How to Add Dissolve Transitions to Videos?

Liza Brown

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

All videos, regardless of how long or short they are, get their final form during the editing process. The overall quality of a video almost always depends on the way you piece the footage together or the video editing techniques you use to accentuate important elements of the story. A seemingly unimportant effect, like dissolve, can add strong symbolism to a sequence or even a single shot, because you can indicate the passage of time or offer a glimpse into the character’s state of mind by overlapping two images.

This effect is most commonly used to transition from one shot to another, but legendary directors like Friz Lang or Alfred Hitchcock have used dissolve to depict a physical or psychological transformation of characters in their movies even in the middle of the shot. Ultimately, the way you’re going to use the dissolve effect in a video depends on the point you’re trying to make, the story you’re telling and the visual style of scene you’re trying to achieve. So, let’s take a look at how you can add transitions to videos you’re editing in Filmora.

How to Create Dissolve Transitions Between Shots in Your Videos?

Making dissolve transitions to fade video in Filmora takes a minimum amount of effort, and you can apply this effect to videos you use in your projects even if you have little experience with editing videos in this video editing app for Mac and PC computers. After going through the installation process, you’re all set to start a new project in Filmora.

Step 1: Creating a New Project

Double-click on the app’s desktop icon, and once the welcome window pops up on the screen click on the New Project option.

When the new project loads, you should start adding all video, image and audio files you want to include in the video to your project.

Afterward, you should drag and drop all the video clips to the timeline and make cuts in order to remove the segments of those clips you don’t want to use in the final cut of the video. Delete all unwanted material from the timeline and make sure that there is no free space between the video clips that are still on the timeline.

Step 2: Applying the Dissolve Transition Effect to the Footage

In the upper left corner of the editor’s main window, you’ll be able to see a number of tabs, like Audio, Titles or Effects. Click on the Transitions tab that is located between Titles and Effects tabs and browse through Filmora’s collection of transitions until you come across the Dissolve transition. You can use the search bar to find it as well.

Zoom in on the timeline, so that you can have a better overview of the segment to which you want to apply the effect and then drag and drop the Dissolve transition on the cut between two clips. You can then drag one of its ends to determine its duration, or you can double-click on it to bring up the Transition editing window.

You can choose between the Prefix and Postfix options, depending on whether you want the transition to start before the first clip ends after the second clip begins. Selecting the Overlap setting will enable you to combine the footage from two clips before and after the cut. The Duration option allows you to determine exactly how long the transition is going to be while clicking on the Apply to All button enables you to set the same durations for all Dissolve transitions you add to the timeline.

Step 3: Adding Audio [Optional]

The sounds you use in your project should complement the video, and make the illusion of realism stronger. That’s why you should add the Fade in and Fade Out effects to the portion of the audio that matches the portion of the video to which you applied the Dissolve transition.

In case you don’t have your own music, you can use Filmora’s library of royalty-free songs . Simply click on the Audio tab and browse through the collection of songs until you find the one that fits the project perfectly. There are also a number of music categories, so you can just click on the Rock or Electronic category and add a song that you like the most to the audio track on the timeline.

Make cuts to the audio file at the same spot where the Dissolve transition starts, and at the end of the transition, and then double-click on the audio file you’ve just created to bring up the Audio Editing panel. Drag the Fade In and Fade Out sliders to set the duration of the effects and that’s it you’ve created the Dissolve transition. The method of applying transitions we’ve described in this article can be used for all other transitions Filmora offers.

Learn more about How to Edit Audio in Filmora

Step 4: Exporting Video from Filmora

Click on the Export button, when you are done editing the footage, and proceed to select the output format of the video, its resolution or the frame rate. Besides exporting the video to a destination on your hard drive, you can export your projects to your YouTube or Vimeo channels directly from Filmora.

The duration of the rendering process depends on the size of the project you’re exporting, as well as the processing power of the computer you’re using.

How to Use Dissolve Transition Effects More Creatively [3 Tips]?

Despite the fact that there is nothing complicated about applying dissolve transition to videos you add to your projects in Filmora, finding ways to maximize the visual impact of the effect can be a bit more complicated. So here are a few tips that might help you use Dissolve transition more effectively.

Be Moderate – It is easy to fall in love with the Dissolve transition because it offers an easy solution to each and every cut. However, this doesn’t mean that you should add it to all cuts in your video, because if you do so, your video might become predictable.

Don’t use Dissolve in Dialogue Scenes – Overlapping the shots of two characters who are having a conversation can be confusing to the viewer. Keep in mind that Dissolve is commonly used to depict the passage of time, which means that it can be quite effective at the beginning or the end of a sequence that contains dialogue, but transitioning between two characters while they are in the middle of a conversation is just silly.

Combine Dissolve with Other Visual Effects – Sometimes you simply have to try out different things to get the result you want. Mixing the Dissolve transition with different effects like Gaussian Blur or any other visual effect Filmora offers will enable you to create a visual statement that makes your video more powerful.

Conclusion

Dissolve transitions can help you make better videos in so many different ways, but relying too much on this effect may end up being pointless. Finding creative ways to incorporate this effect into your videos is going to make them more authentic, although it is important to learn how to recognize the right context in which a Dissolve transition is going to be the most effective. Besides Dissovle transition, Filmora features many other transitions as well, such as fade, ripple, 3D and speed blur. Download the free version of Filmora to have a try.

Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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