Change length of transition by moving the 2nd video clip

If you have a transition between two video clips, there is no (easy) way to change the length of the transition without adding/removing frames to/from one of the clips.

You can move the start of the transition to the right to make the transition shorter, but this will remove frames from the start of the second clip. If you move the end of the transition to the right to make it shorter, frames from the end of the first clip are removed.

To make a transition longer, you can move the start/end of the transition to the left/right, but this will add frames to the start/end of the second/first clip - frames you previously cut of from the start/end of the clip, frames you maybe don’t want to be visible. And it only works, if there are additional frames available at the start/end of the clip.

In some situations this behavior might be what you want, but it should be possible to change the length of a transition without adding/removing frames to/from the clips.

My suggestion: It should be possible to change the length of a transition by moving the second clip.

Currently, if you move the second clip to the right, you get a gap between the transition and the clip. That makes no sense, I can not think of any reason why anybody would need a gap between a transition and the following clip. And if you move the clip to the left, over the transition, it jumps back.

Instead, if you move the 2nd clip of a transition, the length of the transition should be changed accordingly. If you move the clip to the left, the transition should become longer, because the amount of overlapping between the two clips will be longer. If you move it to the right, the transition should become shorter. You may even remove the transition completely, if you move the clip far enough to the right.

This should only happen if you move the clip on the right side of a transition (the 2nd clip), but not if you move the first clip. Reason: If this would work with both clips and if you move a clip with transitions on both sides, you would change the transitions on both sides of the clip - and if you don’t see both transitions, because the clip is long, you may even not notice that you changed both transitions. But if only the transition on the left side of the clip is changed, all following transitions (on the right side of the moved clip) will stay unchanged. (You will get a gap after the clip, if you move it to the left, and you need a gap after the clip, before you can move it to the right.)

In your suggestion, would the current method of shortening or lengthening the clip by pulling on the ends of the transition clip be gotten rid of? And in your idea is the transition clip forever locked in between the two clips it’s transitioning? I like how in Shotcut the transition clip is its own clip and it could be moved wherever. I know it’s not common but it could be used as a cool effect on its own.

My suggestion would not change the behavior of shortcut if you change the length of the transition by pulling on the ends of the transition. As I wrote, in some situations this behavior might be what you want. And the users of shortcut are used to this behavior, so it shouldn’t be changed.

But I really miss a way to change the length of a transition without adding/removing frames to/from the clips. And my suggestion would add another way to change the length of a transition that does this. And it would also add a way to remove a transition and restore to original clips.

The transition clip would not be locked in between the two clips. You could still move away the left clip, you could move away the transition itself, and (if you only want to keep the transition) you could delete the left and/or right clip. Only if you move the right clip (as long as it’s still aligned to the transition), the length of the transition would be changed.

No other reactions?

Am I the only person who misses a way to change the length of a transition without changing the length of the clips?

Is my explanation too complicated?

Your suggestion is fine, but I do not have the productive capacity to impement everyone’s suggestion or bug within a week of their post. Sometimes, it takes years, or I might never get around to it. Maybe I should spend less time in the forum providing support in order to spend more time on the code, but that will mean I get less feedback. On the other hand, I could spend more time editing videos to provide self-feedback, but then there is much less authoritative support.

I think, you misunderstood me! (Maybe my English is not as good as I hoped.) I would never expect that any suggestion would be implemented within a week!

But there was nearly no reaction to my suggestion and so I wondered if nobody else misses a way to change the length of a transition without changing the length of the clips. Or if nobody understand what I was talking about.

All I was hoping/waiting for was a short reaction like: “Good idea, this will be considered for the future.” or “This is nonsense, will never be implemented.”

Statements like these about what you think should happen compared to to how Shotcut is designed is not exactly complimentary to free software.

Your suggestion sounds fine, but in all frankness, I think many people get numb to this particular request because it happens so frequently. Here’s another request for the same feature that came in literally yesterday: Crossfade anomaly

Each version of the request has a slight variation… for instance, in your explanation, the last part of your original post indicated that moving the second clip would create a gap or need a gap following it. I’m not sure how this works if there are three clips in a row with transitions at each junction and somebody tries to move the second clip. There is no existing gap to move the second clip into, nor do we want a gap created if we move the second clip. You had a good goal of not altering the transition to the right because it may be off the screen and unnoticed, but creating a gap off the screen would be just as disruptive. There would probably be a need for some ripple work to make this function intuitively, but the mechanics of that haven’t been fleshed out well by anyone either.

Even if a good alternative was found, this is an open-source project meaning that demand far exceeds the supply of programmers. New features do get added to the priority Roadmap, but this feature has historically not been at the top of the list in terms of urgency.

So reaction-wise, you are in good company with your desire to change the transition functionality. But this also has to be balanced with people who like the feature just the way it is. Either way, we’re at a bit of a stall until the details are hammered out and the request gets priority on the Roadmap. And this assumes that Dan or Brian will like the idea enough to justify working on it. :slight_smile:

In the meantime, since you’re looking for a way to change transition length without altering clip length, you could use the traditional two-track fade-in/out method. If you have ripple turned on, it’s pretty intuitive the way the following clips shift around.

Yesterday @Austin described a sensible solution to the problem of changing transition lengths which I have used myself for some time. I use mainly fade transitions, but I occasionally use other transitions for particular effect. His description is in the thread he linked above.
Instead of dragging clips together to create transitions on a single track, try layering them on two (or more) tracks. You can then use the fade or opacity filters to fade the upper track in or out over the track below creating an identical effect in the rendered video. It makes it much easier to move tracks around and change their duration if you need to. If you need to use a different transition effect, you can merge the 2 tracks in question once the running order and timing has been finalised.
It works for me and has increased my productivity noticeably - evidently Austin and undoubtedly others have found the same.
Try it - you may like it :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks for all the comments.

@Hudson555x: Why is the statement not complimentary to free software? What I did (or at least, what I tried to do) was to describe a problem I have and then describe a suggestion for a possible solution for this problem. The sentence you replied to is part of this possible solution and I explained why I think it should be this way. I never expected that, after I wrote my suggestion, someone directly starts to implement exactly what I wrote. It’s only a suggestion for a possible improvement. Maybe my wording was not perfect and sounded to demanding? Sorry, that was not intended. I’m not a native English speaker!

@Austin: Before I wrote my suggestion I was searching the forum to see if there was a similar request, but I found nothing. So, I didn’t know that this is something that has been asked/discussed many times before and no one wants to hear about it anymore. :confused:

About the gap: I don’t use Shortcut for a long time now, so maybe I’m wrong here, but as far as I have seen, you can not move a clip to the right, if there is another clip to the right, so you first need a gap after the clip. And if you move a clip to the left, you will get a gap after this clip, because the following clips (to the right) will not be moved too. That was all I tried to say - if you move around a clip, it should have the same effect to the following clips as it is now. Of course, it would be nice if moving a clip to the right would also move all following clips to the right too, so you don’t need a gap after the clip first. And moving a clip to the left would also move the following clips to the left, so you don’t get a gap. But to keep my suggestion as simple as possible, I didn’t want to add this extra “request”.

You wrote, creating a gap off the screen would be just as disruptive. But isn’t this exactly what would happen now? If you now move a clip to the left, and there is a transition between this clip and the next one, you will get a gap between the clip and the transition. So, what I wrote would be unchanged behavior. And I would say, it is not “as disruptive”, because it is much more likely to notice an unwanted gap than it would be to notice a changed transition length, and it is simpler to remove this gap than changing the transition back to its previous length.

You wrote, there are people who like the feature just the way it is. OK, but I don’t want to change the feature like it is now. My suggestion is to keep everything exactly like it is now, except for one little change: If you move the clip on the right side of a transition, instead of creating a gap between the transition and the clip (if you move the clip to the right) or refusing the move (if you move the clip to the left) the length of the transition should be changed. That’s it, nothing else. You will not lose anything by this change, you could even still create a gap between the transition and the right clip by moving the transition to the left (in case someone really needs this). Everything else should stay exactly like it is now (to keep it as simple as possible), including the restrictions/effects related to everything that is right to the moved clip on the timeline.

@Austin & @QDSOV : The two-track fade-in/out method is a possible workaround, but it adds additional steps and has some limitations too. And only because there is a workaround, why not try to make the “real thing” better? :wink:

No problem asking a repeat question, especially when you’re polite enough to search first. I was just bringing you up to speed on the history so you aren’t too dismayed by the lack of responses.

There is a feature you may not have used too much yet. Shotcut supports ripple editing, both for a single track and for all tracks. Click the bullseye icon on the Timeline window to turn it on for a single track. Right-click the open space in the Timeline window and select “Ripple all tracks” if you want movement operations to affect all tracks. When ripple is turned on, if you move a clip, all the following clips get scooted with it as if they’re glued to your clip. So yes, you can move a clip to the right without needing a gap to move into. And yes, you can move a clip left without creating a gap. So the extra request you didn’t make is already implemented. :slight_smile:

To be honest, I like your idea. It doesn’t change existing behavior in a negative way and it does make the feature more useful. But I use the phrase “more useful” very loosely. The single-track style of video editing becomes very restrictive the moment a project becomes even moderately complex. Consider this sample project:

V2: Logo with transparency-------------------
V1: Clip1  1&2  Clip2  2&3  Clip3  3&4  Clip4

Now let’s attempt two simple (in theory) modifications to the timeline:

  1. Swap positions of Clip2 and Clip3. This is going to affect every transition. Also avoid messing up clips or timings on V2 or above in the process. This is difficult to do even with your proposed improvement.

  2. Lengthen Clip2 by 10 seconds. The transition will be modified instead of the clip length, even with ripple turned on. Unless I’m missing a feature, I think you will have to delete 2&3, scoot Clip3, lengthen Clip2, then rebuild the 2&3 transition. And if anything goes wrong, the undo/redo feature is extremely buggy when transitions are involved. The broken undo issue more than anything is my biggest personal reason to avoid single-track editing.

So that’s part of why this feature request doesn’t get more traction. You’ve got a good idea and it helps, but there are still a lot of common problems it doesn’t fix, so people generally use other methods that work better. I’m not trying to rain on your parade… I’m just trying to provide you with options that will scale to complex projects more easily.

1 Like

The real work is in making this work across all 3 platforms. The real work comes at coding which there is just two people programming. Moving tracks has been brought up before in this forum.

I guess my CRTL Z is used when it comes to transitions. Even though it’s digital editing, I still have the linear editing style that I had done for years.

@Austin, you are right, I didn’t know that Shortcut has ripple editing.

In this case, my suggested limitation that only the transition on the left side of the moved clip should be changed, is (of course) not really necessary/useful. If ripple editing is turned on, only the transition on the left side would be changed anyway, because everything on the right side moves along with the clip. If ripple editing is turned off, both transitions should be changed. That feels more natural.

You are right, single-track video editing has it’s limitations and sometimes it’s better to use multiple tracks. But this is the way to create (complex) transitions in Shortcut the simple way. And even if I don’t use complex transitions often (most times it’s only fade-out/fade-in) I like the idea to create a transition this way.

You can always think about situations where one way of editing is simpler than the other. :slightly_smiling_face: But lets have a lock at your two examples:

  1. Yes, this is a problem. Mainly caused by the fact, that the transitions are their own elements in the timeline and the original clips are changed to the part after/before the transitions. I used a Windows software a few years back and there you also create transitions by moving one clip into another, but it does not create a transition element. The clips are unchanged and simply overlap (and you can select the type of transition for this overlapping area). So, you can still move around (and re-order) the clips (which will remove, change or create transitions).
    In Shortcut this is more difficult because of the transition elements and the changed video clips. But it can still be done. If you change the order of Clip2 and Clip3 you have to recreate all transitions anyway, so all you need is a way to get the original clips as they where before creating the transitions.
    With my suggestion you could move Clip4 to the right until transition 3&4 is gone. Continue with Clip3 to remove transition 2&3 and then Clip2 and transition 1&2. Now you have the original clips and can change the order of Clip2 and Clip3. Of course, this will move Clip4 and everything that follows, so it’s not a perfect solution.
    But with a “simple” addition to my original idea this could be changed: If a clip is completely moved away from it’s related transitions(s), for example by moving it to a different track, the transition(s) should be removed too. Remember, originally I suggested that if you move Clip2 far enough to the right, this should remove the transition 1&2 and restore the original end of Clip1 and start of Clip2, because there is no overlapping area anymore. The same could/should happen if Clip2 is moved to a completely different place, like behind Clip4 or to a different track. That way you could simple move Clip2 to a new track (removes transitions 1&2 and 2&3 and restores the related clips), then move Clip3 to where Clip2 was before and then move Clip2 to the old position of Clip3 (all with ripple edit turned off to keep Clip4 in place).

  2. This would be no problem. First move the end of transition 2&3 10 seconds to the right. This will lengthen Clip2 (and the transition) by 10 seconds. Then move Clip3 10 seconds to the right (with my original suggestion implemented and ripple edit turned on) to restore the original length of the transition.
    Of course, this could also be improved with another little addition :slightly_smiling_face: : Moving a transition could do this in one step. Currently, if you move a transition you will get a gap between the transition and one of the clips. But if moving the clips will no longer create a gap, but instead change the transition (following my original suggestion), why should moving the transition still create a gap? Instead, moving transition 2&3 to the right should lengthen Clip2 accordingly (instead of adding a gap between Clip2 and transition 2&3) and depending on ripple edit Clip3 is either moved to the right too (and not changed in length) or stays where it is and is shortened from the beginning.

So, here comes my revised suggestion:

  1. Moving a clip to the right or left should change the length of related and aligned transitions before the clip and (if ripple edit is turned off) after the clip.

  2. If a clip is moved far enough away from a transition, so that the length of the transition becomes zero or negative, the transitions is removed.

  3. If a clip is completely moved away from the related transition(s) (for example to a different track), the transition(s) are removed and the original start/end of the related clips is restored (because the clips do not overlap anymore). [This is a little improvement to number 2 above.]

  4. If a transition is moved to the right or left, the related clips are changed in length/moved. Example: Moving a transition to the right will add frames to the end of the first clip and depending on ripple edit remove frames from the start of the second clip (ripple edit off) or move the second clip to the right (ripple edit on).

The first two points are the most important, the other two are nice to get the “full picture” :grinning:

I think you’ve done more to formalize this feature than anyone else I’ve seen. These are very actionable suggestions. As you can see, once we dive into nitty-gritty details, it’s creating a workflow and a scope of change that is quite different from how Shotcut does things today. It doesn’t look like a big user interface change, but that’s a lot of code to change. All of that stuff needs full undo/redo support as well. It’s up to the programmers to determine how important this change is compared to other features.

I would consider one-track editing if it worked the way you described. But I have to make production with the army I have today, not the army I want. :slight_smile:

It seems to me–forgive a nooby butting in–that to maintain UI consistency, it might be an idea to add Delete to the option of Remove or Lift when applied to a transition. Delete (or perhaps Revert) would remove the transition and restore the status quo before the transition was applied, with the two adjacent clips reverting to their original position and length. The option in Properties to turn the transition into a Cut would do exactly the same thing.

I have no idea whether the implementation of this would be trivial or complex. But I notice that an Undo applied immediately after making such a transition behaves exactly as I describe above.


Chris

I agree. I made a very similar suggestion before:

That’s not what Cut in transition does. Cut in transition is actually a useful option if you are putting different clips together but the audio is not playing right with those clips side by side like producing a pop or crackle sound. By creating a transition clip and picking Cut then it would play the video as if it was just a regular cut but allow the audio to be mixed in well and hopefully avoid those pops and crackles.

I a new shotcut user, using transition feature usually. I find there is no setting for transition time; before I used proshow which had this feature. I thought it was included in Filter, but have not found.

To make transitions longer or shorter you simply and pull them out or push them in like any other clip. If you scroll up to the top of this page you will see “Tutorials”. Click on it and scroll down to the video that says “Cross-fades and Transitions”. That video explains it there as well as shows you how to do it.