Creating Smooth Seamless Transitions in Premiere Pro

On this video, Parker Walbeck and Landon Bytheway from fulltimefilmmaker take a look at 8 different “seamless” transitions and how to use them in Premiere Pro.

First of all, it is important that you do not overuse any of these transitions (something that people often do when they just start working with them) as well as apply them when they are relevant in terms of the story that you are trying to tell with your video.

With that out of the way here are the 8 transitions:

  • The Whip – this is a very fast transition moving from one subject to the next which needs to be shot in a precise way to work. You need to shoot the first clip and second clip in the same movement so that the second one will look like it continues from the same place as the first. Plan ahead the action and each movement and try and make a number of takes. Don’t shoot with very fast shutter speed (twice the number of frames) and try and match the colors and exposure on both clips – you can add some directional blur in Premiere.
  • Masking – this is a power (although somewhat more complex) transition where you use a mask to reveal a new clip as the first clip goes through a movement. You can use any object to block the camera as the movement progress but you need the change to be smooth and cover the entire frame at some point.
  • Smooth zoom – this can work very well if both clips have the same theme but in general it is pretty straight forward and can work in all directions, Parker and Landon made a preset pack of this transitions which is inexpensive and you can get it from here.
  • Luma key – this one is being used a bit too much now but it basically allows you to transition between bright and dark clips easily. You do need to have the viewer focus on the movement which should be identical and adding some sound at the key moment is also very helpful
  • Rotation – the best and simplest way is to do the rotation on both clips on location (pretty easy with some gimbals), if you don’t have or use a gimbal you can do half a turn with your hands and if you didn’t do it on the location you can create a rotating movement in Premiere and match the direction and speed of both clips.
  • Match cut – not exactly seamless but still nice – just make sure you have two clips with the same movement from the same angle and cut at a pick moment.
  • Glitch transition – super simple, shoot two clips one with and one without your subject and add the glitch when you do the transition.
  • Frame fill – this can be very similar to masking but you can use either dark or flare which are used for the cut between the first and second, the direction of both clips should match.

You can watch more HDSLR and video techniques on our dedicated HDSLR channel here on LensVid. You can check out more of Walbeck videos – here on LensVid as well.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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