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Connecting with audience is the single biggest challenge in any media work, be it texts (e.g. stories), audio (e.g. songs), or video (e.g. movies). The urge to create something new or remodel what is old is laudable and indeed desirable as long as the end product is able to draw in the audience.

Talking about making movies it is not uncommon for the makers to take recourse to transitions while working on various scenes in the movies. Video transition is an important tool in the arsenal of movie makers.

In the world of web video there are scores of video transitions to use, coming as they do with various software. They vary a lot from one another not only by their types, but also by the ways you can put each to use.

Why Need Video Transitions

Usually web videos tend to be shorter, less than 3 minutes maybe. And no more than the first 30 seconds is all that a video maker gets to keep the audience glued to his video. This is important to understand because unlike watching films, seeing web videos is in most cases not a planned activity.

That means there isn’t much luxury to spend dithering, for the viewer’s mouse-click can instantly and forever send your video to his/her trashcan of mounting virtual memory.

Given those limitations, and given the fact that change of scenes is an essential element of any web video, video transition, you will agree, makes up for the briefest interludes – a couple of seconds maybe – between two scenes.

If that looks like too simple an explaining, it is so in a way. But video transitions have some other uses, if you will:

1. At the time of editing, much of the original piece is cut to curtail the length of the web video or to bring the meaning you want to convey. Video transition joins 2 disparate parts.
2. If there is a need of ‘flashback’ kind of situation, the road to put that into action is via suitable transition.
3. If done with subtle imagination, video transitions can indeed enhance the appeal of an apparently dour web video.

Big time movies routinely make use of sophisticated transitions that are produced with costly editing software. Small budget web videos can hardly afford those, but there is no reason to lose heart. There are enough options available within limited budgets to make fascinating video transitions.

We look at a few of those in the video below. In a future article we will explore some of the excellent transitions that are available to make video from PowerPoint.

Do write your idea of video transition, and share your experience in the comment box below.

Tagged: video, Video clip, video transition

This article of January 11th, 2010 is authored by Partha Bhattacharya, who runs this website. Catering to the clients' video needs aside, Partha also writes guest articles for other web publications.