and when.

Alright, the first and easily most common transition is probably the whip.

Now I find myself using this transition way more than any other transition because it's great for keeping the flow of the video and also from transitioning from one subject or another to another.

So one of the biggest mistakes I see people making with the whip transition has to do with the basic camera movement.

Obviously you need fairly quick movements in camera to be able to mesh both clip A and clip B together but I find that the majority of the time the camera either isn't moving in the same direction as the other clip or the transition as a whole just feels rushed and not seamless.

So the solution to this would be planning out your shots ahead of time and knowing which shots are going to go together.

So if clip A is this shot of Parker dribbling the basketball then passing towards the right of the frame I'm going to have the camera whip following the action that's taking place.

Now in order to have a seamless transition clip B needs to start whipping in the same direction that clip A was whipping at the end which is directly to the right.

So for this clip I'll throw my camera vertical so it at least starts whipping towards the right then slowly levels out with the horizon.

Now for any transition especially the whip you want to make sure that your shutter speed isn't set too fast because that's part of what's going to give away the seam between each of your clips.

So instead bring your shutter speed down to about two times your frame rate.

So if we're shooting at 60 frames per second the shutter speed should be at 1 over 125.

We also want to make sure that the exposure and colors from clip A to clip B match pretty well.

So now that our two clips are filmed the editing for this one is super simple.

If we did our job right while shooting all we really need to do is place the clips next to each other and cut them at the right moment which is at the peak of the movement and when the colors and exposure between each clip match best.

Now normally the speed between each of your clips will vary just a little bit so some simple timer mapping to adjust the speed at the end of clip A and at the beginning of clip B will help that seam become less obvious.

Just don't move too fast otherwise the timer mapping will have the opposite effect and make it more obvious that you just attempted a whip transition.

Now the goal of a seamless transition isn't to distract the viewers it's meant to add to the story of your video and help them feel somewhat attached to the location people or action that's taking place.

Now another effect that I'll drop onto my footage if there's not enough blur between each of my clips is directional blur.

Now I love this blur effect because you can keyframe it to go from 0% blur to however high you'd like.

I usually put it up to about 15% then I choose the direction that the blur is moving to make it feel natural.

Now it's a great little nudge for your footage if you forgot to bring down your shutter speed or if you just need a little bit more motion blur.

Our second transition is seamless masking.

Also known as frame blocking this is where a foreground object wipes across the entire screen to reveal a different piece of footage.

Now there are tons of applications for masking and you can actually do it pretty easily right inside Premiere Pro but if there's fine tuning that needs to be done I'll usually bring it into After Effects.

I think the two most important aspects of making an awesome seamless masking transition is first making sure that again you're using the same directional movement from both clip A and clip B and that each clip is either shot on a different focal length or is providing somewhat of a different perspective or location than what the previous clip gave.

For example in this clip I'm going to be playing some soccer and we'll go from one perspective of me dribbling the ball to a different one.

Now for clip A what's key here is making sure that the object that's wiping across the entire frame and being masked out hits every part of the frame at one point and moves in a smooth continuous motion.

Now in this case my ankles are going from the left to the right side of the frame plus the camera is orbiting slightly to the left so my ankles are going to move a bit quicker across the screen than if we were just shooting a static shot of me dribbling across the camera.

Having multiple kinds of movement meaning the subject moving and the camera also moving helps the transition move faster and can actually help distract your eye from being able to tell any flaws in the transition.

Now the second clip is another moving shot and the key to these two clips working perfectly together is matching the camera movement between clips.

So since our camera was orbiting slightly towards the left clip B needs to at least start with that same movement at that same speed.

Once those two clips are filmed all we really need to do is create a clean mask on the first clip by drying it out with a pen tool then going frame by frame and making sure that it completely wipes across the frame.

I usually adjust the feather quite a bit so that movement feels a little more seamless and again we have a full tutorial in the paid course walking you through the full process of masking if you're not sure how to do that.

But for the second clip it's as easy as placing it directly under the first clip and then just moving it left or right on your timeline until the timing of the two clips matches up.

You might need to do a little bit of speed ramping to match the speed between each clip but besides that you're probably good to go.

Now on to the third transition which is the smooth zoom.

This transition is slowly becoming more and more cliche especially in travel videos but I think if you do it correctly it'll help add to the story of your video rather than take away from it.

Now I find that this transition works exceptionally well when the theme of each clip is identical.

For example in this video of my trip to Iceland I zoomed in on a waterfall to then reveal a couple of friends jumping into a lake.

It wasn't too overbearing of a transition because it was going from a water theme to more water.

Now this transition is a great example of one that should have some prior planning.

If you're zooming from a clip of some trees to a clip of Parker's face it's honestly kind of a useless transition because you're not adding to the story.

You're probably just throwing it on because you feel you couldn't figure out how to make those two clips cut together well.

Now to make this transition work well and not be cliche we need two clips that either follow a certain theme like tying travel themed hyperlapses together or the water theme example I just gave.

And generally it helps sell the zoom when both clips have the same camera movement of pushing in or pulling out.

Now to show you how we pull off the smooth zoom effect we're going to take a look under the hood of my Thailand travel video where I had four different clips that were each shot on the glide cam slowly pushing forward.

I then sped them all up and then threw on warp stabilizer to smooth them out.

So here's what the four clips look like before applying any smooth zoom presets.

Now we've actually created our own smooth zoom presets for Premiere Pro that we sell separately that include a zoom in, a zoom out, an up and down, a side to side and a spin transition preset but we are including these for free in the paid course.

And we made sure to make these super simple and easy to use.

All you do is create an adjustment layer then drag the preset on top and there you have your smooth zoom transition.

Then once I apply that to all the clips here is the final result.

Now the drawback to this preset is that it's not super customizable so if you like to make tweaks or add other effects like Landon's Iceland example that has optic compensation to give it that warpy look or maybe throw in some chromatic aberration then we recommend using After Effects and we'll leave links in the description for more advanced presets that we recommend using.

But remember don't use presets as a crutch and just drag and drop them onto two random clips.

Make sure your edit is already flowing well and then use the preset as the cherry on top.

This one is also becoming more and more cliche especially in travel videos but I think it's because we typically see people using the luma key transition poorly and aren't unlocking the full potential of that effect which makes it feel cheap so let's talk about how to use it to its fullest potential.

The luma key effect basically removes all of the shadows or all of the highlights from an image.

Now I think the best way to get the most out of this luma key transition and not have it be just another drag and drop transition is by doing two things.

First you should have a subject that fills most of the frame.

This will distract your viewers eye to focus primarily on the dominant subject and not notice any of the imperfections that happen when you apply the luma key effect.

The second thing that helps the luma key effect be more profound and less cliche is by going from either a bright scene to a dark scene or vice versa.

The luma key is your chance to transition between two completely different scenes that normally wouldn't be able to go together very well.

For our example we're going to transition from me being inside my dark office to a bright shot outside.

And to help distract the viewers eye from seeing any imperfections we're going to have both a dominant subject and have the dominant subject do a quick movement like a 180 jump.

Once clip A is shot and it looks good, clip B is literally going to be the exact same thing but in a different brighter location.

Once we're in the editing room we just need to do some time remapping to make sure those two clips are moving at the exact same speed.

Then do a little bit of repositioning so that I stay in the center of the frame.

After that we'll just add the luma key effect to the first clip and then keyframe it so that it goes from 0 to 100 and that the peak of the animation is happening at the same time that I'm at the peak of my 180 spin.

Now we can smooth it out just a little bit so there's no sharp edges from the shadows and even add some blur to really mesh it all together.

Alright the fifth transition is rotation.

Now there's a couple different ways that you could do a rotation transition.

And the first way which is my preferred method because it makes editing in post a little bit easier is by doing the roll on location with your camera.

So I just use the infinite roll feature on my Ronin-S.

Now for this example I'm just going to have Parker walk away from the camera while I follow him and do the infinite roll.

Clip B is going to be the same movement with the same subject but at a different location.

Now all I need to do to make sure that these two clips work well together is be at roughly the same distance and height from Parker and make sure that my camera is rolling in both the same direction and at the same rate.

Now in post these two clips probably only need some time remapping to be able to really flow well into each other.

But if they need an extra boost I'll throw on a radial blur and just animate the keyframes until I think the motion blur looks natural and it hides the seam between each clip.

Now if you don't have a gimbal that can do the infinite roll feature you can also just do a handheld rotation like this example from Landon's Iceland video.

In this example clip A actually didn't have any in-camera rotation.

Clip A did however at least have some subject movement.

So he used that subject motion and exaggerated it into a rotation by digitally zooming in then keyframing a digital rotation to match the speed of the in-camera rotation of clip B.

That way both clips are rotating in the same direction and at the same speed.

Then he just added the effect radial blur to help blend the two together more seamlessly.

So even if you didn't plan out two rotation shots beforehand sometimes you can use this trick to cheat the rotation effect and still make it work.

Moving on to our sixth transition is the match cut.

Now this is one of the oldest types of editing cuts in Hollywood movies.

A match cut technique isn't really a seamless transition but depending on how you use it it can feel pretty seamless.