Transitions
Transitions are easings between clips and at clip edges. Fawna supports fade-in, fade-out, and cross-fade, each with an editable duration and easing curve. The rest of the "transitions library" you might expect in a DAW (wipes, zooms, spins) is not implemented; what is here is the common subset that reads cleanly on AI generated footage.
Three transition kinds
- Fade-in
- Attached to a clip's start. Clip fades in from transparent (video) or silent (audio) over the transition duration.
- Fade-out
- Attached to a clip's end. Clip fades to transparent or silent.
- Cross-fade
- Straddles a cut between two adjacent clips. Outgoing fades out while incoming fades in, overlapped. Produces a soft transition between shots.
Creating a transition
Open the Transitions panel (if closed, use the View menu). Drag a transition tile onto the timeline. As you drag, drop zones light up on every clip edge and cut.
- Drop on a clip's left edge: fade-in.
- Drop on a clip's right edge: fade-out.
- Drop on a cut between two clips: cross-fade.
Default duration is 500ms. The transition tile you dragged determines the default easing curve.
The keyboard shortcut F toggles a 500ms fade-in and fade-out on every selected clip at once.
Press again to remove them.
Editing a transition
Select the transition by clicking its visible wedge on the timeline. The Curve panel activates and shows:
- Duration slider: total length in milliseconds.
- Curve graph: the easing shown as a cubic bezier. Drag handles to reshape.
- Presets: quick buttons for ease-in, ease-out, linear, smooth, and more presets covering emphasis and anticipation.
- Remove button: deletes the transition.
Dragging transitions on the timeline
Cross-fades have their own draggable widget straddling the cut. You can:
- Drag the body to shift the cross-fade left or right along the cut.
- Drag either edge to resize (extend the cross-fade duration).
- Delete with the Delete key while selected.
Fade-in and fade-out wedges render inside the clip near the edge. Drag their inner edge to resize the duration.
Picking an easing curve
| Curve | Shape | Use for |
|---|---|---|
| Linear | Straight | Constant rate of change. Rarely the right answer. |
| Ease-in | Slow start, fast end | Fade-ins that reveal gradually. |
| Ease-out | Fast start, slow end | Fade-outs that settle gently. |
| Smooth (ease-in-out) | Slow, fast, slow | Cross-fades between similar shots. The default. |
| Sharp | Steeper mid | Quick reveals, stingers. |
Rule of thumb: default to smooth (ease-in-out) for cross-fades between narrative shots. Use ease-out for fade-outs, ease-in for fade-ins. Reach for sharp only on hard stingers (a cut slam into a big reveal).
Audio transitions
All three transition kinds work on audio tracks the same way they work on video: fade-in ramps volume from 0, fade-out ramps to 0, cross-fade overlaps two audio clips with opposite volume ramps.
For music transitions, a longer cross-fade (1-2 seconds) reads better than the 500ms default. For voiceover, shorter (200-400ms) avoids audible overlap of words.
What transitions won't do
- No wipes, zooms, spins, or stylized transitions. The default set is intentionally small.
- No per-frame keyframing of opacity outside a transition. Use fade-in / fade-out wedges or Ken Burns.
- No audio-only ducking (sidechain). Manually adjust volume automation instead via a parked clip edit.
Where to go next
- Audio and mixing for the audio side of transitions.
- Markers and loops for reviewing transitions in context.